We have just set off on the train to Qingdao. It began with an early morning wake up and Don making French toast and bacon for the crew while we scrambled to get everything ready. Actually, there was no scrambling: Emily and her friend Clara were meticulously organized and I got everything sorted the night before in spite of having shared three pitchers of margaritas with some of my dearest friends on the first Monday of our summer vacation. Such decadence and delight!
Charlotte, our oldest daughter, woke Don up in the middle of the night, complaining of a sore throat and fever. She isn’t accompanying us on this trip because she has one more week of school to work on her extended essay for her Diploma Program. I guess that plan is out the window: at least for today. So…there is some guilt about leaving here behind in Beijing, though I think, in spite of not feeling well, she’s happy to have the house to herself. One more year and she’ll be on her own so it’s a good thing to leave her for a night or two every once in a while. She’s got Kim and Kyle downstairs and Zhang to check in on her.
The seats are so narrow that my right arm is draped over the middle armrest and my elbow is practically jabbing Don’s belly as I write. He’s already sleeping as the train whooshes out of the city and into the Chinese countryside. This position is not exactly conducive to writing that flows. My shoulders are hunched and the drop-down table is too far away from the seat to be of any use when typing.
Clara and Emily are sitting in front of us and they have no window! What is the point of train travel without a window? I felt guilty telling them they needed to sit in the stark seats since we were the ones who paid for the ticket and they were the ones much more likely to be using technology. Even so, I’d like for teenage girls to be looking contemplatively out of a window rather than fixating on a screen. Maybe we will trade halfway through the ride, though then I’d feel resentful if they eschew gazing for gaming.
This is my third day of writing for two hours and I look forward to it and feel present and alive as I do it. I know that much of the journaling part may not be shared with anyone, but I suspect there will be some gems. That’s a part of the writing process that I love – going back and finding the part of the ore that is streaked with something valuable and then mining it and turning it into something akin to a gem.
Yesterday my friend Kyle asked me, as we were walking home from our Monday margarita session, if it made a difference to my creativity if I wrote on the computer or in the old-fashioned way with pen to paper. I have dozens of writer’s notebooks that are waiting to be mined, but I am glad I switched to the computer some years ago. I used to think it made a profound difference and I wanted to write all of my first drafts on paper, but I’ve discovered that it doesn’t. Practicality and speed and efficiency aside, my heart and brain coalesce into my fingers and what needs or wants saying is equivalently accomplished on the computer keys.
From this vantage point on the train, I can see the bathroom sliding open and closed and possibly will smell it soon, too. The dining car is just in front of us and cup noodles and tea and some kind of gristly meat and rice are on offer.
I remember how I used to so look forward to going to the dining car for each meal when we traveled across Canada a few times in the summers of my youth. I can recall the pungent smell – the mélange of meatiness and odiferous vegetables and prepackaged sauces all prepared in close quarters. It was compelling and abhorrent at the same time. Even at breakfast, when just cereal and toast were on order, the aroma lingered, like damp socks on a wet balcony.
We’d have to sign up for our family dining times and order all our meals the days before, ticking our preferences off on a tiny paper with a stubby pencil that reminded me of playing Yahtzee. Though the food was closer to hospital-grade, the joy of watching the sunset across wheatfields or whisking through small, siloed towns, through tunneled mountain passes, or over shaky metal bridges spanning raging rivers as we ate was invigorating. During the slow times of the day, we would often go to the dining car to play cards, Rook or Uno as I recall.
And the reading I would do! Book after book! I wonder if I ever ran out of material or how my parents kept up with my voracious reading. I suspect I read my father’s Louis L’amour and my mother’s Maeve Binchy when I was done with my own clutch of books. I vividly remember reading Valley of the Dolls, a book about fashion models addicted to barbiturates. Though my father never censored my reading as a youngster, I believe he suggested this one was a bit beyond my years. I begged to differ, already carried away by the sensuous sex scenes I had yet to read about other than the milder longings of teenage girls in Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret, a classic coming-of-age novel hidden under many a pillow of girls from my generation.
Back in those days, our vacation bags must have been stuffed with books. Now it’s Kindle all the way for me, mostly reading off my phone app. I have at least thirty books to choose from at any given time, and all the room in the world for extra sundresses and shoes. In the same way I can now easily type my deepest thoughts on a device, I can also read to my heart’s delight with absolutely no qualms about not hearing the crinkle of the pages or smelling the mildew that permeated my secondhand treasures.
It’s difficult for me to pack lightly, even for this two day foray to the coast of China. In addition to a several changes of clothing, I have two scarves to change up my look, an assortment of jewelry to mix up my look, a sunhat and a baseball cap and a jean jacket. My vanity makes compact packing a challenge so I’m grateful my books nestle in my phone – a treasure trove that fits in my pocket
Writing and reading and intermittently gazing out the window as verdant landscapes punctuated by industrial cities hurtle by: I can’t imagine a better way to spend my time on the train.