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Dreams of Going

By Barbara Stahura
www.clariticom.com

The Author and Robert Yehling enjoy time at the SSA Conference.

On cool summer mornings, curled under a cotton sheet and a pink chenille bedspread, I often awoke gradually, rather than to Mom’s quiet call of “It’s time to get up, sleepyhead.” Before my eyes opened, my mind would slowly come alert, wordlessly aware that the confusion of the day had not yet begun. As I rested in the gentle darkness of closed eyelids, my ears would accept the familiar sounds flowing through the screened window next to me. Two in particular spin threads of comfort even now, decades later. They inspired a longing I could not then articulate, although I believe I have now deciphered their code.

I’m not sure why, among all the waking-up sounds, I searched for just these two, as if I were listening to a symphony and awaiting only the most delicate thrum of the violins. My two “best sounds,” typically scorned as so much noise, were the hum of the nearby highway and the whistles of the many trains that rumbled through Hammond.

At this hour of the day, all the sounds I heard through the open window were muted. Perhaps it was my delicious sense of coziness that softened them; more likely, it was the cool, damp air of those early summer mornings. I would hear the rustle of the tall lilac bushes that bloomed sweetly and extravagantly on the boundary between our backyard and the Millers’. I would hear the breeze-brush of the leaves on the four maple trees Daddy had planted, one in each corner of the yard, and the gentle cacophony of songbirds mingled with the harsh barking of neighborhood dogs. Sometimes black and yellow bees buzzed as they bumbled against the screen. But my ears passed over these sounds of nature. As a very shy, timid girl frequently confused by living in a world I often could not understand, I was greedy for the two sounds that somehow came to both anchor me and inspire deliverance.

The first came from the highway. A steady, gentle hum rose from the thousands of vehicles that traveled it each day. The two miles between this main artery into Chicago and our house on Maplewood Avenue blanketed honking horns, screeching tires, and the gear rumbles of behemoth trucks. The early morning breeze carried only the peaceful drone of movement and travel, of life on its daily course. The people whose vehicles orchestrated this sound were going to work, to school, to visit friends. Somehow I sensed they were never confused — how could they navigate this busy highway if they were? They were confident of their purpose. They knew which direction to take, how to be in the world. At the time, I didn’t know I could be other than how I was, but I wanted to be like them.

This traffic hum was faint, yet there it was, every day, even weekends, and I came to count on its presence. Early morning was the only time I ever heard it. Once I got out of bed or said even a word, the spell was broken: It never appeared again all day. So I held still, hardly breathing, ears alert.

Then there was my other sound.

In those days, dozens of trains passed through Hammond on their way to steel mills, factories, and Chicago. Sometimes literally a mile long, these trains hauled everything from milk to Fords. They would block traffic all over town, at any time of day, stopping and reversing, then slowly moving forward again, while anxious drivers honked their horns and muttered or cursed.

But on those cool, lazy mornings, before the pollution haze settled on the sky and abrupt daytime noises took over, I never thought of those rude trains. All I knew were their whistles far away, muted by the dewy air. Like the highway sounds, these disembodied wails also represented life’s movement, in which I, still a little girl, could not yet actively participate. But their distant sighs inspired the fantasy that I, too, could travel to another city and become someone new: a confident girl who was neither painfully shy nor too smart, who was not the ugly duckling belonging nowhere, nor the one who tried too hard to be good, and who read about life instead of living it, because inside a book she was safe.

Now I am a grown woman, much more confident and outgoing, with only a lingering shyness. I have traveled highways and ridden trains, in truth and in imagination, to become the person I am. I am still smart, and glad of it. I still try to be good, but not so hard and not because parents and nuns tell me I have to. I still feel safe within the pages of a book and am even trying to write my own. Sometimes I wake early in my grown-up bed, windows open around it, and hear the distant vehicular hum and slow train whistles of my new city. It is then I remember that little girl under the window, safe in her bed and still fuzzy with sleep, listening to sounds and dreaming of going, even though she didn’t know she dreamt of that.

(Barbara Stahura is an essayist, poet and magazine journalist based in Tucson, Arizona. She is a regular contributor to WordJourneys.com.)