Diary Entry on the 11.30 Train to Dublin

My mother told me a story when I was a teenager, and it has been going around in my head
all day. We had a very stormy relationship my mother and me. But I suppose that’s true of a
lot of teenage girls and their mothers, but I don’t know why I am recalling all that now.
The story goes that my mother was sitting on the station bench waiting for the train to
take her to Dublin where her boyfriend lived. Boyfriend. Not my Dad. That was later. She
was reading a woman’s magazine, that was what they had in those days before iPhone and
tablets, when a young woman came and sat beside her. This young woman was extremely
nervous, and seemed quite high strung and agitated. It was obvious she wanted to talk to
someone, anyone. My mother just so happened to be there.

So, she told me her story, my mother said.
The young woman said, I should have taken the train to Galway. But I don’t know if I
did the right or wrong thing.
My mother didn’t say anything, just nodded, perplexed and wondering what this
woman wanted from her.

Then the woman started to cry, the tears just came streaming down. My mother didn’t
know what to do. She was much younger then and had never experienced anything like this
before. But she knew she had to stay and listen. It would have been too cruel to get up and
walk away. It would be abandoning a woman in distress. She couldn’t do that.
She told my mother that she had given her child up for adoption and had the
opportunity to meet her for the first time in Galway. It had been all arranged. The Social
Worker was waiting to meet her on the Galway train and bring her to the orphanage where
her child was waiting.

But I couldn’t do it, the young woman said, trying to control her tears. I just couldn’t.
I would be a terrible mother. I would. I know it. I’d turn out just like my mother who made
my life a misery. I don’t want to do that to my child.
And then she just got up and left the station. My mother never saw or heard about her
again.

There she went, my mother commented, not knowing if she would make a good
mother. Her fear of being a bad one probably destroyed the opportunity of being a good one.
Who knows, my mother said, maybe she would have learnt from her mother’s mistakes and
been a good mother to a child that needed a mother. But she and the child would never know
one way or the other.

I remember looking at my mother as she told me, and wondering why she was telling
me this story. She must have guessed my question. She put her arm around me, I’d have
never given you up, she said, never.
And then she said. I didn’t take the train to Dublin to meet my boyfriend.
Why not, I asked.

I knew he wasn’t the right one for me. Your father was the better man.
And why has this story been spinning around and around in my head all day, and as I
sit and make this diary entry on the 11.30 train to Dublin?
But it’s obvious, really, isn’t it. As I write this I am asking over and over whether or
not I am making the right decision. My boyfriend is waiting for me at the station. I know that.
But will he just be my boyfriend or the father of my child?