Montessori Glory

Their World, Not Ours

I strolled toward the fence, made of a dark wood and smelling like it had just been cut from the forest the day before. To my right were row of planted beds: heirloom tomatoes, sweet red peppers, meticuliously cared for and ready to be picked. Inside the yard, the playground was surrounded by even more garden projects and a shaded area stood off by the side, arranged with low tables and chairs. Little children, wearing little aprons and carrying little trays, came out of the building and sat at these minature tables. They sat absorbed in their work. Some were sewing with a thick piece of colorful thread. Another was painting at an easel. And one table of children sat in a group working with geometrical solids. I went over to the table and picked up one of the shapes. "What's this box for?" The little boy looked up at me and with an air of correction, "That is not a box, it is a trinomial cube."

I am officially dumber than a four year old.

Embarrased, I set down his 'trinomial cube' and stepped back so that he could keep doing whatever it is you do with one of those things.

Dangerous Minds

Many people have a very vague notion as to just what Montessori education is. Some think it's a cult, probably because it is a private institution where the cirriculum centers around the philosophies of just one person. Some have asked if it's religious. While the theorist herself was Italian and therefore, Catholic, there is no trace of religion within the schools.
But what it is, in fact, is one of the most radical forms of education out there. It produces exactly the kinds of kids that the public school system is trying to avoid- children who voice their own opinion, are extremely independant, and do not fall in line, but rather choose what is right and make their own line. These are not kids that will just sit quietly at a desk and take orders from a teacher, trying to asses their self-worth by some arbitrary grading system which seperates the 'haves' from the 'have-nots'. These children are exactly the kind that a world dictator would find very dangerous. In fact, Montessori schools in different parts of the world have been shut down in the past by regimes, because of the 'dangerous, independent minds' that the method produces. Mousselini did it. So did Franco and Hilter.

Self-Guided

The children at my school range from 3 to 6 years old, but are grouped together in one grade. In this way, the older ones are role-models for the younger, often 'playing teacher', and showing the newcomers how things work in the classroom. Everything is in minature: the sinks, the shelves containing all sorts of 'works'. There are no toys in the environment, but these children don't seem to mind. One child, carefully carrying a tray of dried beans across the room, tips the corner of the tray and the small beans dance across the floor. Several children stop what they are doing and rush to help pick up all of the fallen beans. A girl with strands of ribbons coming out of her tightly curled hair, walks over to remind another child that they forgot to tuck in their chair. The teacher stands calmly in the corner of the classroom, a camelion, blending with the wall behind her, observing the children quietly, noting each individual's progress.

A Rebel in Corset and Stockings

Maria Montessori, as you might have guessed from the name, is the one who came up with this educational method. She was a rebel of her times: Italy's first female doctor, a feminist, anti-war advocate, evolutionist, and scientist who had illicit love affairs and refused to marry.


Montessori continued in the foosteps of Itard by educating children in insane asylums. She shocked the world with her success, and helped progress the now modern take on mental illness. She thought if her method could help mentally ill children become as intelligent as normal children, than this method, when applied to normal children, certainly would create unlimited potentials. She believed that we are all born with this unlimited potential, but the environment around which we grow will determine whether or not we will reach that potential. And so, the whole methodology which I am now studying has to do with the purpose of advancing human evolution to a higher plane. It is a form of education that is concerned with fostering a love of learning within the child. There are no grades, no homework, no 'teachers desk and chalkboard' and no forced competition. I teach good values and I help children become confident, independant, not grade-obsessed and obedient. I do not teach at the students like I did so often in Japan, rather I guide them toward work that may be of interest to them and I give them the key to unlock their own doors. Our educational system teaches children that something is only worthwhile if there is a reward tied to it, and fosters citizens who have no sense of personal accountability. I am trying to build children that do, and help repair this damaged country one child at a time.


The children's response to this is amazing. The method really does work. The children I have in my class are, intellectually, 3 years or so ahead. Right now, my class consists of 3-6 year olds, all grouped together. The older ones are role-models to the younger ones. These kids prepare their own snacks, set the table for lunch, and clean up after themsleves. They have a more advanced vocabulary than I do. And, unlike in public school, I can give the kids as many hugs as I want!

Just another Utopian Ideal?

Currently, I am working at a tri-lingual Montessori school in the bay area. I am the English teacher and I work side by side with the Japanese and Mandarin teachers, so the children learn three languages at once. In this way, I get to keep up with my Japanese and I'm starting to pick up more Mandarin, which is fun. Speaking Japanese is really soothing, and Mandarin, well, it reminds me of throwing darts- an entire idea is expressed in just a few sharply toned sounds.

And I love my students. One of my favorites, a little rosey-cheeked boy around the age of 3, approached me yesterday in a very serious matter. He had big news to tell me: "Lisa Sensei?", 'Yes', i replied. "I have a shadow." He then walked back to his table. Amazing discovery!
While the kids are a joy, the downside of my job is my head directress, lets call her Madame Frown, a knowledgable person whom means well, but everything that comes out of her mouth is a criticism. Now, as ideal as the idea of a tri-lingual environment sounds, in practice, it doesn't really work. Because it is difficult enough to find certified Montessori teachers, let alone ones that can speak Japanese or Mandarin fluently, the other teachers are either underqualified or can not speak English. This has lead to quite a few problems at staff meetings, where Madame Frown will spend an hour telling us how she wants the school run, only to realize that half the staff does not understand what she is saying. And thus, confusion ensues. Madame Frown is also very strict, and can often be found either scolding the children, or scolding me for not scolding the children.

I can remember having many teachers just like M. Frown when I was growing up. How come so many teachers seem to clearly not enjoy children? Why don't they just stop teaching if they are so clearly unhappy? This, I can not figure out. Yes, children can be an exhausting headache, but I guess the reason I feel so drawn to them is the same reason I sometimes prefer the company of an animal to that of an adult human. Dogs and children- they are so pleased by the simplist of things. They do not use there mind to worry- they live by the moment. And their loyalty and trust in you is unmoving. What happens to the adult person that so removes us from these characteristics? And can we return to that state if we want to?

Sticks and Stones and Broken Bones

"It's only fun till someone gets hurt!"
We all remember those nagging, knee-pad wielding parents who chased us down the driveway shouting safety instructions and fastening emergency bracelets to our wrists. As a child, I remember waiting until my house was no longer in view before stashing my helmet and elbow pads into the neighbor's bushes and then roller blading down to the park to join my friends in some sort of parentally unsanctioned activity. Better to live and pay the price than feel like a porcelain doll.
But perhaps this Friday I crossed the line between living life to its fullest and plain recklessness. I was out in Oakland with some friends, celebrating our start to a promising labor day weekend. Leaving the pub and sailing down 20th on a bit of steel and two wheels, I let myself go a bit faster than I perhaps should have. As I rounded the corner onto Broadway, a portly fellow ran into the street to hail an approaching cab.. and dead center into my front wheel. The asphalt kissed my right arm, and the impact with the ground caused my key chain to break open, spraying keys all over the street. My arm was bleeding, but I seemed okay; more concerned about picking up my keys and getting out of the middle of the street. The embarrassed pedestrian apologized and then jumped into his cab, uninjured. We continued onto the Bart train, and it was a good twenty minutes before I noticed my other hand was throbbing. I thought it best to retire for the night and sleep off the injury. But as I awoke in the morning and tried to bend my fingers down into my now very swollen palm, I realized there was a very serious problem.
Now I, like many millions of Americans, do not have health insurance. Either jobs I've worked don't offer it, or, as is the case now, I only work part-time because I'm a student. I'm not a bum, I'm a hardworking person who always pays my taxes. And do I just happen to have an extra $200 or so of disposable income at the end of each month for a crappy private plan? (And if I did, I would be better off putting it in a private savings to pay my medical bills than giving it over to a profit margin obsessed company).
And so, what are people like me supposed to do when we get injured? Just accept the fact that one second of bad luck, one accident, will result in a $10,000 hospital bill, that I will have to endure harassing phone calls from bill collectors for a number of years until I pay it off, or declare bankruptcy? I don't fucking think so.
Now I have some not-so-fond memories of Cook County Hospital in Chicago. There was a certain someone who I had to take there a few years back, and his broken limb involved a 12 hour wait in the ER, in which i got into a fight with a bum for stealing my coffee mug. I was not looking forward to County. So my roommate helped me pack a bag full of books, food, enough to get by for a 24 hour camp out, and we headed over to Alameda County Hospital.
As we pulled up, I expected to see a dingy burnt out looking building teaming with homeless people. But this is California, and the county hospital I went to looked as professional and unassuming as a normal ER. I signed in at the desk, and in less than 5 minutes, I was getting registered in the queue. Within two hours they had me transfered to a hospital bed, where I came into contact with one friendly nurse after another, giving me ice, water, you name it. Over in X-ray, my fears were confirmed: I had broken a bone in my hand, a lovely spiral fracture that would sentence me to 6 weeks in a hard cast.
Back in my hospital bed and waiting for my splint, I became aware of the two others i was sharing a room with. The one, homeless, alcoholic, around sixty, drunk and disorientated. The other, the same, except a women and with a head injury she doesn't recollect getting. She says she has a boyfriend. Then she changes the story. Now she has a husband. These two are regulars here, the nurses are on familiar terms with them. They lie to the nurses, saying they don't drink, they just want something for the pain. They'll be back again. The one tries to get up and pees all over the floor. It's a mess. It stinks. Those poor nurses.
After a total of four hours, I declare myself poor to financial services, and leave without paying anything.
I just went beck to have my cast put on today. The queue was long, and the wait longer. It was six hours before I was finally put in a cast. The doctors were good, knowledgeable, hardworking, horribly understaffed. The doctor that saw me said he usually administers 50 or more patients a day. I heard many patients cussing at the doctors. One guy told the doctor to 'shut the fuck up' because the doctor told him he would have to walk with a cane until his foot healed. I've often heard from friends that work in social services that the ones that are the worst off are also usually also the most ungrateful when they are given help.

Now, we all know that a very historical event is about to go down in regards to health care. Here we have a nation that can only seem to agree on the fact that everyone disagrees. We have a President grasping at the threads of an unraveling garment. Even if this Health care reform does go through, with the need for so much compromise, it will be nowhere near as strong and well organized as Canada's glorious system. There is far too much greed in America to ever have honest, uncorrupted social services, and America is too vast a country to run anything efficiently. In my travels, small countries, such as England, Japan, and New Zealand, have excellent National Health care because those countries are manageable. If my experiences this past week have shown me anything, it is that this country is a huge mess.
So what if Obama's free health care does wind up to be just like County Hospital? Yes, the doctors are over worked. Yes, you have to wait longer and that can be frustrating. Or you might have to endure rooming with a derelict. But are the doctors just as good? Yes. Did they accomplish the job of healing you? Of course.
But most important of all, I would still rather endure a 12hour wait and get it over with than worry every day of my life about how I would afford it. If I didn't have to work a job I hated just because I needed the health coverage that employer provided. Imagine the freedom if we all didn't have to worry any more...

Please leave your bacon and your nuclear energy at the border.

While I am not technically living in San Francisco at the moment, I do have my face up against the windowpane, admiring it from across the Bay. Various reasons led me to settling into a house nestled in the Berkeley valley instead: cheaper rent, ability to have a garden, and the all-powerful job. Although not as exciting as San Francisco, and with not nearly enough flower carrying nudists, Berkeley is still not a bad place to live. The temperature at any given moment is always about ten degrees warmer than in San Francisco and the fog usually dissipates by the time it reaches the East Bay, meaning that I get to be greeted by sunshine each and every day. Berkeley is not quite like any place I have ever been before: it is not condensed or tall enough to be a city, but with its strict liberal policies which ensure that strip malls and chain-stores are not allowed to sprout within city limits, Berkeley retains its hipness and maintains streets lined with artist studios, cafes, organic grocers, and co-ops. To the north of me is an area known as the 'gourmet ghetto', although I am not sure how the word, 'ghetto' plays into the prices of these elite organic vegan dining experiences. To the south and east lie the University and Berkeley Hills, the former being a den of cheap Indian eats, yoga studios, and thrifts stores, while the latter is a great place for hiking and drooling over gorgeous homes, the perennials lining the front yard being equal in price to my yearly rent.
To the far south borders Oakland, which looks a lot more like sweet home Chicago than anything else I've seen out here. Oakland actually does have a downtown area, which is where I have to make a trek out to anytime I need to do something requiring a social service.
Despite the hilly reputation of our neighbor to the west, Berkeley and Oakland and pretty much flat, and I am still able to commute to work on my single speed, leaving my road bike available for trips across the bridge.
Unlike SoCal, in the bay area, cyclists are very welcomed and conscientiously yielded to on the road. The Berkeley folks pride themselves on being outdoorsy/environmentalist/studious (I'm told even some of the bums here hold PHDs), and so this seems to explain the driver's revere for the cyclist (just to note, though, this doesn't seem to apply to Oakland, as once I cross the town line, cars are trying to kill me again) There are at least 3 bike co-ops I've discovered so far, my favorite being bike kitchen in the mission, where I'll be volunteering later this month, waterside workshop in Berkeley which reclaims old bikes/parts and makes em' work again, and Missing Link Co-op, which lets you use stands/tools for free, any time, (but being by the University, the staff is a little grumpy).
And now about Casa de Lisita, my little castle in the valley. I'm sharing a four bedroom with an interesting group of gals and a little lion named Jasper. The previous owner was a little old lady who let the one acre yard fall into a landmine of barbed wire weeds and drought ridden soil cracked open wide to reveal the center of the earth. We've got big plans for this place, which has kept me busy since setting foot. So far, the compost bin is up and running, I've got some basil and beets sprouting, and have been reclaiming old bricks and wood as planter boxes. Crops can grow year round here, and we are reveling in our plan to convert the huge backyard into ten raised beds, of which we will lease out as a community garden. As there are no alleys, craigslist is your best friend out here, a means to find EVERYTHING for free... dirt, mulch, half consumed bottles of vitamins...
The roomies are an interesting bunch: There's Karen, a cello musician from Oberlin who makes some damn good granola. Jon, who teaches special needs kids in Oakland and plays the mandolin. Tonya, the brain of the group, holding PHDs from Berkeley and Arizona, a human evolutionist turned ocean conservation researcher. And her 16 year old daughter Savannah, who's going to play Alice in this fall's school play.
There always seems to be something going down in the Berk, whether its spontaneous African drum circles at the Sunday flea markets, or Swing bands playing in the town square.
San Francisco, however takes things to a new level. Every time I go into the city, I am introduced to some new kind of quirkyness. I've spent weekends perched atop Redwood trees while samba beats drift up toward me encased in bubbles, Nudists streaking across the fifty foot screen playing Annie Hall in Dolores Park, vacationing with a gang of IT nerds at Stinson Beach, the Hamptons of N Cali, a gated community of posh summer homes lining the coast, getting swept up in the current of immigrants bargaining for lechees and ginseng in Chinatown, Bombfire nights at the ocean, four dozen fires ablaze on the beach and a brad pitt look-alike with a feather in his cap serenading me while I lay in the sand.
Things never get boring here. And the locals seem to keep finding ways to outdo themselves.

The California Zephyr continued, Denver to San Francisco

When I last left off, I was re-boarding the train in Denver to continue my journey across the country to California.
Unlike the ride out from Chicago, where my train passengers included Amish families and a handful of weirdos, the train this time was loaded with bright and dreaded Phish fans coming home from a concert the night before in Red Rocks, Colorado. (You can imagine the smell of patcholi and festive atmosphere of the train)
The fellow to the right of me, wearing an American flag bandanna tightly around his long blonde hair, started up a conversation as we pulled out of the station. A landscaper from Lincoln, Nebraska, 'Frosty', as he preferred to be called, was one of the many following the Phish parade. In front of me was a feisty girl headed from Miami, who works in one of the many posh clubs frequented by celebs such as Puff Daddy and Dennis Rodman. Among the characters to join out roster were Shawn, an ex-con from Las Vegas, who now brews beer up in Eugene, Oregon, and Jenni, who ironically enough is also a Montessori teacher who had just moved from St. Charles, IL out to San Francisco with her husband (we've stayed in touch and so far she's my new best friend out here in the bay).
After forming our little group, we decided to re-locate to the back of the train, where there was an empty car for us to plug in our i-tunes and enjoy some of the craft beer Shawn had brought with him.
Shortly after boarding, the conductor announced that instead of going through snow-capped Rocky Mountain peaks and breathtaking canyons, our train was going to be re-routed through Wyoming. B-o-ring. Wyoming is a void in the middle of the US, a land devoid of people and pretty much anything to look at. But because of this routing mishap, we were told we would now get a three hour break in one of the most exciting cities in America: Salt Lake City, Mormon Capitol of the world.
Despite this ill-turn of fate, we worked ourselves up to a pick of excitement, anticipating the opportunity to attempt to inact a few hours of harmless debartury upon the Mormons. As it turned out, our conductor, Roger, was a Mormon himself, but was not at all amused by our behavior or jokes about looking for a few new wives during our layover. Just as we entered Utah and the beer ran out,the train screeched to a hault.
Roger's voice could be heard over the intercom:
"There appears to be a train with a broken engine in front of us. Not sure how long we'll be stopped for. But, Dorthy, We're not in Kansas anymore, and the penalties for controlled substances out in Utah are swift and severe". We were stuck looking out into the dusty void of Utah for three hours before the train started to slowly move again, and because of our delay, the Mormon Gods saw to it that we would only have a ten minute break in Salt Lake City. We were starving. One guy in our group jumped to the rescue and started calling around to all the pizza joints to see if anyone would deliver to the train station. Just as it seemed that every pizza place in town shut down by 9pm, Pizza Hut saved the day by agreeing to meet us on the train platform. And so, just as we pulled into the station, Chris gathered our cash, ran off the train to the waiting pizza van, made the exchange and we were on our way! Too bad those Mormons couldn't have thrown in a six-pack.
We all got some sleep and the next morning, while the scenery hadn't changed much, the laws of the land certainly had. We were now in Nevada, the state of legalized sin. We pulled into Reno around 11am, and despite the fact that we again only had a ten minute break, it was enough time for one dude armed with a skateboard to hit up the liquor store and come back with a gallon of vodka. The lunch hour cocktails were a bit too early for me, but I still had fun chatting with these people from such varied backgrounds, and getting tons of advice and recommendations on living in San Francisco. Our conductor, Roger, had gotten off in Utah, and his replacement was a much more laid back gentleman from the east bay. This new conductor allowed us to get off the train at all the stops for a quick game of volleyball before re-boarding.
You could see the smiles break over everyone's face as we finally entered California and curved around Lake Tahoe. At our first stop in California, the condutor got on the intercom:
"Welcome to Sacramento, for all you smokers out there, you may now step off the train and 'burn one', if you know what I mean".
After months of planning and worrying if I had made the right decision, I had arrived in California, and all was well. The sun was shining, I had already made some new friends, and life's possibilities seemed endless...

What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been: Tales from the California Zephyr

What kind of way is it to start an adventure if you don’t almost miss your train. Keeping to my lust for excitement, I managed to arrive at Union Station 15 minutes before my train was set to depart, well after the cut-off for checking in baggage. Luckily, I found a take-no-shit southsider in an Amtrak jumpsuit with a soft spot for dames in distress who, after emptying the cash contents on my wallet into his open palm, took my bike boxes down to the loading dock and agreed to send them off on the next day’s train. That freed me up with enough time to run around like a mad woman clumsily swinging my knapsack into harmless Amish families as I sought out track number five. I made it onto the train just as they were preparing to pull out, I was on my way…

It only took an hour upon leaving Chicago to become surrounded by corn, chipped paint silos, pickup trucks, and boarded up town squares draped in American flags. What a little capsule of a world I’ve been living in, how unlike what America really is.
But while a city like Chicago represents the finest of its country, a city is never a true representation of that country. I was in the real America now, and all it's corn glory.

For the first few hours, I hung out in the observation lounge listening to Sufjan Stevens Illinoise and thinking about corn. The uniformity of the corn makes this flatness even more dramatic: If viewed either straight on or directly above, it resembles a lake, the rows wiz by like ripples emanating from a pebble.
I think the Japanese mind would be in rapture if it were to gaze upon an American cornfield; the orderly flatness, abnormally perfect rows of ingeniously cloned superfood. It reminds me of the Japanese phrase, ‘the nail that sticks up must be hammered down’, each stalk of corn like a student from one of the school assemblies standing at full attention; so young, but already growing along a plan of someone else's design.

I was hoping the train accommodations would be similar to the long distance trains I took in China, where we were all filed into our own horizontal cubbyhole, six beds to a door-less room. However, this was not the case, the train instead being set up as two opposing worlds of upper and lower class with a dining car in between to insure our segregation. The coach seat I was in turned out to be quite cozy, despite being slightly bigger than an airline seat. The 'first class', or sleeper car option is an extra $400, and while it ensures that your time can be passed lying on your back, I doubt those up front had quite as much fun as we did.

And so what kind of person buys a coach ticket on Amtrak? "Normal" is not a characteristic you find in the people who ride the rails. Perhaps it takes a certain kind of crazy to decide to put yourself through over fifty hours of train travel when you can fly to your destination for almost the same price these days.
To be fair, there probably are some normal people who have very good reasons to be on the train, but they tend to be the ones who keep to themselves in their assigned seat, gazing at nothing with headphones on. As I don’t have the patience to sit in one place without anything stimulating happening for hours, I decided to make my way into the lounge car armed with a chess set and a smile.
I first fell into conversation with a 'bloke' from Essex who was determined to drink his way across America. I watched in awe as my new friend Simon, who wound up being terrible at chess but an expert at drinking himself into a stupor, went on about how much he loved America, despite our refusal to insert the letter ‘u’ into words such as ‘color’. I’ve noticed time and time again that the things I tend to find the most revolting about this country are the very things foreigners just love: massive trucks, strip malls, billboards, gregarious servings of food… While we love to go to foreign countries and marvel at how old everything is. You know what they say, the grass is always greener. Anyway, my British friend wound up getting belligerent on the poor lunch car server, after repeatedly being told he couldn't smoke inside the car. He excused himself to go pass out on the elderly shoulder of his unfortunate Nebraskan seatmate.
The next friend to drop in was a retired vet from Las Vegas in a Vietnam war trucker hat and camouflage jacket who insisted on calling me ‘toots’ and ‘honey’ for the duration of the trip. He plopped himself down next to me and demanded that we have a game of chess next. But contrary to his affectionate demeanor, he proceeded to insult me for the duration of the game by saying that girls can’t be good chess players (apparently this is a well-established fact) and when I won the game, accused me of moving the pieces when he was in the john.
After that, I pretty much gave up on making friends, and slept the rest of the way until Denver.

I arrived in the mile high city at dawn, met with my sister and cruised over to her house in the outskirts of town. Starving because I refused to eat the hideous train food, I scarfed down some homemade banana bread, changed, and jumped in the car to go hiking at Rocky Mountain national park.
About halfway into the car ride, as we were driving through Lyons, where the hotel that The Shining was filmed in still stands, I started to really feel the altitude. Or, at least I thought it was the altitude. One of the girls said something and I just couldn’t stop laughing. ‘Wait, that wasn’t funny, why am I laughing?’ I thought.
I turned to my sister, “??You didn’t put pot in the banana bread, did you?”
“Oh, sorry. I forgot to tell you.”
“I ate THREE slices!”
Sigh.
Well, I was in Colorado now, one of the states where medicinal is legal.
The afternoon was a pretty heavy haze, lots of frolicking was had. After playing in icy mountain streams, we met up with my brother in Boulder and had a few beers at the Lazy Dog Brewery. Boulder has more brew pubs than I can count on me hands and toes, and is in general a very cute little town. It reminds me of a mix between Santa Fe and Madison.
We worked off our beers on another hike through the foothills, taking in the scent of the Pondorosa Pines, and as the altitude, pot, and general exhaustion caught up with me, passed out on the ride home.
The next day, we headed out again early to meet up with my brother in the mountains. My brother secured a job as a lift operator up at A-Basen for the snow season, one of the best ski resorts in the US. The houses he's looking to rent up in Silverthorne, log cabins with wood burning stoves and hot tubs, go for about the same price as a one bedroom apartment in Chicago if you snatch it up during the off season. I'm glad that all my siblings are following their dreams at the moment, (and I'm eager for a winter of free snowboarding!)
We met up with him at the summit of Loveland Pass, the place where my sister tied the knot last fall. At almost 12,000 feet, just a few steps leaves you feeling out of breath, yet exhilarated.
There was still snow left on the tips of the peaks, and mountain flowers were in bloom on the slopes. Everything was sharp: the air, the light. But eventually you have to come back down from that mountain. We stopped at some old gold mining- turned tourist towns on the ride back down, snapping some photos of the burnt out old west. We were greeted with a traditional New Mexican dinner when we returned, compliments of my sister's husband: Enchiladas, tacos, and of course, fresh roasted green chiles. It was hard to let go and get back on that train, knowing I could just very well stay on longer with the family, play with the baby and watch him grow. For a long time before, I felt very disconnected from any notion of family, but this trip was one of the first times that I knew I'd really miss them when I left. Is that just growing older or maybe wiser?
Back on the train, Monday morning, I waved goodbye knowing that I had found another place I could very well see myself living. I fell into a slumber, and when I opened my eyes, was greeted by my neighboring train passenger bearing down on me with a jovial smile: "Hi."
Thus began 34 hours of train mischief and mayhem.
TO BE CONTINUED...