White Castle

We had lunch at the White Castle, my father and I, across the street from the train station in Hartford. The floor was not quite clean, as if it had been mopped with dirty water, the small white octagonal tiles almost the same color as the gray ones. We ordered the trademark square hamburgers, and we sat at a two-person table by the frosted window, the whole place gray and subdued. It was after two, and the lunchtime crowd had thinned out.

Photo by Jack on Unsplash

We ate in companionable silence until Dad said, “So, do you think you can make this trip by yourself now?”

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “It’s all pretty easy except for making that tight connection in Newark, but now that we’ve done it together, I’m sure I’ll be fine. It’s good to know the train to New York always leaves from track 2.”

“Good,” he said, and he paid the bill. We walked across the street to wait for the train that would take us home. Hartford to New York, New York to Newark, Newark to Somerville, a three-hour trip.

It had been my father’s idea. “Let’s take a practice run on the train,” he’d said. I knew how my Dad worried, so I agreed. Outwardly, I teased him about being overprotective. Inwardly, I was grateful. I was anxious about the solo trip to college.

At the time, this trip was just more evidence of my father’s care for his daughters. I was seventeen, the oldest of the three girls, the first to go away to college. He wanted me to be safe. I knew taking a whole day to ride the train from central New Jersey to Hartford and back was a bit crazy. Now, I can see what an extraordinary gesture it was—my father’s wish to impart his commuter knowledge, not by describing it, but by embodying it. In the process, his natural inclination to make the world safe for his daughter created a lasting imprint.

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Thanks for reading,
Deborah