Never able to call myself a staunch morning person, most days of the week I give myself a hefty head start on my day by rolling out of bed a solid 15 to 20 minutes before my classes start. Largely occurring after long nights of work or roommate conversations, my method of maximizing time spent asleep has helped me perfect the ultimate condensed morning routine. With a playlist in tow, I use each song as a timer for a task — teeth are brushed to “Cinderella” by Remi Wolf, clothes then changed to the tune of “Who Are You Now” by Madison Cunningham, all followed by a final speed to the door in step with “Skate” by Silk Sonic.
All this, however, has been transformed this semester by the entrance of the humble yet mighty Ram Van. Now that I have a 10 a.m. Lincoln Center class this semester, my Tuesday and Friday mornings instead are now begun by a calming — dare I say, even spiritual — commute, traversing the Hudson against the golden meld of sunrise and stickly, yet-to-sprawl foliage. Though you might get a Ram Van driver with exceptionally unpleasant DJ-ing skills (shout out to the driver who began my morning with “Junkie’s Promise” by Sonic Youth), for the most part, these early drives soothe with the rush of tires and mellow music filtering through speakers.
In fact, I enjoy this commute and the sense of calm that it gives me before the rush of classes so much so that I’ll often take the Ram Van at 6 a.m. or 7 a.m to study or read in solitude before my class. The only remotely reasonable explanation I can think of is that it reminds me a lot of my morning commutes growing up. Public transport has long been a keystone of my childhood in Jersey City, N.J. It’s especially important for many residents who live in an unofficial custody agreement between Jersey City and New York. Many Jerseyans — including my mother and I — have jobs or school across the river, spending most of their day in New York before coming home.
Something of a seasoned resident, I’ve moved thrice within Jersey City, each time to a new neighborhood. When my mother and I first moved in from Queens, we took up a small studio downtown — a single room of an apartment within walking distance from my public elementary school and the Newport Port Authority Trans-Hudson (PATH) station that shuttled her to work in the World Trade Center every morning and evening. Next came another studio, more midtown and slightly larger than the last, now with my father in tow. It was exactly in between the Grove Street PATH station and my new private Catholic middle school and, again, was within walking distance.
Come high school, we finally moved into a house of our own. The closest PATH station, Journal Square, was now a bus ride away and transported my mother and myself when I began high school in Manhattan’s West Village.
As a first-year in high school, I began to feel a strong discontent with home. Bumped around from one neighborhood to another, school to school, it felt tough to locate myself in the fabric of any community. Reluctant to even call it home, I looked forward to college as a ticket out to anywhere else — England, California, Massachusetts. Not even the new setting of the West Village was able to keep me from looking for a way out.
On my morning commute into Manhattan with my best friend from middle school, we both ran into other people who were also traveling to New York from New Jersey. After a couple of awkward smiles and waves, we eventually got to talking to two other girls commuting from Bayonne after noticing a Harry Potter keychain on their bookbags.
As we began to get to know each other, commutes became something to look forward to in the morning. By the time senior year rolled around, the four of us were coordinating the trains and specific train cars we were taking in the morning on our way to school. As I continued to venture further into Manhattan and further into high school, I fell in love with other people who, too, knew the inner workings of living in a city, who understood what it is to live in too-cramped apartments without having cars and the strange camaraderie of getting to places in packed cars full of strangers.
Passage, in short, became place.
And with it all came a sense of home. I soon found myself echoing pride when Saint Peter’s University made it to March Madness my senior year of high school, shutting down on-campus Jersey slander at college, and itching to go home at the end of a semester — all from finally letting myself have a place to be from. I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to shake the sense of calm and belonging that comes from a morning commute, whether Ram Van, PATH Train or subway, and I’m all the more grateful for it.
Adithi Vimalanathan, FCRH ’24, is a double major in English and economics from Jersey City, N.J.
