Ali’s father is a railroad engineer. As such, he traveled great distances and could be away from home for long stretches at a time. For this reason, plus the demands of her new job, Ali didn’t get to see her dad as much as she wanted now that she had completed college and began her career.
In between their visits she often thought back to mornings of her childhood when they would stroll along the sidewalk, holding hands, making their way to a coffee shop to meet some of his railroad buddies. Sharing a cup of morning coffee was a beloved tradition for them. At home they were always the first to get up and quietly made coffee to sip while they talked softly, waiting for the rest of the family to roll out of bed.
Trips to the coffee shop were a special treat for Ali. Ian, her dad, would buy her anything she wanted from the pastry case and then chuckled as she gobbled it down and called the railroaders by their nicknames, as if they were her old friends instead of his. In this setting, Ali became intrigued with trains. Trains and coffee were the things that tied her to her dad.
The day she moved into her new third-floor office, Ali noticed an elevated railroad track running alongside the building. Curious, she called her dad and asked if he were ever traveling that track. “Only a few times a year,” he said. She made him promise if he were ever to pass by he would call and let her know so that she could go to the window and wave to him.
She told her new co-workers about her father’s promise and thereafter each day when a train went by, someone would tease her, calling out, “Is that your daddy?” Each time she had to give the same, disappointed answer: “No.” Soon she began to dislike the sound of trains.
One late afternoon while she was sitting at her desk her cell phone started to vibrate in her pocket. She pulled it out and answered, and heard the noise of a train engine in the background.
“Guess where I am,” her dad hollered into the phone.
Ali heard the low roar of the train, this time from outside her office, and she felt the floor vibrate under her feet. Her dad’s train was rolling into town!
Excited, she called out to her co-workers that her dad’s train was finally coming around the bend. Everyone went to the bank of windows overlooking the tracks and watched.
As the train got closer, a door in the engineer’s cabin opened and out onto the little platform walked her dad, holding a mug of coffee. He stood outside the engine and smiled, raising his mug to toast his beloved daughter as he spotted her across the way. He waved as the train passed by, and continued to wave until he could no longer see her face pressed against the office window.
Ali returned to her desk with a renewed smile on her face, not only because her friends would finally stop teasing her, but because her dad had kept his promise to her, just as he always had. She sat facing the window and listened intently to the noise outside, steel wheels on a railroad track, until the last vibration could be heard.