Sounds of Home
When I was growing up, our house was mere blocks from the main street of our little town. The main street, itself stretching only a few blocks from the factory to the high school, was messily bisected by a railroad crossing. That crossing was a prime reason we kids learned train safety before we could read: Don’t play on the tracks. Don’t cross when the lights are flashing. If your car ever stalls on the tracks, get out.
It’s probably also the reason I could count to 1,000 by age four. The freight cars seemed to rattle on endlessly, providing plenty of practice.
The day came, of course, when I moved away. I went away to college in a small city, and then moved to live in quite a large city. And eventually, I moved back here with my son. Back to my family. Back to this land where our roots have grown generations-deep, here between the mountains and the valley.
We don’t live in that house just off the main street any more; but we’re not so far away. So at night, when the town is asleep and the highways still, if I listen, I can hear it: the rattling of the wheels on the tracks. The long, low whistle that swells out of the valley as the train approaches the crossings.
The sound that tells me: you are home.
This post was inspired by Doc and the Thinking Parents wiki.