Wherever The Tracks May Lead

"Shhh...mommy did you hear that...choo choo train!" "Yes baby I hear the choo choo train." "Mommy I here train...choo choo!" My two and a half year old is fixated on trains and loves 'Thomas the Train' so that had me thinking, I like trains too always have. I think it stems from when my older brother and I would help my aunt. I think I was about eight when she got a bloodhound puppy, which are known for their incredible ability to track, so she took it upon herself to teach him and that's where we helped. About every two weeks we'd go to this open field near a set of train tracks and we'd go hide and have him find us and each week it would be more difficult for him or so the idea goes, but anyway. I can still recall the first time a train came barreling through, I was a stone's throw away hiding in the overgrowth in the ditch, and more times than I can count that train would come upon us and blow the whistle going full throttle, and the engineer would throw us a wave and pull that whistle again as the ground shook beneath our feet. Love those memories but my point for this is that I'm thinking of doing a photobook-specifically the one Ali Edwards has designed through Shutterfly called "Celebrate the Everyday" but after looking through it, I'm stumped by a couple of the themes so I've had to do some digging. The one that's got me is 'daily travels' because I don't really want to put my job on there necessarily nor do I want to put in my daughter's day care, so I realized one day that I could use the train tracks because our daily travels really do take us over the train tracks and back again, and besides that would be away cooler picture.

So whether going to work or taking my daughter to day care at some point in my day I'm crossing railroad tracks, and this has me thinking - where do those tracks actually go and where have they already been? Even more profound; What tracks do I have ahead of me? Can I jump them if need be? Better yet; What kind of tracks am I leaving? Would they be worth following? How much of what I do now effects my daughter in the long run, am I laying down the best path for her? I have a good life, a beautiful daughter, a very onery husband who loves me, great family support on both sides; but there are tracks behind me that are better left undiscovered, how do I prevent those same routes from being taken again? Would there be any point to warning her of the dangers or is that just apart of growing up and becoming your own? These are the questions that come to mind now when I look at my photos, and it certainly gives me a new found respect for my mother, after all that my older brother and I put her through. Hopefully as time goes on I'll have come up with a clever answer to these questions but until then my approach was to do a mini album so as to remind me, at least, of how far I've come. It is also to document that one precious little story that had such an impact on life then and to make me reevaluate how I live my life now, how I am as a mother and a wife, to really look at how I live in my everyday. Maybe the tracks are laid with each step we take, one moment at a time, I says lets enjoy the moment and be happy in it. Below I have a few pics of the mini book I made, it is nothing fancy just me playing in that particular moment. Thanx for reading!