Me, myself, and Amtrak

So I went to a wedding in Colorado and, predictably, cancelled my plane ticket at the last minute due to intolerable 3 A.M. anxiety about going down in a fiery inferno ("I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down down..."). Which means...I took the train, and was gone for much longer. This was the first time I had been away from my 14-month-old for more than 2 days, and it was totally amazing. In fact, I think that when a child (any child) turns 1 year old, the government should issue a week-long vacation to the mother. This would be sound policy. Would probably prevent a lot of domestic murder issues as well. And I think the mother needs to go alone because a mother is never alone, ever.

The people who take trains are an interesting bunch. Some are neurotic, like me, but most just want to enjoy life at a slower pace (much slower, in some cases--i.e. if you have to wait 4 hours to let a freight train pass in remotest Utah). Dining cars feature "community seating," so as a party of one, I was always seated with a person or people I had never met and would never see again...which is kind of poetic. A group of 3 guys and I had a wonderful meal swaying high up on the second-floor of a dining car as it rushed over the flat green fields of Iowa at sunset. Or Nebraska (does it matter?). Two of the guys, a couple I think, were from Hawaii and talked about luaus at which whole pigs were roasted, which I tried hard not to think about. The third guy was an engineer from England who'd been working in California. The 4 of us stayed so long at our table in rapt conversation that we were eventually kicked out to make way for the next wave of diners. Then, there was an older woman I ate lunch with on my last train-day. I was enjoying talking her ears off (somehow the conversation had wandered to the Amish lifestyle, which I was discoursing passionately about, though I know nothing about it) when she announced quietly that she was going to retire to her seat and eat the brownies her aunt in Erie, PA baked for her. The night before, pulling out of Chicago, my sleeper-car attendant passed along an exclusive invitation (issued to only travellers in our car) to go to the cafe car for a little late-night wine and cheese event, at which an older architect, also from England, and I stared shyly at each other over our plastic cups of wine until I went back to my huge handicap-accessible room, enjoying the private bathroom/shower (to shower, you close the bathroom door and turn on the showerhead, spraying the whole room) and relatively large fold-out bed. The most beautiful scenery I experienced was due to missing one of my trains home, so instead of going to Pittsburgh/Philadelphia, I went into NYC via Albany and the Hudson Valley. For over a hundred miles, our train followed the Hudson which was visible from my big window and sometimes so close that it seemed we were floating over it, and so wide in places that it looked more like a sea, shiny with sunlight and little waves.

At the wedding I had a wonderful time, too and did not get drunk (unusual). Our Inn in middle-of-nowhere Colorado was certifiably haunted, apparently (like, paranormal investigators have captured "orbs" on film, etc.), so I had a lot of fun taking different groups of people in our party up to view the scary-ass second- and third-floor hallways. The second floor one was extremely dim, lit by a few widely-spaced chandeliers that gave out a sparse spray of light, and when you first came up the stairs there was a creepy painting of a young boy playing a lute or something, and the way his head was tilted it looked like he had been hung, but was enjoying it. On the top floor--the one that was actually supposed to be haunted by a murderous stable-guy and two children--an air-conditioning vent rattled loudly, the vents loose and gaping open and shuddering, and the lighting was unnaturally bright. Somehow this was all very entertaining after a few glasses of wine. The wedding ceremony was beautiful and emotional and made me realize I do want to get married again, though it was also terrifying because I was a bridesmaid and had to stand up there in 4-inch heels, with the first row of guests within a foot of my right boob, and I also had agreed to read a poem ("To Dorothy" by Marvin Bell) which I think I did terribly at. But luckily the bride and groom were focused on other things and hopefully will still let me appear in other weddings they may have together in the future.

I guess the moral of the story is that I really advocate taking a trip alone sometime. For me, it gave me a chance to catch up with myself and experience a range of feelings, both scary and joyful--just to see everything that is inside of me (psychically) at the moment. I found a lot of grief still there from my grandmother's death this summer and even the end of my marriage 3 years ago. It's funny how it never goes away and all the different ways it can come up. I also realized how every moment is an opportunity to just experience something new. It doesn't have to be attached to a past, my past, or to anything else--it is just an opportunity, either way. Like, waiting for 4 hours in a train station on a bench under big fluorescent lighting, and looking around (at the mostly elderly people) and realizing that I am the same as everyone else who is waiting, a body that needs to be shipped from point A to point B and is helpless to get there without modern machinery, as if there is no story or individuality attached to any of us, just a common experience.