Last night we hugged. It was more than just a casual hug. It was a “heart-hugging-heart” kind of hug. You know, the kind where the emotions run so deep that we cried.

I should clarify; only one of us cried.

If only there were a metaphor for the complexity and duality of this monumental moment. It was
real-time but seemed like a slow-motion train that grinds along the tracks while the station never nears. Hearts and trains...

I’ve always been enamored of locomotives. There is something both intriguing and fascinating about trains. The horsepower, the chugging of the engine and the whistle blowing at each road-meets-tracks intersection makes sense to me. For me, it’s like a well-rehearsed play. All the minutia of the journey come together and tell the story of a journey beginning or ending with a mode of transportation that has survived for several centuries.

Sometimes the journey is clear yet the destination, a painful unknown. This travel path is more than complicated. You could say that one of the two in this embrace continues in an attempt to build a train for herself. She’s laid tracks for other trains but can’t get the two to work in sync for herself. She needs a cog in her wheel. Turning and burning without the necessary projections to inspire movement. Akin to a childhood without love or connection. A free-spinning wheel that has the will but not the necessary means to move. Moving on is hard enough, but finding the inertia and understanding is more than a cross-country jaunt. I’d call it a “we may NEVER get there” trip.

Where do I even begin? How do I translate something that never has and never will make any sense? My train was never supposed to leave the station. But this wasn’t an ordinary type of train.

I was never meant to be ordinary. I was never meant to be.

I am a tenacious fighter. I have both spark and coal in ample supply. I find a way to move forward even after I’ve backslid. I never quite figured out how this happens, time and time again. Untaught, I somehow learned to build a machine that gets me from one station to another, on tracks I learned to lay. With the steadfastness of a mouse in a maze, I worked morning, noon and night to find a way to negotiate my path. Some journey. SO MUCH PAIN.

My locomotive journeyed away from the stations with rickety tracks. It knew, from its very beginnings, that although the journey leads to the destination, it’s the view of cornfields, the stunning, blaze of changing fall leaves, and the snow-dressed pines are where the heart truly feels. The soul dances and the words flow. It all makes sense.

If only.

My mother and I were trains in opposing directions that never passed. My excursion was more of a migration. I needed to leave the toxicity of a train station with a leaky roof and tracks unsecured by rotted rails. Time was of the essence; I couldn’t bear to stay long enough to become immobile. This would be my dead end. I knew my only out was to teach myself how to become adept at rebuilding my failed parts while creating a sturdy set of tracks. It was my only way. My aching soul told me there was no other way.

My journey has been anything but smooth. A journey like mine writes its tale, a story for every voyage. Lately, I got the feeling I was finally on a steady course. That was not the case. All told in real-time, where blessing-meets-curse. My repeatedly-repaired locomotive locked in an embrace with the skillfully constructed machine I built for another. Here’s where the journeys find a common destination. It’s called love.

Like a two-car train, my 5th child, my 24-year-old daughter and I hugged. She was leaving for the place she now calls home. She embraced me with every fiber of her being, tightly woven in her belief that I was her everything. I built and maintained all she was, using every tool I could find. I always wondered if she knew I never truly learned this trade. I knew. I was consumed with learning to help her navigate through life like I never could for myself. It worked.

This hug, her hug, taught me to let her navigate now. I taught her how to keep one eye on the destination but both eyes on the beautiful journey. She cried because she sees one stunning sight after another through life’s windows. Me? I’m the brilliant wreckage of train parts that learned to miraculously maneuver the tracks yet see and feel nothing. In black-and-white terms, my mother made me a windowless train. She blinded me to the journey and the destination.

Then it happened. All within the moment of embrace I saw what I didn’t feel. Then I cried.

This train is no longer blinded. I see the beauty of everything I am blessed with. I guess I will call it a beautiful journey. I’m ready for this new ride and all the views I can take in. Now, this time, it’s mine for the taking.