Re-Training My Brain

I am writing this column from Amtrak’s Coast Starlight in southern Washington as we cross the Columbia River heading to Portland, Oregon. The train will carry us all the way to Simi Valley from its point of origin in Seattle.

Hubby and I are on the final leg of the trip of a lifetime up to Alaska for some whale watching and cruising Glacier Bay.

Most people would have flown to and from Seattle but we took the train instead. We had never been on an overnight train before and wanted to see what it was like.

Plus, we both try to avoid flying because of the way passengers are treated like brain-dead cattle by the major airlines. After an unfortunate incident in 2000 where American Airlines kept our plane sitting on the tarmac at O’Hare for nine and half hours for no apparent reason, without food, water or functional bathrooms, or even an apology, we decided to spend our money elsewhere.

But for me, there was a deeper reason to take a train trip. I used to love riding the train as a kid. I lived out in the suburbs of Chicago and, on special occasions, my mother would take me and my brothers into the city to meet my father after work for dinner and a movie.

We would get all dressed up and go to my favorite restaurant, Shangri-La, and then see a new blockbuster at one of those old movie palaces, like the Chicago Theater. The bad thing about the train was the smoking car. Yes, my mother was a smoker so that was where we sat. Smoker cars have long since been eliminated.

In September 2008, my feelings about commuter trains, actually all trains, changed from delight to horror.

No, I was absolutely not in the crash nor was anyone close to me. But as a reporter, I was sent out to help the massive team report on the sickening and completely negligent head-on massacre of commuters arriving home at the end of another week.

I was so lucky that I didn’t even have to go to the scene of the wreck, having been assigned, instead, to talking to people at the Moorpark train station.

If I had viewed the mangled and burning mess of metal and people, I most certainly could never again have boarded a train. I know, some of the people who survived the crash got right back on board Metrolink when they returned to work.

I am not one of those people who can compartmentalize such things in order to function. I take it all in and my brain takes over from there.

Even at arm’s length, when the crash happened, I was completely emotionally undone. I did a lousy job as a reporter, afraid to approach family members who were becoming more panicked as the minutes ticked by, with only very bad news leaking from the scene to the station.

Their private terror and sorrow was sacrosanct to me as a human being and my job as a reporter was just not a good enough reason to act like a brut. I have never again worked as a reporter on a breaking news tragedy close to home and I never will. I was deeply damaged by the experience. I cried for two weeks and still cry sometimes.

I needed to get on a real train and conquer my fears. That challenge now has been accomplished.

I was fundamentally changed by the Metrolink crash. I learned that I am not the tough reporter I believed I was but I think I am now a more compassionate and thoughtful writer. It taught me so much about my limits and my strengths.

Four days and two nights on board Amtrak can give you the time to reflect.