By telling us your country of residence we are able to provide you with the most relevant travel insurance information.
Please note that not all content is translated or available to residents of all countries. Contact us for full details.
Shares
Today was a day of blessed freedom from pretending everything is okay. A day free of steeled hearts and censored words. A commute south, a hopeful chance that openess will meet with blessed reward. Trains are carriages of stories for travelling to old places for new memories. Yesterday I met a child who taught me to empty myself. Today, I repeat this commute with new eyes: wider, wetter and more willing to see. Have you ever seen the face of a child who longs to live as free as an adult? It is the face forgotten in the hearts during repeated commutes, customers and repeated conversations. The unburdened, wide eyed pirate child imagines the Tall Ships that race across the oceans, the bears trudging silently seeking salmon in the river and lights above in the night skies to the north. These are all things that the unburdened child will someday see. There is no doubt. It will be. I met them in a hospital. Eleven years old with adventure tattooed across their heart. They stared in the mirror and looked intently at the face staring back as if time has been lost, as if life had passed over it and it had no where to go. She washed her hands without looking away and let the water run over them a little longer just to feel the water: still staring intently with a question on her mind. "When did I decide not to leave?" she asked carelessly. I looked back from the mirror and answered, "First it was when you thought you were too poor, then, too committed and then, too old" Her wide eyes grew wet and I felt her throat ache as she said, "Why not go now?" Those pirate eyes never changed, but they belong to the face of a woman now grown, lost in the mirror. "I have to go to back to work" I said as I wiped my tears on my sleeve and remembered a lost dream. But as I turned away, I looked back one more time and promised, "I will not forget you my pirate eyed girl. We shall sail on sea first." I sit on the train on that same commute today with my pirate eyes. It is not okay to have never gone. My heart isn't pretending that it's alright. My heart is not steeled; my words uncensored. I travel on the same train, to an old place for new memories, connecting to the part of me that truly matters: the girl with adventure tattooed across her heart. I belong to her.