Passages
“Life is a long walk forward through the crowded cars of a passenger train, the bright world racing past beyond the windows, people on either side of the aisle. Strangers whose stories we never learn, dear friends whose names we long remember, and passing acquaintances whose names and faces we take in like a breath and soon breathe away.
“There is a windy perilous passage between each car and the next, and we steady ourselves and push across the iron couplers clenched beneath our feet. Because we are fearful and unsteady crossing through wind and noise, we keenly feel the train rock under our legs. . . .
“So many cars, so many passages. For you there may be the dangerous passage of puberty, the wind hot and wild in your hair, followed by marriage, during which for a while you walk lightly under an infinite blue sky, then the rushing warm air of the birth of your first child, and then, so soon it seems, a door slams shut behind you, and you find yourself out in the cold where you learn that the first of your parents has died.
“But the next car is warm and bright, and you take a deep breath and unbutton your coat and wipe your glasses. People on either side, so generous with their friendship, turn up their faces to you, and you warm your hands in theirs. Some of them stand and grip your shoulders in their strong fingers, and you gladly accept their embraces . . . . How young you feel in their arms.
“And so it goes, car after car, passage to passage, as you make your way forward. . . . So much of the world, colorful as flying leaves, clatters past beyond the windows while you try to be attentive to those you move among, maybe stopping to help someone up from their seat, maybe pausing to tell a stranger about something you saw in one of the cars through which you passed, was it just yesterday or the day before? Could it have been a week ago, a month ago, perhaps a year?
“The locomotive is up ahead somewhere, and you hope to have a minute’s talk with the engineer, just a minute to ask a few questions of him. You’re pretty sure he’ll be wearing his striped cap and have his red bandana around his neck, badges of his authority, and he’ll have has elbow crooked on the sill of the open window. . . . He knows just where the tracks will take us as they narrow and narrow and narrow ahead to the point where they seem to join.
“But there are still so many cars ahead, the next and the next and the next . . .and we close a door against the wind and find a new year, a club car brightly lit, fresh flowers in vases on the tables, green meadows beyond the windows, and lots of people who, together—stranger, acquaintance, and friend – turn toward you and, smiling broadly, lift their glasses.”
Ted Kooser, Local Wonders Seasons in the Bohemian Alps*
On the one hand, this year has had fewer monumental events for our family than some. The passages have been subtler and richer. The older we grow, the more the quiet changes seem to be the ones worth watching and noting.
Amanda began her second year teaching first grade at Sunnyside Elementary School in Great Falls. With great joy, we watched her leave all that first year’s trauma and frustration behind and begin the school year this fall with good humor and confidence and wisdom. We count on her well-told anecdotes about hygiene, kid candor, and teacher-worship to keep us in stitches.
We’ve gotten to follow Memo (our 20 month old grandson Guillermo) as he morphs from baby into a steady-walking, wide-eyed kid who misses no chances for adventure and no opportunities to mimic what we’ve just done. He only had to watch his dad split wood once before he toddled over to the chopping block with hammer and a piece of kindling to execute the same maneuver.
Memo’s parents, Emily and Sergio, are taking root in Missoula. After a summer of waiting and negotiating and worrying, they moved into their “own” home. They are, by spells, exhilarated, exhausted, delighted, and shocked by this passage into the American dream.
At work, Dave concentrates on the gestation of a new Montana history textbook. He’s committed to getting a new book published–one that’s worthy of Montana’s complex past. But the process of shepherding writers and advisors and kibitzers and of orchestrating committee meetings and contracts has kept him—umm—preoccupied. In February, Dave’s heart needed a new stent and in the summer it had to be shocked back into normal rhythm. Still, in most ways, as you can picture, Dave didn’t miss a beat.
I’m finishing my third year of working with small town high school teachers and students involved in community research–part of the Montana Heritage Project. And I never cease being inspired by the desperately long hours, hard work, creativity, and caring that our teachers invest in young people. I never quit being humbled and dazzled by those same young people—who fall in love with research and then write and speak eloquently about their communities.
Passages
- We are struck by how often we allow other voices to fit us into a stereotype that we don’t feel. Of course, our knees lock up when we drive for four hours—but we still see a lot of train cars ahead of us—work we love to do, people with whom we want to visit, books we can’t wait to read, games we love to watch, golden light to drink in, causes to aid!
- We are struck by how quickly the world is changing—how chaotic and at risk it is—across the globe, nationally, within the small confines of the Montana Historical Society. There are so many people for whom the train ride is an unendurable hell. We try to keep them in our hearts.
- We end this year again, grateful beyond words, for the great company of your friendship in our travels through life. We treasure the opportunity to stay in touch. We hope, especially, that this season and the coming year find you in a warm bright space with a lovely landscape shining through the windows. We raise our glasses to you and say, as Memo would, “Chugga Chugga Choo Choo!”
December 21
Perfectly still this solstice morning, in bone-cracking cold. Nothing moving, or so one might think, but as I walk the road, the wind held in the heart of every tree flows to the end of each twig and forms a bud.
Ted Kooser, Winter Morning Walks
- Ted Kooser is currently Poet Laureate of the United States. He recommended himself to our attention as an Iowa/Nebraska writer who earned a livelihood for his family as an insurance executive. He’s now retired from that business and living in southeastern Nebraska—where he would really rather settle in. But he accepted the Poet Laureate’s job with all its travel because he believes that poetry and literature should sing to all of us.
