When I was a little kid growing up in the Bronx, Christmas gifts didn’t always come with batteries or flashing lights. Some came with pages. Thick ones. One year, I received a giant coloring book so big it felt like it needed its own ZIP code filled with Christmas celebrations from around the world.

It had Santas that didn’t look like our Santa. Snow that didn’t fall in familiar places. Traditions I didn’t yet have words for. I colored it carefully, earnestly, as if crayons were my passport. I didn’t realize it then, but that book planted something permanent. A curiosity. A longing. A sense that the world was much bigger than my block and that someday, somehow, I’d want to see it all.

Fast forward several decades (blink and suddenly you’re here), and one of the most lovely gifts I received this year was a beautifully illustrated book of train journeys around the world. The moment I opened it, I felt that same spark. That same quiet thrill. And just like that, I was back on the living room floor with my coloring book, dreaming beyond the page.

Of course, now my crayons have been replaced with mental itineraries and impractical but delightful thoughts like: “What if next year has a theme”? And, How does one casually find oneself on a train through Patagonia?

Train journeys feel romantic in a way airplanes never will. They’re old school. Deliberate. They invite lingering. They feel like something out of an Agatha Christie novel  minus the murder, ideally with steam, scenery, and conversations that unfold slowly. You’re not rushing toward the destination you’re inhabiting the in-between. There’s something very therapeutic about that.

This past year has been full of unexpected connections. Threads tying together things I didn’t realize were related. Old versions of myself waving hello to the present one. The world, it seems, has handed me the gift of synergy of seeing how moments, memories, and meanings echo across time.

I’m accepting that gift. With gratitude. With curiosity. And with the hope that next year I’ll spring from it forward, outward, maybe even onto a train platform somewhere far from home, coloring in new pages with lived experience instead of crayons.

Merry Christmas. May your gifts, whether big or small, new or nostalgic, take you exactly where you’re meant to go.