The first titled that popped into my head was "My daughter, the 'train-her.'
I was going to come up with another list of how my daughter somehow turned the table in her 18mths infancy and now has me trained to do things instead of the other way around! Oh, things like...while hitting the chair upon which I'm sitting with her hand and saying 'moma! moma!', I know she wants me to move my butt so that she can sit in it instead. Or how, when she's all snuggled in my arms with her bottle and blanket, repeating 'mo! mo! (more)', she wants me to sing more songs to her. Or when she bends her arm and touches her elbow, I know she wants me to sing 'skinamerink adink adink'... thank you Sharon, Lois and Bram! But alas...I wanted to expand my interpretation of the word beyond that of motherhood.
One day, the following lyric from Billy Ocean's song "When the going gets rough, the tough get going" popped into my head:
I'm gonna buy me a one-way ticket
Nothin's gonna hold me back
Your love's like a slow train coming (slow train coming)
And I feel it coming down the track.
Yes, I know...where the heck did that spring from?? And how does that help with this week's theme?? Well take the lyric "your love is like a slow train coming"...this made me think of the impact of love in my life. There are many loves...love of the mundane things such as book, good chocolate, the smell of summer rain, sarongs, and the belly laugh that bursts from my daughter's lips when I'm being silly ol' moma! Love like that I have for my family...no amount of arguments, strong opinions or completely different viewpoints on matters like religion, homosexuality or raising my daughter...seem ever to diminish. My love for Babe...finally I understand why two people can envision spending the rest of their days together. And then there is the love for my daughter....you wanna talk slow love?? From everything I heard, I was supposed to fall in-love with her the moment I saw her! I was supposed to feel like I was run over by the love train! No...that's not even close to what gripped my heart when she was born. Fear...ambivalence...protectiveness...uncertainty... yes, if Mama Says Om ever uses those words for themes in the future, I've got one helleva story to tell!
I thought of one of my favorite movies...'Festival Express'...the 1970's party on tracks attended by music legends such as Janice Joplin, Buddy Guy, and the Grateful Dead. "Festival Express was a multi-band, multi-day extravaganza that captured the spirit and imagination of a generation and a nation. For five days, the bands and performers lived, slept, reheards and did countless unmentionable things aboard a customized train that travelled across Canada stopping at 5 major cities." For 70mins or so, I was aboard that train...I sat beside Janis , sipping my whiskey, tapping my feet to the strumming guitar that one of the Deads was playing and Janice was crooning to. I was drunk and high on the energy in the metal compartment...and I didn't give a crap that I hadn't slept in 30 hours. I was one of many people on that trained that stopped at some hick town along our journey and cleaned out their local liquor store. I was one of the last few people to step off the train in western Canada, knowing that my life had changed over the week, I would never listen to rock and roll ever the same again and that my memories of any other train ride paled in comparison.
So...rather than focusing on one train of thought that I went with, I simply decided to write about all of them...a whole fleet of trains so to speak!
You'll have to excuse me now, I need to head to the dinning car for a midnight snack. Choo Choo!
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