Father and son

They boarded a crowded double decker New Jersey Transit train at New York's Penn Station. With few open seats in the main cabin left, the two sat down in the open area by the doors, under the arm pits of weary commuters nearing the end of a long day.

The boy could barely sit still. He looked around at the people on the train, few who resembled his dad. Sometimes he looked out the window, pointing something out to his father or asking him a question.  Sometimes the man had an answer, other times not, but he always paid attention to what his son had to say.

The train thinned out as it headed south, enabling the boy to spread out a bit across two seats. The man sat still next to him, moving little except to pick up a pack of cigarettes that dropped from his pants packet. Eventually tiring a bit after an hour, the boy leaned against his father's shoulder, and eyed a small mark by a tattoo that read, "Nick."

"Dad, what's that?" the boy asked, pointing to the mark on his father's arm. In a low voice audible only to his son, he answered. The boy looked up for a moment, then leaned over and kissed the  mark on his father's arm. The man smiled at his son, then looked across the aisle and smiled at another man who observed the touching scene.

The man and boy got off the train at the Little Silver station, heading to their final destination, but certainly not the end of their journey through life as father and son.