All I can say in my defense is that it was raining hard and I was late: for my job at the magazine, about 20 minutes; for my life, about 20 years. Everything seemed to stop when my mother developed Alzheimer’s two decades ago. I was turning 55 and I was worried. If the human race suddenly had to abandon Earth for some reason—say a meteor was headed our way—and a spaceship was leaving with the cream of humanity to start life anew on another planet, was there any reason to take me? The best I could come up with was that I was small and wouldn’t take up a lot of room. I was filler. And it was raining and had been for days, the rainiest winter in years. I hated being wet. I hated being late. Most of all I hated rushing, rushing, rushing to get somewhere.

So there I was, a petite copy editor running down 14th Street in the pouring rain toward Sixth Avenue to the F train, balancing my umbrella and my bags, trying not to get wet, not to step in a puddle, not to slip, hoping I wouldn’t be too late for work. At the station we all tried to go down the stairs with our umbrellas open so we wouldn’t get soaked. It didn’t work. I was rained on; I was jostled. At the turnstile I thrust my metro card through. “Swipe Again.” I did. “Swipe Again.” I heard the train arriving downstairs as I ran my card through a third time. People from the train were already coming up the stairs, a bad sign. As I got to the platform, the train doors closed in my face and the F train left. 

When my mother’s memory began to fade, every time we took the train, she would tell me the story of how she had taken the Orient Express right after World War II to Paris when she was only 20 years old, how there were armed guards on the train then and Europe was still in ruins. She told me that story so many times, but I had stopped listening, and I can’t remember anymore why she was going to Paris. 

Why was it that just missing the train was so much more devastating than totally missing the train? I think it was the self-recrimination, the guilt—if only I hadn’t stopped, to put on my gloves, button my coat, get something to read, I would’ve made the train. Perhaps it was the injustice, the Why Me-ness of it. It felt purposeful, spiteful. It made me feel foolish, standing there helplessly watching the train leave, like watching your lover turn his back and leave with that other girl, the prettier one. Pick me you stupid train.

I headed toward the uptown end of the platform, so I’d be a few feet closer to my final destination, and a large, filthy homeless man started walking toward me. Usually I gave every homeless person a dollar, no matter how implausible their story or off-key I found them. They got a dollar, I got good karma. It was the quickest way to regain my good humor. But not that day. That day I could not stop and give him a dollar because I had already stopped for too many years for my mother and now I was very late and I had missed the train and probably the boat and I wasn’t getting on the spaceship and if I stopped anymore my epitaph would read “Died with potential intact.” 

I plopped down on the nearest bench, pulled out the newspaper and held it in front of my face. As the homeless guy reached me, the train pulled into the station, and I dashed toward it and away from him. He was shouting now, but I ignored him. The doors opened and I darted into a seat, my newspaper up. The man was louder, and now I could make out what he was saying: “Ma’am! Ma’am!” I looked up. He was standing in the doorway of the train holding my umbrella, smiling when he finally got my attention and our eyes met. I had just enough time to reach him and take my umbrella but not enough time to say thank you before the doors closed in his face and the train took off. I stood there, a wet mad rushing frantic jostled oblivious rude New Yorker holding a cheap $5 black umbrella. 

I never saw that homeless man again, never had a chance to thank him. I wish I had stopped. In a place as time-obsessed as New York, where everyone is trying to get somewhere fast and first, it’s easy to forget that time isn’t really flowing forward. All rushing does is shatter the present. Better to stop than wish you had. It won’t slow you down because you aren’t going anywhere anyway. I loved my mother and she needed me, so I stopped for a long time. That’s all.