Train Brain

The trains rumble awfully close to my parents' house in small-town Texas.  This photo was taken in their yard; that's their fence in the foreground.  Because there is an intersection right outside of the picture, the trains are loud, blasting their diesel horns day and night at the railroad crossing.   Not only that, but the curve means the metal wheels continually shriek their friction as they pass around the bend in metal tracks.

I didn't grow up in this house, but I still remember the first time I slept here, long after I had established my own home.  I woke up disoriented in the middle of the night.  The train whistle, six inches from my ear and bearing down, screamed that I was lying prone on the railroad tracks, just about to be decapitated.  I woke up in a panic, my heart racing, until I realized I was sitting up in the dark, safe in my soft bed, with the train passing outside and rattling my bedroom window glass.   

The trains are still just as loud here, but I never hear them at night.  It is amazing how a brain adapts. I asked my kids if any trains passed last night ; they said yes, but I slept right through.  A train whistle this loud at home would be an emergency.  But, even though I'm only here a few nights each year, my brain has figured out that it is OK, and it doesn't wake me.

Our brains are definitely fearfully and wonderfully made.