A Boy And His Train

Have you ever seen anything this adorable?

With a paper airplane in his right hand and a book-too-big-for-a-little-boy in his left, he sat buckled into the car seat with a manual on his favorite subject - trains. Studiously engrossed in the colorful pages full of beautifully detailed paintings and drawings of America's greatest railways, he read aloud from his cushy ride in the back. "Why are the Indians burning the tracks?" he asked and then, "Oh! I like the chimney on the green train!" ( Green is his favorite color.) "I think it's called a smokestack," I said. "....and the Indians were trying to stop the train by burning the railroad tracks."

"It's NOoooT a smokestack" he argued with a don't-you-know-anything-about-trains-look, "it's a chimney."

What do I know?
I'm just the chauffeur. And I'm learning a LOT.

"Read something else to me, baby boy" I said. "What else is in the book?"

Switching the paper flyer to the other hand, he leaned in closer and read to me again.
It matters not that he can't read.
I hung on every word.

So, on the way to dinner, with the Wild Wild West resting on his modern day jeans, the airplane ready to fly out the window at the slightest provocation and "Sam" the stuffed puppy dog "taking a nap" on the seat beside him, he taught me about engines. Boy stuff. Trains, planes, imagination books.....he has so many projects going at once I can't tell if he's airborne or grounded. Sam's the only one who knows for sure.
But my baby boy's caboose was ready for our weekly adventure.
It's our regular date night ya know.

Flashback 2 days ago: I took him a carton of ice cream. Knock. Knock. Big eyes peering through the door blinds. "It's Mimi, Mama!" He nearly knocked the vanilla ice out of my hands jumping into my arms with a single leap and with one smooth swoop he glued both legs around my entire body, little arms around my neck and his Hilfigered head on my shoulder.

Stuck like a bug to flypaper.

"How did you know I needed a hug today, sweet boy of mine?"
Not a word.
Just more squeezes.

"Are you picking me up tomorrow, Mimi?"
"Of course," I said. "It's our date night. Remember?"
More squeezes.

"Where we goin'?""The usual," I said, "dinner at a fancy schmancy pizza parlor, the WalMart toy aisle and a movie."
"Bumpity Boo!??"
"Yes. Bumpity Boo."

Be still my heart, I thought, this could be one of the most romantic nights I've seen in a while.

When I finally pried his little legs from around my bony body the ice cream needed re-freezing and I needed a spinal adjustment. But who cares?
His hugs are magic.
Flypaper glue and all.


If his mother would let me post more than half his face (it's a family affliction) or at least show him cartoonless, you'd see what I'm talking about (the Queen said with all the humility she could muster). You'll see what I mean if you're ever a "mimi"......

He has the largest blue eyes I've ever seen and sometimes they rest on my face like some starry-eyed fairy full of wonder. He studies every part of my profile with an invisible microscope of love that makes me melt right where I'm standing. And he cares not that I see.

Peering into my eyes. Rubbing his nose on mine. Giggling. Wiggling. Silliness........and other times he just wants to morph into geometrical shapes - "See Mimi! I'm an 8-sided triangle!" - and catch me off guard with a nonsense or two of counting mishaps.

Have you ever seen anything this adorable?
(I said that, didn't I?...)
After dinner we went flower shopping.
We sang "He's Got The Whole World In His Hands" ....He told me to stop changing the words.

Then "Hit The Road Jack" as we got in the car to go home (which he thought was hysterically funny) and the first two phrases of Dona nobis Pacem. It made no difference to him we were singing Latin, just as it made no difference to me that he can't read. I'll tell him about peace globes soon and he can fill me in on the wonders of moving steam through his Wild West imagination.

But first, I'll need to learn a cowboy song.

Time to go home. Back to the book.

Under a blue-billed hat, strapped in like a conductor on a track-burning adventure, he led Sam and me through the streets of our town - wearing not feathers and moccasins but wild-faced animals on his cute little shirt and reading the marvelous book, which was too big for his little boy hands and too wide for Sam to see with his puppy dog eyes.


Baby Boy drifted off into scenarios full of dangerous destinations. East and West. Union and Pacific. Chimneys.....smokestacks....which is it? I wonder.
I wonder....I wonder what he'll be. And how - or even if - I'll manage to forget all of this should he grow up too fast and leave me standing in the dust of locomotives long past, when he's too big for spider-leg hugs and has lost the desire to love his grandmother's face with searching blue eyes that laugh and love....
and never let go.

No. I won't forget.

And just when I thought he was surely ready to write a dissertation on steam engines and construction trains, railway stations and..... he stops pontificating.
"What's wrong, Baby Boy? I was enjoying your reading."


"Oh...I forgot to put my puppy in the seatbelt."


Have you ever seen anything that adorable?




Parts of today's post were printed April 2008.