Il treno a Cinque Terre, con Aidan!

Time: 1540 hours
Place: Train 526, near Alessandria, Italia
Why: en route a Cinque Terre!

Alas, we veterans of the Bay Area’s Caltrain system are in a familiar place today – taking a four hour train ride from Turin, bound for a weekend at the peaceful Cinque Terre, a little gem of the Italian Riviera, not yet ruined by development and tourism. I didn’t really feel the parallel to Caltrain until we were delayed in the station at Alessandria and repeated announcements were coming over the loudspeaker. Each time, the only words I caught were ‘bus’ and ‘1520’, so I thought we were waiting for a busload of people that was delayed, and that we expected to be on our way again at 3:20. Turns out, some of that was possibly right – more so, it seems the delay was due to an unhappy soul who…well, let’s just say this person wasn’t intending to get on the train. So, as one might imagine, there was much need for “municipal police”, and copious report writing, and wow, if I actually smoked, I could have worked my way through a good portion of a carton in the time we were stopped there….

But, I feel it gives me an opportunity to get on my soapbox. In life, I hear of individuals who are in such despair, and whether I’ve ever met them, or those I don’t know from Adam, it puts me into a despair of my own. Not of the sort that I too want to stand in front of a rapidly approaching train; no, it is more despair of the “oh what a terrible job we did communicating to that person 1) the value of human life, and 2) the value of their life” variety…and thus, I hope that if I am in any way connected to an individual who is feeling sadness like this today, maybe a few words of encouragement here can remind certain individuals of the mistake –and the tragedy – of matching temporary problems with permanent solutions.

Lest I seem to be wholly Scandinavian and prone to only talking about that which is depressing, I must highlight the antidote hanging out with Aidan provides. (For background, see the earlier post from June 17th.) It has been so fascinating to watch him grow up (he is the Big Five as of Tuesday), and form his world view… as he colored on the floor the other day, I got him some water and filled the glass too full (and if the glass is *too* full, that’s a – grand-optimist? extra-optimist?), such that I spilled a little as I was kneeling down. As I’m running to get a towel for mopping it up, Aidan is saying in his most comforting tone of voice, “it’s only water -- it’s fine -- it won’t hurt anything – it’s nothing to worry about…” and thus, I get a little reminder of yes, hey put things in perspective once in a while – there’s inconvenience and then there’s actually problems. Water on floor – inconvenience. Impetus to walk in front of train – problem.



In this particular instance, we are having cheese, which is most certainly not a problem -- until we run out of it.