Chasing Ghosts in the In-Between

Community Threads - Where Stories Connect Us | Editorial  

February 2026 Edition

This weekend in Louisiana, the streets will be loud.

Beads will fly. Music will roll through neighborhoods. Families will gather under tents and along parade routes. Mardi Gras is a season of spectacle — color, movement, celebration, excess.

But this month’s Community Threads looks different.

Instead of chasing parades, I chased a memory.

Instead of standing curbside, I stood on an old railway bridge.

Sometimes the thread we need to pull is not the loudest one — it’s the quiet one that formed us.

The Road Back

Recently, I drove 45 minutes out to the country where I lived from ages nine to thirteen.

Thirty-five years have passed.

The houses felt smaller.

The silence felt larger.

The air felt familiar.

I wasn’t entirely sure why I was going. But something in me was reaching backward.

Anthropologists describe liminal space as the in-between stage — when one identity has dissolved but the next has not yet fully formed. Research on autobiographical memory shows that during transition, we instinctively revisit formative experiences to reconstruct coherence and direction.

I am in a liminal season now.

Not broken.

Not lost.

But reconsidering.

And so I drove back.

The Tracks

One memory had been tugging at me.

My cousins and I walking the railroad tracks in the middle of summer.

My mother kept her nieces and nephews often. Summers were loud and crowded and full. We roamed freely — bikes, four-wheelers, horses, dirt roads. No adult supervision. No digital distraction. Just six or more kids riding miles into a tiny country store to drink a Coke, eat a pickle, and talk to whoever happened to be at Mr. Valdry’s store.

One day, a train came upon us faster than we expected.

I was the last one on the bridge.

The rails vibrated beneath my feet. The metal hummed. My cousins were already across, screaming for me to run.

Run faster.

Come on.

You can make it.

The train was hot on my heels.

At the last second, I jumped from the side of the bridge into the riprap of rocks and coal below. I rolled down the embankment covered in dust and grit.

But I made it.

And they were waiting for me.

Encouraging me toward them.

That memory stayed — not because of danger, but because of the chorus.

The Freedom — and the Isolation

Country life held beauty.

Horses. Dirt roads. Open sky. Miles of sugarcane fields, bicycles and late sunsets.

But it held isolation too.

Twenty minutes to the closest grocery store with milk and eggs. Snakes coiled in tall grass. Using the woods when there was no bathroom. Silence so thick you could feel it press against you.

As I walked those tracks again this past week, my body reminded me I am not nine anymore.

Cancer leaves its own marks. There are injuries now. Limitations. Hesitations.

But I climbed down the side of the tracks down under the bridge anyway.

I bent. I squatted. I picked up a loose railroad nail and turned it in my hands.

It felt brave — not because I outran a train, but because I stepped back into a place that once held both freedom and fear.

Lacunae

A lacuna is a gap — an absence in a manuscript where something once existed.

Families have them.

Communities have them.

Lives have them.

Recently, my aunt came close to death. The family gathered.

And I wondered — why does it take a near loss to bring us together?

Why do we wait for the vibration in the rails before we run toward one another?

Research on belonging consistently shows that communal identity forms the foundation of resilience. What felt like simple childhood roaming was something deeper. We were being formed in relationship.

We were running toward each other long before we understood the value of that.

Maybe what I miss isn’t childhood.

Maybe it’s unfragmented presence.

The Nail

The railroad nail I picked up was rusted and heavy — a small object that once held something massive in place.

Legacy often works that way.

It is rarely spectacle.

Rarely a parade.

Rarely noise.

It is small, repeated acts of togetherness — cousins encouraging you to run, an aunt gathering children for summer, a tiny store that becomes a community anchor.

We carry those imprints forward whether we mean to or not.

What Are We Running Toward?

When the train was coming, I ran toward my cousins.

Now, in this threshold season, I find myself asking:

What am I running toward?

What is calling my name on the other side of the bridge?

What parts of my former self still deserve to come forward with me?

Maybe chasing ghosts isn’t about going back.

Maybe it is about remembering who we were before the world split us into roles, obligations, and constant motion.

Mardi Gras will be loud this weekend.

But sometimes the most important parades are quiet ones — the ones that move through memory, calling us back to the people and places that formed us.

The Power of Community

Community Threads exists to remind us that legacy is rarely spectacle. It is built quietly — in summers spent running the tracks, in cousins calling you forward, in small country stores that become gathering places, in families who return when it matters most.

Sometimes the thread we examine belongs to someone else.

Sometimes it is our own.

Liminal seasons often send us backward before they move forward. Not to relive what was, but to recover what formed us. The courage to run. The people who called our names. The places that shaped our resilience long before we had language for it.

Legacy is not only what we build.

It is what we carry.

The encouragement that once pulled us across a bridge.

The memory that steadies us when the rails begin to hum.

The quiet acts of togetherness that hold something massive in place.

This is how lives become positively indelible.

Not loudly.

Not perfectly.

But faithfully.

Reflection

Every life has a bridge.

A place that formed you.

A season that shaped you.

A moment when someone called your name and urged you forward.

When you find yourself standing between what was and what comes next, pause long enough to remember:

Where did you first learn courage?

Who ran toward you?

What small, ordinary experiences quietly built your resilience?

Sometimes the way forward begins by honoring what already holds you in place.

Community Threads is part of Positively Indelible, whose mission is to help people upcycle their lived experiences into meaning, resilience, and lasting legacy.

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