All this week Miranda, my 15 year old daughter, has been riding in with me on the commuter rail from South Acton Station to North Station in Boston, from where we take the Green Line to Government Center and the Blue Line to the Aquarium. For the first time this morning, I got off at the Porter Square stop to go to work in Kendall Square, leaving her to navigate the rest of the journey to her job as a CIT at the New England Aquarium summer camp program. It often strikes me when I ride public transportation, what a diverse set of people are in this world. Today, for example, there were buskers both at the Porter Square stop and the Harvard Square stop playing the cello – students on summer break from one of the colleges, gaining a little public exposure? Sitting on the train in front of me was a 60ish Asian gentleman with short cropped graying hair, dressed in a military jacket bearing a stars and stripes pin and a “Free Tibet” button. He held what might have been a spear, or at least some kind of stick, wrapped in an off-white fabric, and was telling beads on loop of string while softly chanting. A monk at a local temple? Next to him sat a nondescript student exploring his new iTouch – totally unremarkable these days – but what would we have made of this gadget a few years back?

Miranda has been texting me at each jump in her journey telling me where she is. There’ll be a time when I won’t be around. I wonder what she’ll see on her journeys?