Counting Cars, Recounting Memories
Today I am grateful for the refreshing morning air and for safe travels and new experiences.
The other evening, my husband Darcy and I were enjoying the nice weather and the end of a good day on a college visit trip with our son Sam. The view from the hotel patio looked out at, among other things, railroad tracks about 50 yards away.
A train came around the curve, blew its whistle loudly and then proceeded to roll past at a fairly sedate pace. I began to count the cars, mostly tankers, as they passed. It was reminiscent of growing up. Trains were visible from our farm as they went through our little hometown about a mile across the fields.
If a train hit 100 cars or more, it was a big train. The one I just counted the other evening was about 110. Our first home in our current community literally had railroad tracks about 10 yards out our front door. We joked that we lived “on the wrong side of the tracks.”
It was a short line only in town and usually just a few cars, moving really slow, shaking our house a little. Those trains certainly intrigued our toddler Sam. We would step to the window and watch it go past, or step outside and wave.
Counting train cars and recounting memories. Reminiscing about growing up with my siblings on the farm decades ago, and about our son and our first home 14-15 years ago. Memories Sam doesn’t even recall. He was too little.
Now his senior year is right around the corner. He is approaching adulthood and my siblings and I mostly qualify for senior status. It is a lot to consider at times. This sum of experiences and memories and the thoughts and feelings that go with them.
And as I consider it all, I also consider the blessings that have lined the path of those years. Side by side with challenges, the blessings pulled us through to each new day.
Here we are again. Another new day. More blessings ahead.
The other evening, my husband Darcy and I were enjoying the nice weather and the end of a good day on a college visit trip with our son Sam. The view from the hotel patio looked out at, among other things, railroad tracks about 50 yards away.
A train came around the curve, blew its whistle loudly and then proceeded to roll past at a fairly sedate pace. I began to count the cars, mostly tankers, as they passed. It was reminiscent of growing up. Trains were visible from our farm as they went through our little hometown about a mile across the fields.
If a train hit 100 cars or more, it was a big train. The one I just counted the other evening was about 110. Our first home in our current community literally had railroad tracks about 10 yards out our front door. We joked that we lived “on the wrong side of the tracks.”
It was a short line only in town and usually just a few cars, moving really slow, shaking our house a little. Those trains certainly intrigued our toddler Sam. We would step to the window and watch it go past, or step outside and wave.
Counting train cars and recounting memories. Reminiscing about growing up with my siblings on the farm decades ago, and about our son and our first home 14-15 years ago. Memories Sam doesn’t even recall. He was too little.
Now his senior year is right around the corner. He is approaching adulthood and my siblings and I mostly qualify for senior status. It is a lot to consider at times. This sum of experiences and memories and the thoughts and feelings that go with them.
And as I consider it all, I also consider the blessings that have lined the path of those years. Side by side with challenges, the blessings pulled us through to each new day.
Here we are again. Another new day. More blessings ahead.
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