What She Didn't Realize

She must have seen me shivering, the woman on the train sitting in the seat behind us. She must have seen me, because she said something when we sat down -- something about how I finally got warm. Her voice was empathetic.

She was a mother. She and her daughter had come to Chicago to celebrate the daughter's birthday -- a girl's weekend off from husband and brothers. The came to watch the marathon. And they, as we, were riding the CTA back where they came from now that it was done.

If she saw me walk up at the end, she probably thought I was in tears from pain or maybe from cold. But she wouldn't have known that that wasn't it. She couldn't have known that I often come close to tears (as unmanly as that may be) after crossing the finish line, and I can rarely hold them back when I find family waiting at the end.

She was a parent, so she would have understood that had I explained, but I was only now beginning to warm up and my feet were only now becoming less sore. So I let the others chat with her, and I sat still with my arms tucked together and hands in my lap gazing ahead as the train swerved and swayed from side to side.

She wished us well as we got off at our station, and she offered me words of support, not knowing that I had finally warmed up and the pain in my feet was gone. And she will never know that in a strange way those tears she saw will warm my heart for a very long time to come.

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