Heaven

Living on a Military installation in a foreign country is a lot different than living in a foreign country without support. For one thing I have American TV. The Armed Forces Network sends us most of the top rated American television shows. We don't always get them at the same time as they are seen in the US but we get a lot. Sometimes we get the shows a few days, weeks or months after they are aired in the US. We haven't gotten the second season of Desperate Housewives or Lost yet so don't spoil it for me.

The other day I was watching the Barbara Walter's special about Heaven. I was really excited to see it. Living and traveling to other countries has given me a great curiosity about other cultures and religions. I was a bit disappointed in the special, it was more like a music video than I would have liked, but it was interesting. But it reminded me of an adventure we had in Italy. During the beginning of the special they showed many of the songs written about Heaven, one was the song by Bob Dylan: Knock Knock, Knocking on Heaven's Door. I am hoping your are singing it in your head right now.

Back in 2001, we were on a train in Italy traveling to Firenze (Florence). I am taking some poetic licence here, I cannot specifically remember if this was a train ride to Florence, Bolongna, Venice or somewhere else, all the train rides are a bit blurred together for me. Angel if you read this your memory is better than mine.

We walked about a mile from my house to the train station in Pordenone. There were three families. Ours consisted of Jeff, Me and Mandy who was around 10 at the time. Our friends both families had children who were 3 and 5. The kids were all amazing for this very long adventure. So we walked to the train station at o'dark early. We rode the train from Pordenone to Venice. We then had to get off the train and use our traveling skills to figure out which track our next train would be on and get on it before it left. We had to do this while keeping track of all of the kids and bags. Luckily it was early in the morning and there weren't many people around. So we found the train and our seats on the train, we had all our kids and friends and bags. I really can't remember how many trains we had to get on to make it to Florence that day, or like I said this could have occurred on our way to Bolongna or Venice.

But, there we were in our assigned train car early one Saturday Morning. The only other people in the car with us was a Tibetan Monk in his scarlet robes, and his entourage of companions. Just like the Tibetan Monks on Barbara Walter's special. They were quietly sitting on their side of the train and we on ours. We were all dozing as getting up early and being on a moving train often puts me to sleep. A Pat (think Saturday Night Live Character androgynous man-woman person) came into the train car. He/She was noticeably drunk. He/She saw the Tibetan Monk and started singing Bob Dylan's Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door, very badly and very loudly. (This song was also portrayed on Barbara Walter's special.) They also spoke a bunch of Italian we couldn't understand and Pat left the car. All of us, the Tibetan Monk and his entourage along with all of us Americans we all laughed and laughed. We all wondered what he/she had been saying. Every once in awhile Pat would come back through the train car singing his song. I think he/she opened his/her wallet at one point to give the monk some money. For the rest of the day we all had that sound in our head, knocky.. knocky.. knocky. We would slur it just like Pat did. It was an incredibly long day, after getting up so early and riding the train for hours we walked miles and miles through the streets and museums of Florence with all those kids. Taking turns imitating our drunken Pat.

To this day my family will imitate Pat's singing for a laugh. So to me Barbara Walter's special was an ode to my train ride to Florence and a drunken Pat serenading a Tibetan Monk with Bob Dylan's song. Knockey, knockey, knockey.