Prologue

Train

FB - guitar/childhood/family


 

01

I'm looking back, now, to a time that's becoming increasingly unclear as my existence continues. I'm looking back, calling it back, because I am, presently, where I've spent most of my life, counting the days behind me as past, and viewing the days ahead as future. But for those weeks when the country was waking up to the truth of what had been done to us, the days weren't like that at all. They were, instead, more like one long day, maybe, or perhaps like a time more angular than aligned, shaped, not flat, with points and dimensions that severed chronometry and its perception. It's hard for me to recall that time with the same mechanics with which I remember the whole rest of my life: one event stacked on top of the other like a pyramid, pointing towards something real, like the sky.

My name is Ruthie Grace Lahti and I was fifteen years old then. Thirteen years have passed. And even though the memories of that time - especially the first few months - have melded together into one big dream, the singular events are carved into me, my heart, my body, and my soul. There's a scar from my left tear duct that curves down to the bottom of my chin. That's just one of the obvious ones. There are more, inside. But everyone suffered. Not a single American escaped that.


I already had a ticket for the train and since I was only blocks from the station when the earthquake hit I headed there instead of going home. I'd just left my guitar lesson so I had my guitar with me and I think that fact is really what saved my life. I know I wouldn't have left without it and hesitating could have easily meant I'd been trapped in the city. 


The earthquake caused panic right away, but most in Franklin City only considered their immediate safety. Thoughts about the future didn't cross most people's minds. And, really, why would it? Natural disasters happened everywhere around the globe and all were random - at least that was the general thinking at the time. So most quickly found their way home, located their families, and waited for it all to pass. 

The train station was relatively calm. Sure, there were a few people pushing and shoving but not much more than a regular Friday afternoon. You have to remember that I'm telling this story many years later. So when I look back at that time my memory of the past is tainted by the knowledge of all that I came to understand later. My ticket was for the next day, Saturday, and when I requested a change it was quickly granted. It wasn't my first time to travel that route - my father had been commuting back and forth to Canada for several years, and I'd often taken the train, accompanied by Cecelia, the woman who had been my nanny for all those years. That day, though, was only my third time traveling alone. 


My father insisted on traveling by train instead of air. He was a Constitutional lawyer. And way before it all became clear that our country had long abandoned that document my father knew something ugly was brewing. And I knew too, by proxy, by being my father's daughter, but I also knew because he'd not only taught me how to read, he'd also taught me what to read. So when, in 2003, the Patriot Act was written into law by that President, my father staged his own personal revolt. Years before it happened he asserted that travel by airplane would be one of the first major steps towards not only stripping citizens of their rights, but would also be the first major realization that those very same people would meekly give those same rights up.


I boarded the train. It took five days to travel from Illinois to Washington state. My intention was to join my father in British Columbia. If it'd been three days, or four, my life would have been dramatically different. But as it happened everything changed in America on that fifth day and it changed quickly and dramatically. As a result, when I arrived at the border the world, too, had been transformed. The border was closed. 



I was aware, dozing on that train, of the shift, a barely discernable shift in my perception, and as it settled in I let it, feeling the dull gnawing in the place where I set it. It settled and I moved to accommodate it. Later, when the events of my living were altered, I was forced to recognize further the consequences of that moment's admission. I tried resisting. It never did work. Instead I dreamed of Canada at nighttime, dreamed of the train ride across the Prairie and through the mountains, and during the daytimes I kept one arm held close to my stomach where everything had settled, and, with the other, rubbed my thumb against my fingers.



02

My father gave me the guitar for my eleventh birthday on July 4th in 2001. I was going to school at the Friends Circle and he showed up during music class, guitar in tow. Of course everyone else knew of his plan and all morning I could feel the excitement mounting but I pretended it was just another day. 

Late morning and it was already hot outside. I was in my history class studying the American Revolution. We were discussing an idea that patriotism had been an idea of the elite imposed upon the working class in order to produce cannon fodder. It was an interesting subject and we were having fun with it but it made me sad since the band I'd started in April was called The Spirit of '76. So I was a little bummed. And I was also a little ticked off that here, on The Fourth of July - a holiday more patriotic than any other - such a subject had been raised. Plus it was my birthday. 


03

notes: ruthie's guitar comes from her "nani" her father's mother who got it from her father when she was eleven also. it was old then - got it from a pawn shop - research which gibson that would be...

so ruthie's nani is the "original" protest singer/songwriter. ruthie is named for her as well... 

It's not as though I wasn't prepared. I'd been given plenty of education and information. But when it happened it was so fast there were very few who knew what had happened. In Franklin City we believed it was an earthquake. And, actually, it was. But the earthquake was the result of something so much bigger.    

I got on the train the day only because I already had a ticket and my plans to meet my father were already in place. And when I boarded I truly believed I would see him soon, within the week or so it would take to get to Canada. And I was close. But ultimately ...