When The Train Comes In The Morning

Sunny Pleasures

Lil’ Boy. That’s what his mother called him, growing up, and what she and his friends continue to call him now that he’s a grown man. I like tagging along with Lil’ Boy on his Saturday morning walks.

Shall we go? I ask eagerly.

O, sige, Lil’ Boy says, yawning.

It is a dazzling sun-drenched day, with little cottony clouds. The sampalok trees are flooded with wondrous light. I feel buoyant excitement as we cross the alley toward Aling Sisang’s store, then stroll straight away in a weekly self-replicating stretch up the wooden bridge to Geronimo Street.

We climb up a small hill from where we can see the serpentine head of the railway tunnel. With one knee drawn up to my chin, and the other leg dangling over the side of the largish rock on which I have chosen to perch, I look over the housetops, the flapping wash on clotheslines. Lil' Boy and I sit motionless for a long moment, as though we've been suddenly bronzed. Wherever we look, there is something beautiful to engage our eyes.

Then I hear the familiar sound of creaking and jerking. 

Lil’ Boy, train’s coming! I squeal in delight.

The train comes in very slowly, as though aware of its own charisma – a faraway circle of light moving in, growing bigger, pulsing a little in the dark air of the tunnel, and then behind it a lumbering line of coaches, big, gray, dusty, and hooked together like elephants in the circus.

Lil’ Boy perks up. 

He begins his recitation of an often-told story about how his father followed the railroad track and walked from his northern provincial hometown all the way to the capital city of the island. 

Biding his time, he tells the story from the beginning. He doesn't rush the proceedings along. He chants a psalm of pride, passion for adventure, gratitude for roads taken, and despair for those not traveled.

You only need to follow the path, as your heart tells you to, he says, arching a knowing brow at me. He makes it seem like there is no one else in the world, the way he is talking to me.

But you can get lost! I say, bewildered.

He gives a short nod of understanding, but continues on thoughtfully. The tracks will lead you. He seems to know a lot of things before I can even think of them.

Oh, Lil’ Boy! I say breezily. You always say that.

Suppressing a smile, he hoists me up from my perch before I can say anything more, Let’s walk back home.

I never admitted it, but I've always thought about Lil’ Boy’s words. That counsel has become part of me, while life, the changing view, streams by.

Maybe someday I’ll concede with an approving glimmer from under my brows that the admonition has sometimes stirred me to thrilling destinations; that it has inspired me to detour down another trail far more arduous, but nonetheless a thousand times more interesting.

Someday, perhaps on an auspicious day like Father’s Day, I’ll tell him, Dadee, what you said about the tracks, it’s true.