ghost of christmas past

I took Amtrak because I had always romanticized trains having grown up beside a railroad tressel. I thought sometimes I might want to take a train across the country to California and so I decided to try it out with a run from Chicago, IL to Columbia, SC around christmas 1997.

I remember having to stop and change trains in Washington, D.C.

I remember being so excited to get back to Columbia. It had been only six months. I was leading a lonely lonely life in Chicago. A life without a group of friends to cling to, to watch tv with, to eat dinners with, have a beer. Nope it was just my great uncle Benji and me living together in his apartment building on the far north side of Chicago.

When I got back everything was all the same and different.

One night there was a little party going on. It was at this house that had belonged to this couple - he about 21, she about 41 - and her kids when I had left. It was a nice house, it was a grown up house, but there were kids living there now. All around my age. Some I had known from working at the same restaurant. A few I did not know.

Those close friends who brought me to this house on this night (I don't remember when but I remember it was on this trip), well, this was their new group of friends to watch tv and eat dinner and drink beer with. But I didn't fit in with this group and I felt uncomfortable and so I went to go and hide out in the kitchen and sulk about no one noticing that I was not there.

That's what I was doing when I noticed a painting being painted in the breakfast area of the kitchen. The painting was of some rabbits ice skating in a park. I looked over the painter's shoulder and made an approving noise. When I realized that I had rudely intruded, I apologized, then introduced myself.

I am haunted by this memory and a dozen others.

I am waiting to be able to begin to hope to be free of this haunting.

I found the experience of being on a train for eighteen hours without a sleeping berth was too uncomfortable and claustrophobic to attempt again. I haven't been on a long train ride since then.