SuBRABia: April 2009

The bathroom at the train station in Galesburg is the typical neglected public restroom, black dingy toilet seats and dirty cracked tiles. Nothing much caught my attention until my eyes wandered from the tan colored metal dividers to the frosted window in the corner of the restroom.

Graffiti. It fascinates me. Graffiti can tell one so much about the time, place, and people. It is an impulsive attempt at some sort of artistic immortality. I have never written on a bathroom wall, stumped on what I would want to write for thousands of other urinating passer-byers to read on the go. Someone in Galesburg wrote in black permanent marker on the frosted window a message that struck me. Unlike frequent graffiti suggesting who I can call if in need of a good time this message had a story behind it and it awoke my imagination.

"I have finally found a love that will last forever, everyone deserves that..."

As our train, the Southwest Chief, appeared whistling down the tracks my two year old son jumped up and down with excitement. My husband moved about organizing the luggage and searching our tickets for which car we were to board. I stood beside them, smiling at my own childish anticipation for this adventure and running that line in my mind over and over. I said it to myself as it were the start of a good book. I don't know who she is, who she loved, or if that love has lasted~ but I felt connected to the girl who scribbled the graffiti on the train station wall and I hoped for her with all that I had that her love was still true.

We were greeted by two attendants who called to us by name and loaded our luggage for us. They gave us a tour of the car, showed us to our room, and pointed out the refreshments available to us twenty-four hours a day. Jason and I looked at one another, eyes bulging in response to the tiny space that would serve as our locomotive home for three days. It was a beautiful little space, with a large window where we could overlook the changing landscape, two captains chairs that turn into a slim bed, and a bunk bed that lowers from the ceiling when night falls. My son did not notice the tiny space, he saw only a train that was his, all his.

Traveling on a train these days was a bit like luxury at it's worst. Even our uniform clad attendants had the harshness of over worked government employees with the awkward attentiveness of a cruise line mater'de.
Still, we are appreciative of the strange forced luxury and each night we order Salmon and rave about how surprisingly delicious it is being that came up to our table from the bowls of the locomotive kitchen.

The train whistle blows. I shiver.
Paul Simon sang it~ everybody loves the sound of a train in the distance.
My two year old son looks up at me and asks where the sound is coming from. He thinks that there must be another train.
I tell him that we are the train in the distance. And, I like that.

I am the train in the distance. Another good beginning for a book I think.

Early on we watch coal black cattle sunbathing in season old corn fields, their thick bodies relaxed amid the stalks, unconcerned by the passing train.
I feel a bit sneaky peering into the backyards of homes who's fences kiss up against the tracks. It is industry just a picket fence away from sanctuary.

At night we sleep, but barely. My husband is on the top bunk. He can not roll over, his body takes up every inch of space. My son and I are below him. Each time the bed above us squeeks I throw my legs up for fear that he is going to come crashing down on us. But, he does not and we laugh as he dismounts in the morning.

"Did you sleep?", he asks me.
I tell him that I don't know. I think I slept, but I woke up so often and each time I woke up I was so wide awake that it never felt like I rested. He agrees and yawns happily over our breakfast in the dining car. We are now in the mountains of Colorado and there is a snowy blizzard outside.

For hours we sit in the observation car. My son searches the sky for airplanes, eats fruit snacks, and moves his matchbox cars up and down the window. He is content because earlier in the day he was able to shake hands with a real train conductor and he glowed the rest of the afternoon from this introduction.

Jason can not believe that there is so much open space in America. He also can not believe that there are so many people who have their own personal junk yards. He is a bit envious, he wants to explore the junk and find treasure buried amid the heaps.

We pass by homesteads that are in nowhere lands, miles from paved roads, alone and active. It is easy to forget that we are actually in America. The train is a wonderful way to remind ourselves that although America is a unified country, it is a massive body of land, and each state's culture and people are in a way a country of their own.

In Colorado we pass by bushy crevice filled lands thickly dotted with brown steer. For miles there is nothing but this, not a single home or business in sight. We see deer and the bony white remains of livestock caught by predators. Not once do I see one galloping across the range, but I know they are there. I can feel the spirit of the American cowboy from the train.

In New Mexico we go through an industrial town, even the rusted high school sports bus that is parked on the road side echoes the town itself. In blue chipped paint it reads~ Go Miners! I see them in the work yards filled with rusted machinery. As we pass through I wave to the spirit of the American working man, the laborer.

With both of these, the laborer and the cowboy, I feel a connection in my bones. I know as I look upon their spaces that I do not understand and I do not belong, yet I scribble madly on my tablet, body swaying to the rythem of the tracks. I know why I feel connected to them and I smile. I am thinking now not through the mind of a tired stay at home mother who has dishes to do and a hell of a ketchup stain on my shirt. I am thinking now with something that the train itself woke up within me~ the great American spirit of romance.

On our last night on the train my son wakes up. I have no idea what time it is.
He crawls over to me and we open the curtains and lay silently together looking at the brilliant star filled sky from the squished comfort of our makeshift bed.
"Mommy?", he asks.
I answer.
"Please don't ever get lost, because then I would not have you.", he says.

I cry those happy tears that spring up uncontrolled from the gut and squeeze him to me. We look at the stars until his little body goes limp and he is asleep again. I can not go back to sleep. I slip out trying not to wake my sleeping boys up and get a cup of decaf coffee. I return and Jason rolls over giving me a sleepy smile before falling asleep again.

I drink my coffee in the middle of the night, watch the stars shining for me, and try to process this trip. I wonder if we should have just flow to San Diego. We would have been there three days quicker had we taken a plane.

The sun begins to rise and with it a storm can be seen moving heavy and thick across the Arizona sky. There is something magical about flying rapidly through the clouds, this I will not deny. But, there is also something to say about travel that awakens withing us the very spirit of adventure rather than just mires us down with stress and luggage claim tickets. We are not flying through the clouds. But, we watch the storm approach, release it's fury, and blow off into the distance all while listening to Dido on my computer in the background and sitting together as a family in our own tiny train space.

There is more. There are dark mile long tunnels, ghost towns, three sided churches, interesting people and inside jokes. But, these are ours. They are the memories we have now thanks to this journey, thanks to this three days smooshed together in our cabin, thanks to the Southwest Chief.

From our hotel room in San Diego we can see the ocean. A train passed by and we heard it in the distance.

"Is that our train, Daddy?", Samuel asked.
It is strange, there is a spirit of immortality in the sound of a train in the distance. It has gone places we do not know and it going on to places we have not been. Yet, for three days it was ours and that lives on.

This is my graffiti today, what I just might scribble on a bathroom wall if I found any interest whatsoever defacing property~ for a good time, call Amtrak.