Rhinecliff

The river is grey and blue and, at spots, a deep purple. The train is late. But only by a few minutes. Negligible to me, but an annoyance to others who I wait beside. And perhaps, an earlier version of me would have been annoyed as well, but that’s not the woman who I am in this moment that I occupy. I think that they are not looking at the river and the mountains as I am. I want to urge them to look at the thin slices of ice that slide down the river that flows both ways, but we are all masked strangers, so I keep it to myself.

A man my age walks down the stairs from the station to the platform. He pauses to watch the ice move with ease down the river. He takes a picture on his phone before pausing to take another moment to gaze on the river’s majesty. He looks up to continue down the platform. We make eye contact, and I squint my eyes as a sort of pandemic smile. He squints back.

I turn to look back up the river valley. I think that I see a bald eagle - they returned to the Hudson, did you know - swiftly making its way north. I cannot be sure that it truly is an eagle, but I feel that an eagle is fitting to this moment of quiet splendor. The colors of the valley with its mountains and river have all shifted to appear to be one color. All the shapes and lines blend into one another in the dusky purple light, barely distinguishable from one another.

The train is late, but if the train were on time, I would not have had this thoughtful moment with my home. It is beginning to look again the way that it did last year when I returned, unsure and lost and simply wishing to be left alone. This return, the passing of nearly a year, could easily shake me and push me down down down into something that I am continuously working to pull myself up from. But something has changed. I am not quite as fragile as I once felt. Or, perhaps more accurately, I can sense my fragility in ways that I previously could not. I have a better sense, a stronger sense, for my weaknesses and I see them arise, I acknowledge them, and then I try my best to let them go. And I let go of the potential panic of smelling late winter or early spring, depending who you ask, air and remembering the way I felt and the part of the woman who I am that tumbled into the purple mornings and darker evenings last March.

And so. I greet this passing of a year with a nod to how far I have come. I still cry when I am cruel and speak harshly to the people who I love because I’m hurting and suddenly in that moment I want someone else to hurt, too, but I instantly regret my smallness and what feels like evilness. I still cry when I wonder how I am going to re-teach myself algebra in order to take the GRE and I feel a certain math-related panic that I have not felt in years. I still cry when I wonder why I hate my body the way that I do and attempt to control it to mold it to keep an eye on it when it brings me no happiness at all and only a misery that is pervasive. I still cannot help but cry when listening to Anna Tivel and Angel Olsen, and at times, Sidney Gish.

What is different now, a year later, is me. The sun rises in the morning. I have forty 10 year-olds who depend on me. Who look forward to seeing me. Who want to know how my weekend was. I drink coffee and cook and walk and talk and sleep and dream and love so deeply that I had not known to be real. I depend on myself. I want to be here. I want to cry and scream and shout into my pillow when I hate myself. I want to hug and kiss and dance and get dressed and undressed and love this world and my life and every waking moment, even the ones that make me want to hide.

The train rounds the bend by the bridge. The lights create two bright points in the purple evening. The platform is quiet. We all watch the train in a hush, taken aback by its beauty and the beauty of a moment that would not have been possible if the train had been on time. A child with his mother looks at her and says quietly in awe, “Do you see the train?” I smile behind my mask. The train pulls into the station. The conductor steps out. She scans my ticket and says, “What a beautiful night, huh?” I squint my eyes all the way shut and nod in response. I climb aboard and push my suitcase on the rack and settle into my seat. Returning to Brooklyn along the river that has guided me and will continue to guide me. My feet are steady on the ground and I am ready for what will come.