Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
Today is the first day I stay home with our children alone.
Liz just left for work. She got me up from my too-short nap (I foolishly read the latest Harry Potter for an hour) at 6:30, and both babies went off as soon as she left the room to shower. So instead of drowsing for another half hour or so, it was fuss and feed and change from the get go.
The most either Hunter or Aden sleep at a time is about four hours. Our routine is for me to stay up for them from 10:00 in the evening until 4:00 in the morning so Liz can sleep enough to be coherent during the day. Then I sleep for a couple of hours, get back up, and care for them through the day, then sleep for another three hours after Liz gets home. With luck I'll be able to nap off and on during the day.
So until the twins actually can sleep in the night, I will be one sleep-deprived mofo.
Anyway, after her bottle and having her diaper changed, Hunter has settled right down, dozing in her boppie pillow. Aden on the other hand is wide awake and having none of this quiet-time shit. So he's strapped to my chest in a Baby Bjorn, which in general he thinks is the Best Thing Ever.
And just to do something, I start singing to him:
Nighttime on The City of New Orleans,
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee.
Half way home, we'll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea.
And all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain't heard the news.
The conductor sings his song again,
The passengers will please refrain
This train's got the disappearing railroad blues.
Way back in the early 80's I would occasionally take the train between Charleston WV and Baltimore where I was going to school. It was one of those old-style trains, with the ancient leather seats with an amazing amount of legroom. That train was called the Cardinal, apparently because the Cardinal is the state bird of most of the states the train ran through. As I recall it ran from Chicago to Boston, taking a leisurely, scenic loop in the process. Hence the stop in Charleston.
As far as I know it still does, but I wouldn't bet on it doing so for much longer. Which is a shame, because I would like to take my family back to West Virginia on that train some time. It was a beautiful way to travel.
But now I have a son and he's curled on my chest, and I am singing to him about trains, and I'm remembering being young in a time that was already really past the time of trains, but riding a comfortable old dinosaur into a future I would have no presentiment of whatsoever, and thinking how lucky I was, have been and am.
And I started crying for the first time since they were born.
Life is good.
Good night, America, how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
I'm the train they call The City of New Orleans,
I'll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done.
