There’s something quietly sacred about my Thursday mornings.
I leave the house with a book in hand, my office bag on my back, the air still crisp, the sky unsure of its color. I usually call someone a friend, a loved one, or a familiar voice. The conversation is gentle and unhurried—just enough to carry a little warmth into the morning. The bus arrives with a gentle sigh. There is no urgency, no noise, just motion. When I board the bus, the call ends, and the quiet returns.
The ride is short. A few regulars sit beside me—half-asleep, half elsewhere. It takes me to the Somerset station, where the CTrain is already there, still and waiting, as if it knew I’d be coming. Something is reassuring in that. In a world that rushes ahead, here is something that waits. The CTrain is made by Siemens, the company that I worked for before I moved to Canada.
I climb aboard and find my usual window seat. I press play on Dan Gibson’s Solitudes, and in a moment, I’m no longer in a train but in a forest—birds calling, streams murmuring, wind weaving through leaves. Nature, held in sound.
I open my book. A short story or a novella is always something that knows how to say much in a few pages. Today, it might be Ruskin Bond, with his quiet hills and lonelier hearts. Or Chekhov, with his truth beneath the ordinary. Or perhaps Maugham, whose sentences carry both wisdom and weariness. Lately, it’s been Fredrik Backman—his tender little worlds where broken people quietly try to be better. I read slowly, letting the words breathe.
Around me, quiet lives unfold. Most passengers read too—thick fantasy novels, crime thrillers, and dog-eared books from a beloved series. A few scroll endlessly on their phones, faces lit by screens. Others lean back, eyes closed, stealing fragments of sleep between stations. Some lean back with eyes shut, mid-dream. But every now and then, something lovely happens. I catch the title of a book a fellow passenger is reading—or they glance at mine—and a conversation blooms, quietly. We exchange names of books, not of people. A woman once handed me the title of a book I’d never heard of. “You’ll like it,” she said, before getting off at Chinook Station. I read her suggested book, and I did like it. And I never saw her again to thank her.
These small interactions—strangers passing through my life just for one ride—leave no names, but sometimes, they leave stories. We are together, yet apart—bound by the rhythm of the tracks and the hush of the hour.
When the train reaches downtown, I step off with the others, scattering like birds from a wire. But before I join the noise of the day, I make one final stop—Tim Hortons, and I order the same thing: A medium French Vanilla, with a quarter dark roast. The warmth of the cup in my hand is like punctuation— closing the gentle chapter of the morning before the day’s paragraphs begin.
A voice. A bus. A train. A tune. A tale. A cup of coffee.
