Walk on the tracks in the rain

I went down to the railroad tracks today.  It was raining quite hard and the sky was the color of dirty cement. I wanted to be quite young again, with much stronger legs that could run for hours on the railroad tracks, but arthritis has taken it's toll and I was forced to walk along the oily, rain slick ties, staring down the twin ribbons into a hazy distance where only a few gulls were visible. They, atleast, seemed to be happy enough, dancing back and forth over the rocky embankments, tossing cheerful screams back and forth and playing a game of tag with the wind and the too wet rain.

What made me want to be out in this sort of weather. There was a half read book, a crock pot full of spicy tea and a good jazz show on the radio at home and I could have been stretched out, after a hot Epsom salts bath, in my sweats on the rug losing myself in a story. But, something in my foggy memories kept painfully sticking me saying to go and like some mindless zombie I complied.

I rode my bike down the back roads to avoid the traffic and their tendency to splash water over anyone foolish enough to be riding along side them in the rain. I made it only damp from the sloppy slurry of road water cascading up onto my jeans. My rain coat, holy and old as it was, kept the stuff off my body efficiently enough and I locked my bike to a rusting lamp pole by the railroad bridge before I climbed the embankment and set out. There was a song playing over and over in my head, from years before about how two people and a dog named Blue traveled and lived off the land. But, I didn't feel like a free man. Instead, I felt like an intruder, in a world young people were meant to enjoy, wishing I was one of them again. Visions of my black Labrador retriever running along with me as I bounced from board to board only made me feel more depressed.   Like my youth, my wonderful running partner had slipped away and was nothing more than a box of ashes on a shelf in my apartment. In my mind I could still see the happy, dark eyes, the waving tail and hear the sharp report of a bark by the river asking if it was alright for her to take a swim. And, I smiled in spite of myself at the memory.

The tracks went on forever, but this  day, I could not bring myself to follow them as I might have years ago. Instead, I wandered along, picking mullein until I'd filled a bag full and told myself that was what I really came here for. I took the mullein back home, washed it and let it dry all afternoon in my oven, while I cleaned house and waited as my bread dough rose (I'm really into cinnamon, spice raisin bread lately).  Finally, when the tea was sufficiently dried, I cranked the oven up and rounded the dough into loaves. I congratulated myself on being so self sufficient and collecting my own herbal tea, though inside it felt like a lye.

In truth, I know I went back to the railroad tracks as I had gone so often when I was a kid, because I wanted to be a kid again. It wasn't a selfish thing. I wanted to be that sort of young, carefree teenage youth I had once been because that would have meant my dad was the man he had been then, always on the go and always creating something, building something, doing something and I could be with him again. And, mom would be inside making the bread roles as I remembered them on rainy days long ago. Mom, with stew cooking in the deep well cooker on her old Westinghouse, ivory white stove with silver chrome. And everything would be good with years of family life to be lived.  But just that day I'd learned that dad was in the hospital with a collapsed lung, due to years of smoking and tuberculosis from when he was a kid. And, mom was in another hospital after suffering a heart attack. And, my sister who was going out of her mind had been fighting so hard to keep it all in while we visited at the hospital.  And, suddenly I had to go somewhere by myself.

So, I went back to the railroad where I'd wandered as a kid and tried to feel normal again. But, when the whole foundation of your life is suddenly pulled apart, can that  be possible?  I don't know, never having passed this way before. How does one lose their parents and stay sane? 

The railroad tracks, even in the rain, seemed the only place I could go to forget for a while. And, now, as the bread baking fills the air with it's lovely scent and the I savor the first sips of mullein tea with lemon grass and honey I try to tell myself things are good.  I used to feel so optimistic.

 But, dammit all why?