ManicDDaily

Pearl Doesn't Mind Dishevelment (Or You Know What)

Saturday:  I am on an early morning train way too early in the morning to be on a Saturday train.

A woman, clearly an experienced traveler on this train, slips in at the last minute, not breathing heavily.  She takes the seat across the aisle and immediately takes off coat, sweater, stows bags, attaches iPod to her head, and from the top of one of her stowed bags–little totes–retrieves an inner plastic bag with knitting project and needles.  She sets to work over some pieces of paper, shielded in plastic, to which she occasionally refers.

I, in contrast, who made the train with some time to spare, am still rustling around my stuff, the dog jammed beside me (inside her bag and a couple of old parkas, one of which doesn’t quite fit into the bag) an overly-heavy suitcase, my hat, my own parka, tea, purse–

The woman across wears reading glasses as she knits and has, precise, slightly pointed features (lips, chin, nose, eyebrows plucked in vaulted arches).  Despite, or as part of her precision, she seems to love patterns.  Her outer sweater (taken off immediately upon sieeing down) displays a snow scene with fir trees, deer, mountains, all woven into the pattern: her inner sweater (which she does not take off) is grey with pastel stripes in multiple colors; her bags are floral, one a brocaded pattern of (seemingly) rhododendra, the other water lillies in a backdrop busy with current.

She makes notes about her knitting on a piece of graph paper.

My black and grey across the aisle feels more crowded and disheveled than ever.  Does the conductor give me a snide look as he takes my ticket?

Pearl, at least, doesn’t seem to mind.