Railroad Tracks

I have been planning your first visit for almost two years.  Wanting my friends to meet you, to make you an honorary Steelers fan (of course), to show off our inclines that weren’t ripped out the way Cincinnati’s were, which happened before I was old enough to remember anything, maybe the mid-fifties.  I couldn’t wait to show you the historic landmark house where my great grandparents raised my grandmother, during the quiet years after Great Grandpa Joslin hung up his Oregon Trail spurs and took a job with the railroad.  My grandmother married an ENT surgeon and moved to Cincinnati, where my mother met you and I was born, the second of four.  It may have started there, but it will end here, where I will live my days and years quietly, partially submerged in the woods surrounding the house; and I will always stop and listen to the trains, as they chug and grind along the tracks that follow the river.  They bellow their sustained chords all night long, which causes some Sewickley suburbanites, rumpled and grumpy, to awaken and reach for their phones to complain, but the melodies only make me stir, conscious enough to wonder how I managed to wander home; so I drift back to sleep, smiling and soothed to remember.

A Bit About Me:  I am a Cincinnati native who settled in Pittsburgh after many restless changes of venue; and I recently entertained my father on the weekend of my graduation from the University of Pittsburgh with honors, which snagged me a BA in English Writing, along with parties, dinners, cards and presents, and lots of time spent "steelerizing" my father.

Comments

[Catherine]

Your writing draws me in and flows easily, I will be back!