The Train Trip

Chicago's Union Station

Because the space in which the Symphony performs is closed while OWU renovates the chapel organ, Warren did not start 2013 in the midst of rehearsals and executive preparations for a March concert. While it is never easy for him to slip the surly bonds of the Symphony, February represented as good a time to get away as he was ever likely to get. So we were extravagant with our time and took the train to Portland to meet Ramona.

If passenger rails still threaded this country, I would never fly again. It was that wonderful an experience.

We traveled by train from Toledo, Ohio (our nearest Amtrak station) to Chicago, where we boarded the Empire Builder to Oregon. As a nod to my health and energy levels, we bought a roomette. (More about it later.)

We have traveled by train before, but never so far for so long. We left Toledo in the early morning, after a very short night and a two hour drive from our home.  I thought briefly of napping on the five hour trip to Chicago. But as the train rolled through the dark, I caught a glimpse of someone standing in their kitchen, the yellow light of the room spilling out into the still, dark morning and I could not go back to sleep.

It is that intimacy—that quick glimpse into peoples' lives—that makes train travel so gripping. Train travel is travel at a personal level and rhythm. The train flashed through Indiana downtowns that mirrored our own, the Italianate structures so familiar that I felt I could walk down those strange streets and not feel disoriented. As we moved further west, we passed little towns pinned in place by the train tracks that split through them. The vaster the spaces became between communities, the more the train served as connecting thread and viable short-distance mass transit.

Montana 

There is a soliloquy about baseball in the movie "Field of Dreams," about the importance of baseball to this nation's history. I feel the same about railroads and train travel. As E.B. White noted more than 50 years ago, we did ourselves a great disservice when we turned our backs on passenger trains and took to the air. Now, as airlines disappear and airports contract back in upon themselves (St. Louis and Cincinnati, to name two), I wonder whether we will turn our eyes back to the rails as a viable way to travel.

As I mentioned, we bought a roomette for our travels. An adventure in micro-living if ever there was one, a roomette requires two adults to live in a space in which one youth might comfortably take up residence. It taught me a lot about packing light and being compact in how much space one takes up. Fortunately, Warren and I are highly compatible travelers (no surprise), so we made the roomette work with a great deal of laughter and love. While a roomette adds to the cost of travel, it includes hot showers (a wonderful luxury), linens, and all meals, which on Amtrak are substantial and excellent. (There is a full galley on a dining car, and the food is cooked right there on the train.) I don't think Warren and I stopped smiling from the time we got on the train in Chicago, we were so pleased.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh, like E.B. White, also spent a lot of time on trains, even after she took to the air. In a letter to her younger sister, written while en route from the east to Mexico City (where her father was the US Ambassador), she wrote, "Tonight all through supper, having ordered baked apple with cream (I hesitated between that and cornflakes), I regretted the cornflakes. And it occurred to me later that life might so easily be that eternal "If only I'd ordered cornflakes—"

At breakfast, I contemplated the hot crab cakes versus the Amtrak french toast. I chose the french toast. It was magnificent.

I did not once regret the crab cakes.

Sunrise over the Columbia River Gorge 

Reading Lessons

I'm in the homestretch of my April poetry challenge! The remaining eight poems are all of recent vintage, most of them written this month.

As I wrote recently, the poetry challenge has been hard for me. I've had more than one anxiety attack over the foolhardiness of this venture. Even now, the jury - my own internal handpicked jury - is still out as to whether this was a good thing for me to do.

On the other hand, focusing only on poetry for a month has made me aware of other things. For one, I have missed blogging about life, whether mine or the community's.  So much - the small moments, the small observations - has slipped through my fingers. I am more attentive when I am blogging. Another realization I have had is how little poetry there has been in my life in recent years. I don't mean writing poetry. I knew that was gone. No, I am talking about pulling a book of poems off the shelf and losing (or finding) myself in it for an afternoon. Living with my own poetry this month has made me acutely aware of that gap and I am resolved to slip poetry back into my life.

Something else has occurred to me: I don't write poetry about cancer or about living with cancer. I am hardly silent about cancer - a quick skim of the blog labels to the right tells you I write regularly about the disease that took up permanent residency in my body six and a half years ago. But with the exception of one haiku I dashed off this month in response to the Haiku-ca-choo! challenge to write a riddle, there is nothing in cancer or my life with it that would move me to poetry.

[Oh, I know, you are all wondering about my haiku. Remember, we were supposed to write a riddle.

Little turncoat! What
made you switch your allegiance?
Power? You rogue you.

The first two guesses were Arlen Specter and Joe Liberman, both of which were perfectly appropriate depending on your politics, and both of which just cracked me up. My answer, not nearly as good, was my bone marrow.]

So what am I inspired to write about? Small moments that catch my attention, little happenings that make me take a second or third look, phrases or pictures that make me imagine the life experiences of others. Like my blogging, my poetry also tends towards the little picture and the things I can touch (literally or figuratively).

The poem for today came about during a recent walk when I had to wait at the railroad tracks. It is a good read-aloud poem to catch the rhythm of a freight train clacking by.

********

Photo from Eddie's Rail Fan Page

Reading Lessons

When I was a little girl, I loved to read off the names
Painted on the boxcars and gondolas and hoppers,
A roll call of America:
B & O, Pennsylvania, New York Central
Wabash, Santa Fe, Burlington
Rock Island, Grand Trunk, L & N
Denver Rio Grande & Western
Cotton Belt, Lehigh Valley, Soo Line
Reading, Frisco, Union Pacific
Erie Lackawanna
Seaboard Coastline.

My brother and I would hang over the front seat of the car,
racing to be the first to call out the line.
Frisco!
Wabash!
Chessie!
Rock Island!

Sometimes I would just chant them under my breath
To the rhythm of the train:
Er-ie Lack-a-wan-na
Er-ie Lack-a-wan-na
Cotton Belt, Cotton Belt
Er-ie Lack-a-wan-na.
Er-ie Lack-a-wan-na
Cotton Belt, Cotton Belt

Today while I was walking, the crossing guard blinked and
Clanged down.
I heard the locomotive's sharp call
And saw it coming down the tracks.

I stood back and watched the freight train roll through,
Car after car:
New cars, sleek cars,
Glossy black coal cars
Filled and heading north,
Rumbling through and then gone.
CSX every last one.

All work, no play.
(Rock Island, Burlington)
All business, no romance.
(New York Central, Soo Line)
No America to roll off your tongue.
(Denver Rio Grande & Western, Seaboard Coastline)

Nothing to read there.

Cotton Belt, Cotton Belt
Erie Lackawanna
Erie Lackawanna
Cotton Belt, Cotton Belt

Gone.

On the Road

We are about to head out of town for five days.

Five days are forever in our schedules. A lot of planning goes into being gone for five days. Right now I am watching my week run out faster than my "has to get done" list is getting done.

Friday morning we will get up very, very, very early, shower, get dressed, and get out the door. It will be cold as we will have the furnace turned down for the duration and I am already shivering slightly just thinking about it. We will drive four hours to Pittsburgh to catch Amtrak to New York.

I know, Cleveland is closer by two hours, but the arrival times on the return trip are so markedly different even with the four hour drive that we opted for Pittsburgh.

Warren has Symphony business in New York. The League of American Orchestras is holding its Midwinter Managers meeting Sunday and Monday. This is Warren's chance to meet and discuss orchestra issues with his colleagues from around the nation. The Central Ohio Symphony has been garnering League attention for its innovative community engagement work and that makes this meeting even more exciting.

For me, it's a chance to spend time with three close friends.

We are staying with one of them, my friend Katrina (and her husband), who I have now known for 35 years. She and I are a casebook study of someone in Admissions (a close friend of Katrina's mother, as it turned out) looking at two incoming freshman folders, saying "they will be perfect together," and getting it absolutely right. We are not similar in many surface ways, including politics, lifestyle, and looks (Katrina is beautiful), but we are so close beneath the surface that I often know what the next line in a letter from her will be before I read it. We are able to talk about anything and we have shared everything over the three and a half decades of our friendship. I can't wait to see her again.

The second friend is Bethany, who reappeared in my life shortly before Christmas after a decade long absence. Bethany was in 5th grade when I first met her; she is now 30. She lived next door when I moved back to Delaware; she showed up within 24 hours of our moving in. My boys loved her; I loved her. I still do. Bethany moved away just before she started high school, but we managed to stay in touch until she was about 20. I have since learned some of what happened during the missing years, and I am even more grateful that she is back in my life. She now lives in New Jersey. Bethany and I are meeting at Grand Central Station (what a great space!) Sunday afternoon. It is amazing to type those words, let along think about what they mean. Bethany! In New York City!

The third close friend? Warren, of course. Five days away, even interspersed with the Midwinter meeting, are a luxury. We both guard against being so busy that we are merely passing each other in a rush, but sometimes that happens. This year has started off at a gallop. The Symphony has some major events this spring that will take a lot of time and planning and management on Warren's part. I am about to disappear down the United Way allocations tunnel until the end of April.

We truly have to be vigilant not to lose sight of each other in 2010.

So I am looking forward to five days with Warren. The beauty of taking the train to and from New York is nine hours plus each way of "just us" time - to talk, to watch the landscape roll by, to dream, to pay some attention to our relationship and our life together. It is time away from the computers and the emails and the endless lists. It is time to polish and buff our marriage and our love for one another.

We'll get back home late Tuesday night. Both of us already have appointments scheduled for the rest of the week. Life goes on. But for five days, and two train trips, I get to be with my very best friend.

All aboard!