Derailed

You should have seen my to-do list this morning. It was epic. It rhymed in spots and it was a monument to ambition. But then there was this house...

I know, you're tired of it. I'm tired of it. Derailed. Drop everything, jump and run, feed the Hooligan a hot dog in the car. He gets to sit and eat a giant hot dog and read Calvin and Hobbes instead of cleaning up his junk. Best day ever for him. That's OK, though. It's all OK.

It has to be.

I suppose that I could whine and complain a bit. Wah. Things didn't go as I'd planned today. Wah. I have the luxury of a flexible schedule. Wah. My husband wants to buy me a house. Wah.

Seriously. Starving kids. Not just in Africa, in my city. I'll keep my guffing on the down low.

So, my Love Train got derailed. There were checks to write and paperwork to gather and cuticles to bite and Hooligans to feed and one thing led to another and I was just now standing in my kitchen making Muddy Buddies feeling like perhaps there was something else I should be doing. Is there really ever anything better to do than make Muddy Buddies? I think not. Not in the grand scheme of things.

But then this song popped into my head:

And I was transported to Michigan Avenue in Chicago about ten years ago. We'd gone on a weekender with some dear friends of ours and we were, of course, shopping. This song burst out of one of the store fronts and Alain started it.

I know it was him because it was so surprising.

He was usually so proper and French and intellectual and he suddenly clapped his hands, raised them over his head and started to dance down Michigan Avenue... people all over the world... and then Edward scooped me up and we followed ... join hands... arms aloft, beckoning the Chief Lou, who executed just about the finest Water Sprinkler you've ever seen on a Saturday afternoon... start a Love Train.

We danced in our motley parade of four amid tourists, amid shoppers, amid families.
Just a few steps of exuberance down the street. Love train.

Thirty seconds on a sunny afternoon amid a weekend away with friends, amid the chaos of a time full of stress at work and school, amid a whole lifetime of memories.
Thirty seconds of pure abandon that will likely stick with me forever.

We all moved on from there. We finished our shopping, we went back home.
They moved to California and eventually split up.
We moved on to law school and children and on and on.

All of us are always moving on. That's the nature of things, isn't it?
I could whine and complain about that, too, I suppose.
But the idea of standing in my home, getting ready to move on again, making Muddy Buddies and suddenly feeling that train again.
This idea sustains me sometimes.

The idea that these golden moments come and go, like the flash of sunlight on a river.
The river keeps moving, but it carries the sunlight with it. I don't want to be a stick in the mud of this river. So I'll move with the currents, see where it takes me, bask in the sunlight when it comes.
 I'll get swept into a brief dance and then go back to work.
It's all part of the same thing.

This is my Love Train.
This moving, this chugging forward.
 The dancing, the holding hands.
The dropping everything and running.
The hot dog in the car and the Calvin and Hobbes.
The making of Muddy Buddies and the signing of large checks.
The memories and the future.

Let it ride, let it ride, let it ride, let it ride.