That Giddy Feeling

My Mama, Tia and my soul-sister cousin accompanied me to the train station. As excited as I was to board the train, my heart wanted to stay in New Mexico. But unlike other times, I knew I would return. I eagerly scanned the horizon for that tell-tale sign; not wanting to miss first sight of the train's headlamp. There is something about seeing a train's headlamp coming towards me that makes me feel all giddy inside. It's right up there with watching an eagle glide on the wind currents and the sun's setting rays on the lake and the smell of campfire on a Fall evening and and and... When I'm riding on the motorcycle and sweep around a curve on a lonely expanse of land and see that headlamp.... my breath catches. And before I know it my arm sweeps up in greeting to that fellow lover of the wide open lands. In acknowledgment he blows the train whistle connecting us in one magical moment as we fly past each other...each carried away in the whistle's dying echo. My spirit soars. That's how it is.

I watched as my Mama and Tia gathered in a flurry of activity. Looking up and down the tracks, huddling, laughing and looking again. I wondered if they felt the same as I. Could we have been train robbers in another life? Cowboys lying under the stars after a hard day's work? Or maybe they were in a hurry for me to leave? Could it be? But no, nothing like that. So what do you think these two elders of mine were up to?

They were putting PENNIES on the tracks.

"The pursuit of truth and beauty 

is a sphere of activity 

in which we are permitted

to remain children all our lives." Albert Einstein

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If you want to know, yes, my Mama came home with three flattened ones.

~ ~ ~

 "The great man is he who does not lose his childlike heart." Mencius