My son loved trains. So much so that yes, I think he would have married one, (if he hadnt already promised himself to his best friend Aniella). His obsession with them began in the childrens hospital, that first dreadful week when the word tumor was still wandering around in my head like a lush who has forgotten where she parked her car. The doctors kept using the word and their faces were drawn with concern and all I could think was, Tumor... something that happens to old people, but Vasu is not old. We waited a lot that week. Waited for doctors. Waited for technicians, waited for sleep to come. I remember a piercing ring in my ears that refused to go away. And my eyes let too much light in. It felt like light ringing in my eyes... does that make sense? Can light sound like a high-pitched bell that never fades? Can your eyes hear? We waited, and one day we waited in the room that got named after it. The waiting room. In the movie Beetlejuice, limbo is a doctors office waiting room. Very precise, very true. In the waiting room was a wooden train set. Thomas and Percy and Gordon sat on the tracks. Vasu pushed the trains around with wide open eyes. Another kid, older, bigger, not afraid to push his way into life, came up and started moving around the trains that Vasu didnt hold at the moment. Vasu threw a fit. The next time, Vasu the trains were gone but the track was still there. It was in the childrens hospital that I learned to tie down everything I wanted to keep. Vasu begged for the trains for hours. After our appointment we stopped at the toy store and got Vasu a Thomas train. He liked it, played with it, lost it. So the next time we got him Gordon, and Gordon became Vasus best friend. Wherever we went, Gordon went too, and any child even wanting to look at Gordon was glowered at and rebuked. This lasted years. In pre-school, Vasus fixation on Gordon was so profound that several of the other boys made a game of trying to get Gordon away from him. I dont think they even liked trains, but Vasus love was too evident and they had to see what was up. Vasu refused to do any of the art projects at school, hated painting and drawing and writing. The other parents would get stick-figures and rainbows to put on their fridge, and every now and then Id get a big blob of dried glue. It was the only art the teacher could get him to do. And then, when he was five, he picked up his etch-a-scetch and drew a train. Then he drew another, and another. He drew twenty or thirty a day for another year. He knew everything about trains. All the different types, all the parts, all the different sounds they make. I was just sitting here now, and realized that I have forgotten what the wheels are called... they had a special name for the four wheels on a block with a joint to allow the train to take curves... If Vasu were here right now, he would scoff at me like I were an idiot for not remembering. I wish he were here right now to scoff at me.....
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 01:11:04 +0000