To Trains

My grandfather’s: He was an engineer for Southern Pacific in Louisiana during World War II. Because he worked for the rail line, a vital job for national security, he wasn’t drafted to fight overseas. So, instead, he worked the rails, traveling between his home state of Texas, the state he tried to move my grandmother to. They went for a while, but she was so homesick, they moved back, right next door to her mother. From that house, they could hear the train, know he was back and would soon be walking through the door. Exhausted, ready to sleep. But home.

Eurail: Start in Germany and wake up in Paris. I’m meeting a friend at the station and we will spend the next 5 weeks sleeping in train cars crossing through eight countries. Some days we were lucky and had the seats to ourselves, could fold them out into a bed, but often we slept sitting up, heads resting on our backpacks. In Germany, the trains were spotless and always on time, but the conductors were gruff and never smiled. In Italy and Greece, the trains were crowded and we’d wait hours drinking coffee in station, trying to pass the time without spending money. But the conductors were happy for us, Americans in Italy. Now you can see for yourself. Finally you are here.

New York St.: In grad school, sick of the tiny apartment with walls so thin I could hear my neighbors argue and then snore, I found a roommate and rented a house. A whole house. The train ran right through the yard, so close that if we stood on the side of the porch and reached out, we could touch it. For the first month, the roar of the train and the bells at the train stop would violently wake me in the middle of the night. I wondered why I didn’t even notice this when I signed the lease. But any noise can be accommodated, can grow familiar, so familiar I didn’t hear it anymore. I could sleep through anything those nights.

Toys: My son is three and loves dinosaurs. He studies them in books and we play with them all afternoon in his room, then in the backyard. We take them to the grocery store. He doesn’t want to play with the trains we bought him for Christmas, so I set up the track in his room, a figure 8 with a little wooden bridge. He humors me for a bit and we run the train through the imaginary town, but he’d rather play with the T-Rex. I don’t know how to be a dinosaur and I get all the names wrong. For him, the train is limited, so fixed. Just these tracks? This is all it does? No, Mommy. This is not enough for me. These trains don’t go far enough.