Station No. 3

The phone rang and Rosa put down her crossword puzzle dictionary, climbed out of her chair and shuffled to the kitchen. She had not stepped very far into the technology age, still relying on the rotary dial telephone which had hung on the kitchen wall, rather than a cordless one which would have allowed her to stay in her favorite chair and not suffer the aches and pains which now made her too late to catch the caller. Just as she picked up the receiver, the line clicked; there was no answering machine.

Upon turning around to make her way back to her puzzle — looking for a four-letter word which meant “three” — she saw Sam dropping the day’s mail through the slot on the oak front door. Sam caught a glimpse of Rosa shuffling toward the door and stopped.

“Miss Rosa, getting along okay today?” he asked, part as friendly conversation, part in sincere concern for the frail woman.
“Yes,” she answered, her voice raised to be sure Sam heard her through the door. Rosa was accustomed to her daily discomforts and the ways in which her aches slowed her such that the day was in fact “okay” even though she felt her aches as though they were a ball and chain around her ankle.

Rosa asked Sam if he knew a four-letter word which meant “three,” but Sam was at a loss.

“He’s a nice boy,” Rosa said out loud as she went back to work on the crossword, although Sam was himself the father of two boys and far removed from boyhood and the days of adventures in the woods imagining great heroics. Before Rosa could sit down, however, the sound of some sort of music wafting in through the open parlor window drew her and she poked her head out a bit to inquire. The day was magnificent; autumn in its glory with the rich colors and crisp air which stopped short of brining a deep chill on account of radiant sunshine. Out her window was a neighbor she rarely saw, Charles, working in his yard. Everyone else called him “Chuck,” but Rosa preferred the more formal name, and asked Charles what he was listening to.

“The three tenors,” he replied, pausing to rise from his kneeling position and put down his garden tool. “They are quite a trio.”

The recent news that my wife and i are expecting our third child, has me meditating on Ps. 139. The obvious focus regarding birth is the part which speaks of being "fearfully and wonderfully made." But i have been convicted, and rightly so, when i look at how the majority of the psalm talks about God searching me and knowing me.

If i want the blessing of being wonderfully made, then it comes with a condition: He will know me. In the end, only then am i truly protected, cared for and blessed. True freedom is to be naked before God with nothing to hide, knowing that He loves.

Ache

Why must i ache for your acceptance?
Why must i cry for your approval?
Why must i yearn for affirmation from behind your hollow stare?

i'm drifting on an ocean of a thousand desperate claims to be someone.

For all my effort at achievement;
For all the pain of having failed;
For all your well-meaning compliments that leave me feeling pale.

Still i feel the sting of all the ugliness that seeks to bring me down.

In my dreams i am so much more than this.
In my dreams, i would never miss.
In my dreams i am so much more than this.

What is the answer to the question?
What is the reason to the rhyme?
Can this passion for a savior be fulfilled in time?

i need a resurrection from the grave of doubt that never lets me go.

In everything that i am lacking;
In my trying to grab hold;
This cyclical rejection, and so on i flail _

An errant pendulum between insatiable rage and despondance.

In my dreams i am so much more than this.
In my dreams i would never miss.
In my dreams i am so much more than this.

Station No. 2


When Rosa arrived home that evening she made herself a glass of warm milk, sharing some of it with her black cat — Shadow. It was a kindness to have the friendship of an adoring pet to welcome her home each night with consistent faithfulness. Rosa always counted on the warm reception; Shadow's head rubbing Rosa's stockinged leg as she purred long and deep.

"If only the conductor on the train home had been half as friendly," Rosa said out loud with a tone of amazement.

Rosa had, yet again, forgotten her transit pass and fumbled through her purse for what seemed like an eternity to the conductor and the other passengers. Out of the doctor's bag-sized carry-all Rosa pulled her makeup kit, her crossword puzzle book, a few loose photos and a portion of the daily paper. She had been certain to hold onto that day's edition as it had a death notice for an old family friend whom Rosa had always called Aunt Betty, although she was no blood relation.

The suddenness of Betty's passing had surprised Rosa, who was also slightly angered at the absence of a proper obituary. But Betty was one of those people who, while she was dearly loved by Rosa and had been influential in her life, was completely unknown to just about everybody else in the world.

In the chaos of attempting to find her transit pass, amidst the derisive stare of the conductor and the superior glares of the other riders on the train, Rosa felt the intense heat of embarrassment wash over her. Unfortunately, that feeling was common to Rosa. At long last, the conductor simply rolled his eyes and walked on to attend to the other passengers on a very full train, muttering something about a crazy old lady.

Rosa had half a mind to give the conductor, easily 25 years her junior, a talking to, but as she turned to address him, she caught the eye of another woman close to her in age who was wearing a sympathetic grin as one who was uncomfortable on Rosa's behalf. That look was at once a caution to Rosa and a consolation, the way it often feels when one realizes not everyone is casting aspertions in one's direction. The sense of caution Rosa had stemmed from a pained look in the other woman's eyes which seemed to counsel against pursuing anything in conversation with the conductor given the fact that Rosa had looked somewhat foolish.

But now that she was home, Rosa rehearsed that scene on the train and became increasingly annoyed.

"I am not a crazy old lady," she huffed.

Such was her increasing aggravation living in a world getting ever younger and moving ever so quickly past her. Rosa fell asleep in her clothes, propped up in her tattered wingback chair — a gift from Aunt Betty — Shadow confortably nestled in her lap, while Moonlight Serenade drifted out of her record player.

Station

Rosa ambles through the train station quick food mart, talking excitedly to the fresh bouquet of mums and carnations clutched to her chest. Her uneven gait bespeaks a hip replacement, a year ago now, and the wasp's nest above her grooved brow waits anxiously for tomorrow's hair-dressing appointment. The brown polyester slacks and matching knit top, a quasi-herringbone, reveal less her fashion sense and more her economic condition. She grabs a stool by the window of the food mart which opens out to a modestly busy station.

Middle-aged men in khaki uniforms sweep the faux marble floor of the station with the same energy that the well-dressed man next to Rosa uses to turn the page of the daily newspaper. His Italian tailoring and the tabloid he reads seem rather Capulet and Montague. He flips the page again _ boxscores _ and his eyebrow jumps with modest pleasure. He clears his throat, and startled by that, a balding, scruffy, dusty-eyed man in a soiled trenchcoat stops talking to himself long enough to click his lighter with several rapid-fire strokes and drag his cigarette deeply. The trenchcoat is lost in the full-bodied exhale of smoke which mimicks the Hiroshima sky, and the man tilts his head back in what appears to be personal revelry.

Returning from the tilt, the trenchcoat's glassy gaze settles on two reflector-vest-clad railworkers sharing a chat over steaming java. Rosa had noticed them too, and thought their camaraderie a spectacle in this asylum.