Rails and Tails

Sometimes I'm just not ready to travel

I’ve got the plan. I like the plan. But when the day comes I have a feeling of “don’t go”, “I’m not ready”, “I just want to sit around for a day before I go”. But no. The plan is set and I’m off. Zip.

Got a ride from the lovely PP to the train.

The train left late. But really, no big deal. I mean, it’s a 24 hour train ride anyway. Being late 45 minutes at the start is no big deal. . . unless that lateness is a harbinger of further lateness to come. Cross those fingers!

And so you get on and you sit in Coach. There’s no one next to you so you just kind of settle in. Appreciate the leg room, the elbow room, the head (space) room and just idle. Let the mind sit back and reset into a mode of nothingness. There is no urgency, no need to move or shift or adjust or be antzy. 24 hours with nothing to do but breathe, sleep, drink a little, eat a little, look out the window, read, breathe… I thought a lot about the last two years. My sister’s husband died about a month ago. He had been on hospice. He’d actually been sick long before Katie but his fight was different. His path and desire to stick around, not the same. Visions of what his passing may have looked like flicked through my mind’s eye. The girls and my sister all there with him in the house. The weird call to hospice when it happens. Their response. The nurse that comes and confirms it has happened. All those things spur memories for me of Katie and while it’s been over two years I can still feel the weight of her. Know the sadness, know the relief of her no longer being in pain. No longer in physical pain. No longer in emotional pain. No longer. The giant force of her still lingers.

Sigh.

But this time my nephew SS was getting on the train too. I’d have a buddy! So after three hours he appeared and joined me. It was already 11pm so we just dozed off instantly. Coach seats and all. A little uncomfortable but sleep.

I woke to sunshine about 4:30. Mt. Shasta in view in the early dawn. The train did a big loop around it. This photo is maybe an hour after I first saw it. Lovely thing.

A break in the serenity… an Italian dude behind us calling his son or nephew or grandson or somebody. Oye, he was loud. As we travelled his phone would cut out for short periods and there would be silence. Then as soon as the signal came back he’d be calling again. OYE!

SS somehow slept for another couple hours. I just sat with an empty brain. A lovely thing. When he woke we ate some food, drank some canned coffee (I did have hot cafe coffee too) chatted and played cards. A lot of cards. and then some more cards. Cards anyone?

There was a family reunion. We went to it.

I left SS and went off with my sister to her place. Another SS. Amazingly her big animal, Mae (half German shepherd, half Pyrenees, I believe) seemed to have remembered me and was actually nice. Like, from the get go. It’s nice to have a 90lb ruff-ian of a dog actually like you.

Running and hanging out and talking and eating. That’s what time is like with my sister and her girls. They’re a good strong group.

Then I visited an old friend. There are people in life that you instantly get along with. I met him in 1998 at CatalogCity.com. We became co leads of production and ran a group of twenty content inputers as if we were one person. His crazy ideas and empathy combined with my detail and follow through worked brilliantly together. We had intuition and a positive, let’s just do this attitude that just worked. To this day, probably the one individual that I worked the best with - and I generally get along with folks so that’s saying something.

I hadn’t seen IM up in his home for a while. It was just like old times. Curry good! No pets there.

One thing about travelling is that it is hard to find a space that is comfortable and safe. A place where you’re not worried about how you’re behaving or if there are eggshells you need to avoid. TK and SK have such a place. Just hang out and relax. Welcome to whatever you want. We’ll hang out, do stuff… here, pet our cats!! It’s all good. I was relaxed enough to write my last post. That’s saying something. It is frequently hard for me to relax enough to write in someone else’s space.

Speaking of someone else’s space. Here’s one of their cats seeking a comfortable space too.

Meow.

And then there’s this cat getting all up in my space at my niece’s.

Meow.

And then there’s my Step-mom’s mom… 105 and 4 months. Visited her too. She’s still pretty sharp. Visiting someone that old makes you think a lot about time and change and the marvels of life. Wowzers. Where were you 105 years ago?

While I wasn’t ready to go on the trip, I did enjoy it. But I was ready to come home in the end. I missed my fish and friends.

I had a lot of me time, contemplate time, on this trip.I feel stronger, both physically and emotionally than I did 2 years ago. I have found a particularly good friend that is just marvelous. I like my job. The last month of the school year I found a lot of joy in my interactions with the students and their parents. It was like someone had just drawn open a curtain and I could see the space fresh and new. I could appreciate the 9 years I had with some of them. I recognized and acknowledged just how fond I had become to some of them. In their yearbooks I had written sappy, encouraging things. There are many I will miss. I feel … open.

Funny thing too… I feel like my hugs have gotten better. Like I’m putting more into them and therefore getting more back. Genuine, emotional squeezes. I must have been blocked. Sometimes you don’t know you’re blocked until you’re not blocked. I wonder if I’m still blocked and that was only a partial block that disappeared. Hmmmm. How many blocks?

I am enjoying the better hugs. The one gap I am still aware of is really the physical intimacy thing. Perplexing, it is. At this point I am feeling pretty good about my day to day but there are still those evenings when it would be nice to just hold someone the whole night through.

Oh wait… Did I mention I mostly slept on the floor during my trip? Yeah, beds are too soft. I spent three nights on a bed at my sisters and then my whole lower right back tensed up in a massive cramp that hurt for a week. I switched back to the floor. Much better for me.

So… yeah. Whoever I’m cuddling with… how’s the floor sound? It’s really not as bad as you might think. Honest. And as a bonus, when the floor is where you crash - you can pretty much sleep anywhere. 🙂

HUG someone!