Brendan on the Platform: NYC Connections

The subways are a mess. Mercury is in retrograde and we are between two eclipses, or at least that’s what everyone keeps saying, and honestly, this morning it felt true.

I found myself scrambling underground, trying to figure out how to get to Brooklyn for another 5K. I’m working toward my 9+1 with NYRR, nine races and one volunteer shift, and you’re in the New York City Marathon the following year. This was race number five in my streak, and I was not going to let a broken subway system take it from me. A spontaneous, slightly panicked decision to leave one station for another (eating the additional fare and telling myself it was fine, it was fine) and suddenly I was standing on an empty platform, staring at a board that didn’t show the train I needed.

I almost gave up. The race wasn’t even that important to me. I could just go home. Get a coffee. Call it a morning.

And then a tall young runner sat down next to me on the bench. He had a running bib on. He was going exactly where I was going.

I said good morning. And then, and this is the part that surprised even me, I did something I almost never do. I spoke to him. And as a longstanding New Yorker I broke the cardinal rule and asked for help with directions. “What train are you taking to the race?”

His name was Brendan. British Royal Navy officer. Sharp with a lilting UK accent, warm, unhurried despite the chaos swirling around us. He had his phone out and the MTA app open before I’d even finished explaining where I needed to go, tapping assuredly in that way that said I’ve navigated harder things than New York City transit. He probably has.

What followed was an hour on the R train and then the F train, an unplanned, unscheduled, completely unrepeatable conversation with a stranger who turned out to be anything but.

We talked about running. About life. About living in New York and the way people push their limits without ever stopping to ask themselves why. Brendan had volunteered as an EMT at the NYC Marathon, and we found ourselves shaking our heads together at the same quiet surprise: how many people push themselves to a breaking point simply to say they ran a marathon once. The finish line as a checkbox rather than a destination. We both understood the other way of seeing it, the joy living in the journey itself, the texture of the miles rather than the number on the clock. Our words tumbled on top of each other’s as if we had known each other for years, excited to share stories and perspective.

I told him I’d been taking a break from running after decades of it, from 5Ks to ultramarathons. That I was slowly, carefully finding the fun again, enjoying the journey, the people, the connections. Not chasing times or proving anything, just remembering what it felt like to move through the world on my own two feet and actually enjoy it. He nodded like he knew exactly what I meant. We talked about respect for limits, his, mine, the ones we’ve tested and the ones that have quietly tested us back.

He told me about the Bahrain marathon, one lone path built in the middle of a desert, desolate with no landmarks or distractions, 90-plus degree heat billowing about you. He told me about navy buddies who showed up along the route with food gels, biking alongside him in solidarity. He told me about his early days as a cadet, conditions so extreme they made my ultramarathons look like park jogs, the kind of training designed to strip you down to nothing so you could learn to lead from that emptiness. How to stand in front of people who are exhausted and lost and be the one with strength, optimism, and clarity toward a shared end goal, especially when you feel even lower than those you are leading.

And then he mentioned the chapters he had recently closed: his work as an EMT, and the ongoing, evolving shape of his service with the Royal Navy. He talked about ending something intentionally not as loss but as choice. As clarity about what comes next comes to light. I stored that one away carefully, because I am, whether I’m ready to say it out loud or not, navigating my own next chapter right now, and this stranger on a subway bench kept landing on exactly the things I’ve been turning over in my own mind.

Who dropped this man next to me this morning?

But I realize that none of this happens if I stay quiet on that subway bench. None of it. And I almost did.

As I shared about my background, classical concert production included, he offered up that he used to play the clarinet. Of course he played the clarinet, and always wanted to learn the oboe.

I also told him something I don’t always say out loud. That, as a writer, I’ve always been someone who loves to listen. To absorb. And I always seem to be the one people want to tell everything to. And I love to sit with what someone so personally shares and let it find its way into my writing later. That conversations like this one are, in a strange and specific way, part of my work. He smiled at that, understanding how he was becoming a part of it, swirling into the mix of my words, reflections, and eventual shares with those who join into this conversation.

At some point I mentioned poet and writer John Milton. Blind in his later years, Milton would sit and wait for his assistant to arrive each morning, practically vibrating with everything he needed to say, begging to be milked of his torrent of words so they could finally exist somewhere outside of him. The ideas were there. The passion was there. He just needed someone to receive them. Brendan didn’t blink. We were two people doing exactly that for each other, pouring forth and receiving in equal measure, the ideas demanding to be spoken aloud and shared. We talked about eulogies. About writing the words while you’re still alive to hear them. About the to-do list you will absolutely die with unless you make some decisions about what needs to be accomplished now. Right now. Don’t wait.

As we approached the last train before the start, I knew it would get crowded and loud, so I turned to him and said it clearly, before the noise swallowed the moment. Thank you. Thank you for saving me today. Thank you for talking and connecting. He smiled, really smiled. And then he did something brilliant. He asked for my race bib number. Not my phone number. My bib number. So he could track me. So that if he ever wanted to remember this particular morning, this particular strange and unplanned connection, he could pull it up and see: yes, that happened. She finished. I returned the gesture, adding him to my racing app so I could track his progress.

I laughed and told him he was much faster than me, so he’d best get moving, and I’d bring up the back of the pack as usual. Just leave me a few breadcrumbs.

My app pinged at 8:19 am, 19 minutes after the first wave of the 5K race started. Due to the thousands of runners and my back of the pack starting corral, I couldn’t even see the start line yet. I laughed out loud, catching the attention of the strangers around me, when I saw his result and silently congratulated Brendan on a great and swift run.

Prospect Park was shrouded in fog. Thick and mysterious, the kind that makes a familiar place feel like somewhere you’ve never been. When I emerged from the subway into that haze I found, to my great amusement, that I had somehow become the leader of a small pack of runners who had no idea where they were going and had decided, apparently, that I did. After the morning I’d had, scrambling and lost and nearly turning back, I was now the one showing the way, and I had to laugh.

The sun came through the fog in an eerie, glowing way that doesn’t look real, that makes you stop mid-stride and reach for your phone to grab a photo. I did, and like a chain reaction, my gesture set off everyone around me like clockwork. All of us suddenly stopped, pointing our phones at the same patch of light, strangers briefly united by the same impulse to capture something beautiful.

Somewhere in all of this, I became aware that I was replaying my earlier conversation with Brendan in my mind, hearing my own words. And it wasn’t the anxious monitoring I used to do, scanning my own words for mistakes or weakness, but actually listening. On that train I had described myself, my work and my life with a clarity, a confidence and a volume I don’t usually use in such a situation, especially with someone I don’t know. I said: I’m a writer. I’m a runner. I’m a musician. I’m a classical concert producer.

No internal asterisks. No qualifiers. No waiting for someone to dispute it.

I’ve been committed to sober-minded living for fifteen months now, and what that has given me, beyond everything else, is this: I have rediscovered, or rather uncovered, who I am now. Today. I speak about it clearly, with passion, without apology. That’s not something I did easily before, not like this. The person who nearly turned back on that empty platform this morning is also the person who spent an hour in genuine, equal conversation with a Royal Navy officer about Milton and marathons and the courage it takes to close a chapter on purpose. All things are true within the same space. I am still learning to hold them in the same grasp without flinching.

I promised myself 3.3 race miles of what I like to call “mind laundry,” the time to work through the connections made this morning, to let the words arrange themselves before they disappeared. I identify with Milton longing to capture these thoughts before they disintegrate, and I will often grab for my phone mid-stride to dictate shorthand wave after wave of words.

And maybe that’s the whole point, the very lesson presented to me in my morning adventure: The challenges are always going to be there, the delayed trains, the world in various states of crisis, the mercury doing whatever mercury does. But you get to choose how you show up inside all of that. You get to decide whether to stay on the platform or switch stations. Whether to sit quietly or say good morning to the stranger on the bench who sits down next to you.

I said good morning. I asked for help. I did something different.

And look what I would have missed if I hadn’t.