Two Tales About Trains and Marriage

Many, many years ago, when I was married, I left my two children in the care of their father and took the train into the city to visit my parents.

While waiting at Union Station to board, the passengers around me were upset with the porter, on behalf of one traveler. I guess the railway rule was to put the passengers into specific cars, based on their destination. But there was a woman in her eighties, traveling with her daughter and son-in-law who had come straight from the airport, making the final leg of their journey home after a trip to England.

Their stops were not the same, and the porter would not let them stay in the same passenger car. It caused quite the uproar, and for a group of us, that uproar lasted as the train pulled out of the station and headed east.

The woman I was sitting beside got upset when she thought I was missing my stop, so I rushed to gather my stuff and hurriedly got off the train...one stop too soon. I can understand where the mistake was made. That stretch of the tracks travels through one small town after another before it hit some bigger cities going east. The stop at the small town, 15 Km before my stop, had been discontinued for a time and only recently reinstated.

So, I walked into town, grabbed a taxi and headed home. I was upset because I pictured my husband and kids at the station, waiting for me, upset when I didn't depart the train. The taxi took me to the train station, and I couldn't see the familiar truck waiting for me, and then I remembered it was Thursday. "Take me to the arena," I said.

My beloved spouse had called my parents, and was told they had, indeed, dropped me off at the station. Now my parents are worried, wondering where I could be, but my husband had other priorities.

At the arena I found my kids playing the rink rat, and my husband on the ice playing his weekly hockey game. To make a sad story short, is it any wonder we ended up divorced?

Then there's my brother and his train tale. His wife drives every day to the GO station and takes the train downtown to work. I don't know exactly where she gets off the train but assume there are subway trips and a walk before actually arriving at her office. I've never had to do that kind of daily trip as I've lived most of my work life in small towns or had a car and could drive directly.

Last week we had a terrible ice storm...power outages, trees downed, the roads chaotic, accidents...a Canadian winter.

After all that walking, the subway, the train ride, my sister-in-law was faced with clearing the ice off her car before she could make the final drive home. A long day at work made even longer. When she arrived at her car she found it cleared, when all the cars around her were still frozen under a coat of ice.

At home, she noticed her husband's coat was wet, as were his clothes and his hair. He had ventured out in that freezing rain, to clear his wife's car of ice and snow. Is it any wonder that have been married for more than forty years?

A tale of two trains, and very telling examples of  relationships, love and marriage.