My Train and Yours

I've been dreaming about trains frequently in recent weeks. I wish I could describe in words how deeply they resound in my psyche. Trains are dark and powerful; they engulf the station platforms in shadows when they roll in. They represent freedom and escape, mystery and malevolence, deep love, sad losses and joyful reunions.

Songs and movies capture my sense of them. I include train songs in all of my performances. Fred Migliore's recent FM Odyssey show featuring train songs sent me into a euphoric trance. I run for my rebounder (thank you, Darcy, for that gift!) at the first notes of the "Orange Blossom Special." 

The movie "Schindler's List" stirred up my deepest sense of powerlessness when as a child in the 1940's, I stood on the dark cement platform in the shadow of the towering steel cars, eye-level with the wheels, close to the deafening hiss as white clouds of steam blasted out around the wheels. I watched my tiny hunch-backed grandmother, clutching her little train case, climb up the steps and turn to wave before she disappeared, while my mother stood beside me sobbing.

I went with my mother to the train station to meet my father when he came home for the first time, brain-injured in the war. I was 2 or 3 years old. Mother pointed to him getting out of the train. He was leaning on a cane. He didn't approach us, and then he wasn't in sight anymore, and the train started that chugging sound and rolled out of the station. Mother panicked. She ran with me to the car and roared out of the parking lot headed to the next town, the next station. "Your father's stuck on the train!" she said. "He went back in to help his buddy get his luggage off, but he can't talk well enough to tell them to let him off. He'll get off at the next station and we'll take him home."

In Alabama, as a 2nd and 3rd-grader, my friends and I played on the railroad tracks. We crossed them on our 1 or 2-mile walk to and from school. When a train was in sight, we waited until the last minute to run across in front of it. Yikes!

I remember lying next to my sleeping mother through a long night on a small bed in the pullman car. We were enroute from Ohio to Seattle to be near my father before he shipped out. I watched the tiny window through the night, listened to the sound of the wheels on the track, and took all the bobbi pins out of the curls in my Mother's hair. In the morning, she looked as angry as she behaved, with her hair sticking out in all directions. What was I thinking?

I have so many more memories of trains--riding into New York city in the smoking car with my Uncle Gene on his daily commute to his office; riding the scenic train to the top of Pike's Peak in Colorado Springs, and back down, with everyone who ordered food in the little grill in the gift shop on top getting sick (but not me--being anorexic has its advantages!); and the bumping, screeching, and clanging of train cars being loaded onto the ferry in the early morning blackness on the shores of Lake Michigan as my husband Whitey and I waited to board, one leg of our journey to our next gig in Minnesota or North Dakota, or back across from Wisconsin to Michigan or the Poconos.

I don't know what my train dreams mean, but it seems that I'm on a figurative slow train in my life, headed down the backside of a gradual mountain slope towards a bend in the road that I can't see around. Maybe we're all on slow trains--for some, a train of quiet desperation; for others, a scenic train that stops on the tops of beautiful mountains and rolls through lush valleys; for others, a party train full of revelers; for others, a train of diverse cars for sleeping, meditating, worrying, partying, and scenic viewing.

I've named my train "The Mystery Express." It's a rickety, clangy, squealy old chain of steel that struggles over every bump on the track. It would much rather be moving backwards than forward, but it never stops! All of my worldly toys and technology, sudoku puzzles and books are stacked in the cars on my train. One day I'll get off at my destination and leave everything behind for someone else.

What are your memories and thoughts about trains? What kind of a train are you on? How would you describe it, and what would you name it? If you're not on a train, what metaphor would you use to describe the forward movement of your life?