THE TRAIN

As a kid, I loved trains. Most kids do right? They represent power, travel, strength, and the rise of machine doing the work previously done by man. Indeed, trains were the first mass transit that connected our nation from coast to coast (google: the golden spike), and today still carry people, goods, livestock, and the like, helping get from point A to point B. All good. But there’s something else.

I want you to picture this: a long, flat, straight train track on a bed of gravel, surrounded on both sides by a green meadow that’s filled with yellow, red, purple and blue flowers. The meadow also contains tall grass, ponds, sunlight and insects. It’s warm and there are kids playing, laughing, and running in the sun. The tracks are nearby, but everyone knows where they are and no one gets too close. Except for me. I’m not curious per-se, but somewhere in my deep inner conscience, I cannot wander too far from the tracks to play. I don’t know why this is, and I don’t even realize it. I just have a “feeling” somewhere that I need to look far down the tracks, and that some unknown force is keeping me close to them. I’m not scared, nor do I even think about a train coming, but I return and look over and over again, day after day of playing. There is no train, only sunlight.

Years pass like this and at times, there are clouds and the rumbling of distant thunder while I play. I’m aging, but don’t think too much about it. I play. The games become more sophisticated. The faces of some of the other kids begin to change, while some remain the same, and some new ones join as well. All of these friends also see the train tracks, and some run across them, jump over them, and even carry me across them in times of laughter, but I am still the only one who stays near them, looking, looking, looking for a train. Grass and weeds grow on the track. More years pass, and the track remains empty. I become convinced that there is no train coming. I sit on the track from time to time. I rest there. I think about life there. For some reason, still unknown, I can’t pull myself to leave the train bed completely. I begin to feel “at home” on the track. Although it is not particularly comfortable, I stay. At times I wonder how sitting on a train track while looking over and over again for a train that may never arrive is even a sane thing to do. Still I stay. I feel trapped, but since it’s usually sunny, the track is not all that uncomfortable and there’s no vibration from the steel below my body, I’m ok. I like trains. There’s worse places that I could be spending my time.

One day I realize that it has grown very quiet. I’m all by myself, sitting on the track as usual. I feel cold, and there are drops of rain starting to plop down from the gray clouds above. The metal rails have grown cold and are beginning to vibrate. There, in the distance, is a train. I see a puff of smoke and can make out a dim light. I hear no sound. I begin to worry when I realize that I cannot get off the track. I talk to myself and realize that I am not dreaming, and it dawns on me that this is not going to end well. Fast as a flash of lightning, I understand everything and my brain has an epiphany. My train has been coming for decades. I always knew it was around some bend, across some long prairie and chugging on this track that I have been stuck on since I was a little boy. The biggest difference now is that no one can lift me off and move me, although many have tried. My friends and people dearest to me all have a look in their eyes that I cannot explain. It’s as if they know something, or see something that I am blind to. It doesn’t compute. Why is everyone looking? Do they see the train as well? I can hear it now, and the rails are rattling like crazy. Vibrations are coming up through my body seemingly from the core of the Earth and they are shaking each and every cell that lives and dies with each tick of nature’s clock. I struggle with my thoughts and time becomes meaningless. Each and every small problem drops off my radar. I’m no longer bothered by trivial things like possessions, work, or hobbies. Instead, I have retreated to fight or flight. Except on the tracks, alone, there is no more flight and how in the hell am I supposed to fight a steam train that is barreling toward me, unrelenting, at a high rate of speed? I didn’t think it was possible to be terrified and calm at the same time. In a quiet moment, I am reminded of reading the final words of The Beatle’s George Harrison who put it beautifully: “Everything else can wait, but the search for God cannot wait, and love one another.”

Everything is fine. Until it’s not.

As of this writing, I have lived on Earth for half a century. Beginning at the age of 12, people have asked me what it feels like to live with muscular dystrophy. The essay above is my answer.