Manhattan-bound Bronx train

middle-age American living in New Jersey near the Lincoln Tunnel «« The fatherly sentiment triggered in me yesterday on a Bronx train riding from the zoo with Hana was triggered by Black boys, which seems important to this narrative though in a less racially divided location or time being Black could be omitted.  The brothers were split by about the number of years that separated my late son, David, and my teenage son.  The Bronx travelers were probably 17 and 9.  The 17 was a fine manly boy becoming man, and the basketball that sat on his backpack held in place by his shins made him appear as an NBA tracker.  He had an oversized Samsung phone and white earbuds.  One bud was plugged into his ear and the other bud hung in ready position with the cable around his ear’s back.  He was so intensely focused on his game that it seemed the world could have been falling apart around him and he would not notice though he did notice each time he had to reach and return the basketball to the on-the-backpack-storage position.  A seat opened next to the 17, and it was filled with a boy that could have been his little brother.  This was a touching scene.  For a long Bronx local ride the 17 was flanked by the 9 to his right and left, and the intense focus on his video game from the stranger to his left went unnoticed.  The 9 brother falling asleep on a stranger’s shoulder also went unnoticed, so sleeping brother and intensely focused stranger was the 17’s immediate surroundings that he was oblivious to.  In time, a long time, the stranger boy who was traveling alone left and something knocked the 17 out of his vgame trance, so he swung the brother’s head from stranger’s shoulder to his own shoulder in such a loving way that it has me tapping away about this tender moment almost twenty-four hours later.  I learned the game was NBA 2K15.  Fatherly emotions rose in me as I saw this 17 rise to the occasion to be fatherly.  I saw the stranger 9 leave the train with reason to ache in his heart for a brother as good as the 17.  Most of all I would see my surviving son’s pain losing his brother, David, to premature death.  The 9 brother was sleeping through moments — wonderful moments only made possible with intimate loving relationships between siblings.  The 17 was just doing what was natural to him.  He was uninhibited, and just being a 17 playing 2K15 yet in his spare rem cycles he plenty to spare of his little bro.  God it was a wonderful, and the best part is not one of the thresssome really has a clue just how great life was for a series of Five Train stops on a Manhattan-bound Bronx train.  I trust my teenage son could see that moment and appreciate how the ordinary can be extraordinary, and how part of him will always wish to have David return . . if only for a moment.  My late son, David, was not Mahantma Gandi though he did leave a legacy, and yesterday his legacy let me extract the beauty of one of life’s ordinary moments amen alleluia asalam alaikum mazel tov. »» about me  302-990-2346  twitter  nearlincoln@hotmail.com  contact us