Back Home Again

I heard it said once, at a funeral, that one of the best blessings in the world is to have known someone who it is really hard to say goodbye to.  Well, by the same token, another grand blessing is to live in an area that you are excited to say “hello” to, a place you’re proud to call home!

Look!  A Dairy Queen sign (Texas Stop Sign)!

There’s that red, muddy Brazos River I love – so rain swollen!

Hello, Columbus, with your giant live oak trees proudly displaying the latest in Spanish Moss styles!

Howdy, Flatonia!

An A&M flag in that yard! Must be Aggies living there!

And all of those Texas-style farmhouses scattered everywhere, with their wrap-around porches and obligatory fenced pens holding decades of retired and rusting farm implements, tractors and appliances.  What is it about us Texans that makes us think we need to hold on to every lawn-mower we’ve ever owned?

Hello, Madame Houston, with your bustling traffic and your proud, majestic skyline!

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Rolling into southeast Texas this afternoon, it felt so good to see the familiar again.  But while it’s great to be home, our train odyssey has had a renewing, relaxing effect that I don’t want to lose!  As we slowly crept at train speed back into our well-known world, I sensed my mind and body start to be influenced again by those stressful things that I left behind six days ago.  I did my best to fight off those re-emerging anxieties, at least for a while!

I learned on this trip that train travel has a magical way of making you forget other things and to just focus on the present.  The author Anna Funder said it well:

“I like trains. I like their rhythm, and I like the freedom of being suspended between two places, all anxieties of purpose taken care of: for this moment I know where I am going.”

Let’s see….Tex-Mex tonight?