Thanksgiving Train Ride

 --- to Portland

Train food isn’t what it used to be when I was a child. Hot meals were served on white linen tablecloths, on china plates, in the dining room. Although to be fair, I’m on the Cascade 530 from Vancouver, BC to Portland, not a long distance train. But the snack bar is unworthy of being called a bistro as it serves slim portions of teriyaki rice, practically meatless turkey sandwiches, okay chicken salad served on plastic and probably lackluster coffee.

            When we headed out this morning an inch of snow had already accumulated on the ground. I took a deep breath before driving to the station. The roads to the station were dry yesterday and it was snowing so hard and fast I didn’t think it would have frozen back on the roads already. Once we were on the train, I enjoyed watching the white snow swirling outside our windows.

            The train was a half hour late crossing the Canadian border. Larry, the overly talkative conductor, told us the time won’t be made up. Although at the rollicking speed it is going, it seems like a possibility. A very tan man with light blue eyes and a white blond hair wearing a smart looking canvas shirt and jeans stopped with his daughter to watch the 18-month old girl across from us twist and whine as her parents entertain her with puppets. The couple in front of me, especially the man, has found a willing audience in a mid-thirish looking woman with long, long dark brown hair, wearing a black shirt, skinny black jeans and brown boots with stud patterning. He tells her: “I grew up with strong women, a different paradigm.” Strong women —a different paradigm? So the common paradigm is weak women? Eventually we leave our families, isn’t it possible we gain other views that overshadow the original ideas? Although, it does seem difficult to overcome some of the ideas that my parents passed on to me like prejudice. I’m not sure where my father stood on it, but my mother is racist and sometimes I hear her voice in my head saying something awful and I want that voice to shut up.

We’ve stopped at a small red brick train station, red brick sidewalks and Spanish tile roof. The large lettering says it is Centralia. A genuine Americana small town that has a walkable main street, the Olympic Club Hotel, and an old white painted brick Shell gas station. Then we pass the freeway overpass ripping through the town, destroying the image.

Emily’s friends, including Colton and Drew, have texted her a Happy Thanksgiving. Katy, says Happy Thanksgiving to one of the beautiful people I know?

The little girl across the aisle is quite busy. The grandmother keeps trying to pacify her, she’s following her down the aisle right now, but she has been the one to rock her to sleep. No one has gotten up and walked her down the aisle, it always seemed that walking used to work with Emily, or is that a false memory? Now the grandmother left, she set the little girl into her seat across from her parents who are clapping and making faces at her.  Imagine having people that determined to entertain you.

The train ride back from Portland

We are returning from our quick visit to Portland. Bunny held court last night. As we left today, Mom said, “I thought he’d changed.” But I didn’t think so; it takes more than one gloomy doctor appointment for people to change. And when I asked him on the way to the restaurant he told me that he’d seen a different doctor had given him a better prognosis, from the perspective of an electrician vs. a plumber.  Mom and Aunt ML didn’t stay long; it wasn’t possible to say much to mom. I didn’t know how to avoid the conversation in his living room since we were staying at his house, in his bedroom and he picked us up— it seemed like I should pay the courtesy of listening to him. Although his daughter told him, twice, to give the Reader’s Digest version of the story, which I thought was a good idea. He was telling the four stories of how Sajawaja saved the Lewis and Clark expedition. Also he’d had quite a bit to drink so what do you owe a drunk? Would he even remember the next morning if I were rude the night before?

We are flying down the tracks now, swaying back and forth through the darkness as if an evil being were after us. It’s only 5 o’clock but neither Emily nor I got enough sleep last night and we’re tired. I didn’t sleep well because Bunny has no curtains in his room, so there was light pouring in to the room and I can’t sleep well in so much light. My heart pumps in beat with the clickety

Mom commented on how she didn’t always pay attention to ML because she’d gotten so illogical. I realized that I did the same thing to Mom to some degree too because she’s gotten hard of hearing and isn’t always following a conversation when she asks questions. In the next generation, Emily gets impatient with me when I don’t hear her because of background noise or she’s turned away from me when she speaks. Understanding doesn’t always make for sympathy.

I realized that the Moka Joe coffee, the hazelnuts, and certainly not the lumpy chocolate-raspberry sauce that I’d brought as thank you gifts for Bunny, weren’t gourmet enough for him. I’d forgotten that despite his vulgar drinking, he fancies himself a knowledgeable chef. So I gave Ross the gleaned hazelnuts, which he appreciated. He doesn’t drink coffee, so I gave it to Becky and took the sauce home with me. I bought Bunny a bottle of wine at the restaurant where we ate lunch.  Ross will give it to him, he promised me he would take it home if Bunny made a disparaging comment about it.

Ross and I had a humorous, but bizarre conversation at lunch. Topping each other over recent tragedies. We told him about the woman slamming into the teenager while was she texting. He told us about looking down the street and seeing cars that had slid around the road. He crept down the road, but slid into the cars, missing the husband who jumped out of his way, but pushing the car in front into the wife. Then he told us about a man who had road rage and through out a woman friend’s dog, we told him about the Chihuahua that we saw running down the road after he was tossed out of a car that rolled over. He told us about some kids who had burned down their school, we told him that there had been an accidental fire leaving only the shell of Whatcom Middle School. Since children had burned the school in San Jose, we added about the fire that middle school children had started, burning down the old shopping mall in Lynden. Laughter worked to heal the fear of so many incidents happening recently to young people in Bellingham. Even David, Becky’s husband had mentioned the young Western student who disappeared, his body found later in the bay. Mom kept asking Emily what we were laughing about, and when she explained, why it was funny. Who knows? It might not be to Ross and I in a later conversation. As I told her good bye at the station, my eyes welled up, I was suddenly aware of how fragile she is, she’s 88-years old. I can’t take seeing her again for granted. I need to be more careful.

I just walked up and down the station sidewalk in Seattle, the conductor announced that we arrived early and wanted us to pass on the information. I jumped out of the car to shake out the stiffness and was told we were leaving at 1850. Okay, I’ll have to do the math to figure out the time. I walked into another car to check out whether or not when you flush the toilet it goes directly onto the tracks. For extra measure, I washed my hands too. Then I dashed outside to clarify whether or not the water goes directly onto the tracks. It looked like the soapy hand washing water was emptying on to the tracks, but I can’t confirm the rumor that the toilet water is flushed onto the tracks. When I go back to my seat I spy the man who sat in front of us going to Portland, educating the woman across from him, is in front of us again, he’s quiet this trip. When I got back to our seat, Emily told me couple of men got in to a rowdy fight. The conductor is standing, blocking the aisle looking authoritative; he told them if they didn’t settle down, he’d throw them off the train. His stance says that he will. And I missed the excitement during my water drainage experiment.

Emily hopped off the train for a short walk. When Michael was eight-years old and Matthew and I got off the train in Montana, I asked Michael what he would do if we missed the train and he said, he wouldn't worry, he’d just get off in Spokane. What a sophisticated child! He’d been to Spokane before and knew the cousins that would greet him, but he was so calm.

Emily and I watched the movie Ondine the rest of the trip so I quit writing. We arrived back to flooding rain.