The Stars and the Cookie Jar

All my life I have bounded with gaiety and faith down the concrete or the gravel or the ringing metal walkway to the train. I looked to the end-point, but also to the adventure in between, to the world I would see speeding past the long windows. Amtrak, German rail with its absolutes, Polish rail with its tooth-aching delays and the Trans-Sib with its second-class benches, I tolerated a great deal; cinders, fumes, tedium and bad tea were part of the journey. Even in Poland, I never went with my grandparents' fear of the trains; I don't flinch in the bahnhof, I don't recoil when the diamond-grated steps come clanging down. I swayed into sleep between Warsaw and Vilna, because the train rocked and murmured, and soothed over that great sob of memory. Carry me into the countryside, to the narrow skyless cities, carry me into history or to where none of my blood's ever been.

Don't carry me away from the woman I love.

I did not want to board that bloody train, I tell you. I caused my own small traffic snarl trying to put it off to the last second. Then I made a huge racket banging and barking myself on the gangways. And then I oozed my miserable self and my attendant misery into a seat and most assuredly I took up both sides of it, and I pressed my forehead to the window and tried not to cry, but by two stops out of Union Station I was busted the hell up, for lack of eloquence, and I had no right to be crying as hard as I cried.

It's just, it's difficult. I wouldn't trade the chance to see her -- I'm grateful for any chance. It's the walking away from her that's hard.