I hear a train a-coming...

My mother’s room in the retirement residence in which she finds herself is on the second floor at the back of the building. She overlooks the parking lot and sees a bit of the street behind on the south side. Just past this street there is a walking path where people jog, exercise their dogs and which is particularly delightful in the warm weather as it is completely tree covered and always in the shade. This is all that remains of a belt line that ran from one main street in the city to another, about three miles long, the sole purpose being to bring coal to fuel the main source of energy at the factory or mill at the other end. Because the line ran through a rather posh residential neighbourhood, the engineers were instructed not to blow their whistles when they came to level crossings lest they disrupt the serenity of their surroundings.

During my young years, I recall this train doing its thing. After all, my childhood home is only a 10-minute walk north of my mother’s present abode. When I was a teenager, though, the rails and ties were removed and all that was left was a cinder path that was used as a short cut by the locals. It wasn’t until several years later that the city put down a proper bedding and turned it into a pleasant bicycle/pedestrian path.

When my mother was growing up farther south in the city, there was a train she remembered hearing from her house. While her recent memories seem to play hide and seek, her early ones are still quite intact. She was telling me that every so often she could hear a train from her room, convinced it was the same train she had heard so often as a child. I knew this couldn’t be, but I also knew that the old belt line was just to the south of her building, and in my mind, I started to fantasize that she was hearing a ghost train go by. There was also the possibility that she was hearing the subway, but that was far enough away, and the traffic from the main street next to the home loud enough, that it was unlikely. So this ghost train remained a mystery for me until I spoke to my son last night.

I was feeling at loose ends after Hubby left yesterday. I took a bath, slept, played on the computer, and while I was eating my dinner, so I wouldn’t feel so alone, I called Buddy Boy and we had a long chat. We talked about his grandmother, since he goes to see her on a regular basis, and he told me that the heat comes on in her room from time to time and there is a fan that sends it out through a vent. He was in her room and the fan came on and she said, “Ah, do you hear that? That’s the train that goes by where I used to live.” Buddy Boy listened intently, but heard no train. Instead he heard the fan in the heating system. When he told me this, I felt we had solved a great mystery.

I called my mother today to chat. We talked about my children and I mentioned that Buddy Boy had told me about the heating fan and this was causing the train sound she was convinced she was hearing. I think she was a little disappointed when I gave this explanation, but the beauty of her condition is that she will forget what I told her today and go back to thinking she’s hearing a train. I, for my part, still prefer to think she’s hearing a ghost train running along the old belt line. It seems more fitting, somehow.

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