LITTLE BLUE ENGINE
“I adored the cheerful little blue engine, her kindness, her persistence.”
When I was growing up in Maryland, we didn’t have a large library—just a handful of well-loved books on our shelves: The Velveteen Rabbit, A Wrinkle in Time, eventually the entire Baby-Sitters Club series. The book I loved most—read to me by my mother as I sat in her comfortable corduroy lap, her minted breath soft on my cheek—was The Little Engine That Could.
I was enamored of the dolls in their straw bonnets, the sweets, the sweeping illustrations. I adored the cheerful little blue engine, her kindness, her persistence. How she huffed up the mountain and chugged triumphantly down as the sun rose, making her special delivery of goodies for the “good boys and girls,” the clowns and toys cheering her on.
When I was 19, I was away at school in North Carolina, playing college soccer and miserable. I was restless with a sport I’d played for more than half my life, and struggling with the transition from girlhood to adulthood and the disconcerting physical changes that went along with it.
I am going to fix myself, I thought. Stay the same size to stay the same me. So I played soccer. And ran extra miles. And hit the StairMaster. There were days when I ate just a small salad and apple slices for lunch. Then a two-hour practice. Rice with Russian dressing for dinner. Another workout. Maybe a few raisins. One full year spent trying to correct things I couldn’t control. I was a stick-thin, self-sabotaged mess. My preoccupation with changing every inch of myself broke me from my friends, my brain, my body. (I would wind up having amenorrhea for a year and a half.)
That summer at home, I softened into my mother’s comfort. She lay with me in bed at night, between my old Holly Hobbie sheets, rubbing my lower back, humming me to sleep like she had when I was little. She placed bright asters and zinnias on our kitchen table. Later in the summer, she made me manicotti and brought me fresh bagels in a brown bag. She assured me that I was loved as is.
In the fall, I returned to my same school, my same dorm room—but changed. I found freedom in playing on the field again. In October, halfway through soccer season, I opened my tiny college mailbox to a slip that read: PACKAGE. The mail clerk presented me with a manila envelope; inside was a new copy of my old favorite, The Little Engine That Could. I reread the story, and the inscription:
Natalie,
My Little Blue Engine
Love,
Mom
My mother died of a brain aneurysm when I was 25. She’s been gone for 20 years. I miss her in my cells. This beloved book is how she returns to me. How she speaks to me during difficult seasons, cheering me on from the sidelines of this life, coaching me from afar, reminding me what I need to hear: I think Ican, I think I can, I think I can…. I can feel her presence in the inscription and hear her voice narrating the train, speaking our story. It’s the same story I’ve been writing with my two young girls: Don’t be afraid. You can do it. We’ll help each other. I’m always here. Hold on. I love you.
—Natalie Serianni
Natalie Serianni is a Seattle-based writer, instructor and mother of two with writing at HuffPost, Insider, Motherwell, The Manifest-Station and elsewhere.
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