“Cold ghost whistles through towns With Names Given Long Ago”
It was the middle of July, the news claimed it to be 85 and high humidity, for her it was as cold as the whistles that warned of a train coming through some small town that sole claim to fame was that a train passed through it. Was the whistle blowing a warning of a train approaching, or was it some prophetic moan of things to come? It didn’t matter, really. When the heart calls out, it drowns out warnings and moaning of dread and it falls on a deaf ears.
Pulling her little jacket tighter around her, she remembered all that had transpired. The memories were whisking by at a speed far greater than the towns with names from long ago. “Now those people must have done something right to have a town no matter how big or small named after them,” she thought. Her mind went back to the past year of her life. Never, ever in a million years would she have imagined that she would be on a train bound for, well for what she thought would be the end to a year of longing, frustration, and utter disappointment.
Earlier in the day she carefully chose what she would wear. One outfit for the train ride, another special bed clothes, (not too seductive, not too plain, just, what do you wear when you are traveling to regain what had been lost?) then of course there is always the next few days.
As she packed her bags she talked on the phone to a friend that knew the story. What she needed was a friend who wasn’t quite as prone to romanticizing everything. What she needed was hard-core logic. No mistaking that one. She wasn’t real sure if she wanted to be talked out of going back, or did she want to be encouraged to go, run straight into a dream. Maybe she needed to be told that there was something so much more right there, right where she was, but it required waiting, just waiting, and that, was something she had done too much of.
The problem with the second scenario is that there wasn’t anything waiting there. She prayed for a career change, prayed for financial support, prayed that her daughters would all be fine, prayed that she would not have to let go of the hope and promise that she thought was before her.
How do you undo over twenty years of daily routine, of a life-style no matter how mundane, how unsatisfactory, it was what was? When you get use to the idea of wanting to be loved, you just do not let go of that too quickly and learn to live alone. She promised herself three years earlier that she would live the rest of her life out with the love of her dog, her daughters, her friends, and her God, but she was going through the fire. She would leave her husband of 20 years. A husband that she never really believed she belonged with. “Focus on the kids, they are the beautiful outcome of that disaster,” that thought came way too often during those 20 years.
The reality is that living out the rest of your life content with your kids, your dog, your friends, your God is this...the dog couldn’t live with a single girl in the city…friends move away…and text messaging, phone calling and emailing is not completely sufficient…your kids grow up and seek their own place in the world, and God, well God is the center of it all and sometimes you just can’t hear what he is saying when all you can focus on is that you are alone!
Something brought her attention to a simple town sign, and she remembered her own mother. Hammond…that is where her mother was born, how strange that she is passing through her mother’s beginnings, “how would things have been different if she hadn’t died so early?” She was robbed, robbed of shopping with her mom and daughters. What wisdom could she have gleaned from her mother? Having her own daughters ages, 20, 21 and 25 she is aware of how different the conversations, the struggle, the laughter the tears are as opposed to when they were in the earlier stages of life. Daughters are not supposed to lose their mothers until they are solid mothers themselves, or even grandmothers!
It had been a long day, and it was only beginning, she still had at least three more hours on the train. She took a deep breath and looked around the train filled with people. She swore they all heard her let out a sigh, or a gasp of panic. What if he isn’t there at the train station when she arrives? Why hasn’t she heard from him? Only a month or so earlier he would text message her regularly, now nothing. She had a sinking feeling. “What am I doing?” she thought, a part of her hoped he would just break her heart, stop the double talk and just get it over with. She had a back-up plan just in case.
