Different and not

 I did the usual round of pre-travel things today - running out to get a few last minute things (some granola bars and dried fruit to go in the little otherwise-useless backpack pocket, the pocket that I have now dubbed the "cookie pouch" - a friend of mine refers to her cat's "primordial pouch" as a "cookie pouch," and it amuses me enough that I wanted to apply it to something else).

And I realized, driving around town: yes, this feels very much like Mays past, the light is the same, the warm-but-not-quite-hot temperature is the same. It feels familiar, it is back in the old round of the year I once observed. Pretty much every May after graduation I would go up and visit my parents - and yes, both of them were alive the last May I went up there (in 2019).

(I am wondering if the reason I still am dealing with grief for my dad is that 2020 was such a strange, and interrupted, and isolated year. I had a dream a few nights ago where I had gone up there at it was not at all clear whether my dad was still alive or not and....yeah. I think I've just not processed it yet because a couple times I've said "when my dad died last year" and I had to stop and correct myself)

I've been watching the track-a-train map (even though it won't be at all relevant until tomorrow morning, and even then, won't be relevant until the train is through Dallas because it often gets bad delays in that San Antonio-Dallas leg. But it looks like the train I think is the through train from LA (#2) is decently on time, and the down train from Chicago, which I think gets "turned" and attached to some of the cars from LA, is on time)

And I'm thinking about it again - sitting there on my little made-up bed in the roomette, looking out at the dark world passing by. The peace of that, the realization that there are hundreds of people out there living their own lives apart from me. (There's even a nice word for that: sonder. And yes, I do take an odd peace from knowing there are lots of people out there I never met who are just going about their lives, some with lives like mine, some with lives very different). And with my books and my knitting, I can pass the time if I get bored looking at the scenery. 

Oh, it will be different: masks are still expected in the public areas, and that will be a reminder that we are still, really, in a pandemic. And the meals are different - apparently they are simpler, and with fewer choices (and people on the Amtrak board have complained of the quality, but I am reserving judgment, and really, I don't ride the train for the food anyway - I do have my granola bars and some dried apricots and some gummi bears if it's just too terrible, or I could go buy something in the cafe car; they used to have a cheese and cracker plate that was really quite good). But it will also be much the same as in the past. And of course, for me, the train is a way to get from Point A to Point B, and even if the food's not great, I'll be at my mom's soon enough. 

And I have my projects to work on, and books to read, and there will be things to do up there, even if we don't go out as much as we did in the before-times. And it will be quieter in her neighborhood where she lives than in mine, so I will probably sleep better. And I won't have to cook for myself - which has got to be a problem of late, because I am just so tired of it. 

I am still apprehensive about the likelihood of heavy rain for the drive down (and construction, especially on the bridge), but once I'm past that? I'm on vacation, at least as much of a vacation as I ever take