The A-ha station

My brother won't ever let me forget how I broke the train set when I was a baby. HIS train set. I apparently grabbed the tracks and made tiny pieces of them. He always reminds me of this awful act at every opportunity. Every little family gathering he tells the tale of how I "DESTROYED" the tracks. In jest of course.

To put an end to this track-trash talk, my sister-in-law and I decided I would buy my 2 year old nephew a train set for Christmas. My sweet, darling nephew. You may remember him from this post. Let me tell you something about this kid, he teaches me life's lessons in unique ways. He likes to enjoy simple things, be affectionate, be crazy, be quirky, make people laugh, ask them "are you ok?" if they look sad or anxious. He is magical, fascinated by almost everything, and asked his first "why" question this past weekend. He recognizes Monet paintings, Beethoven's symphonies, Egyptian Pharaohs. This is no ordinary kid. He knows planets, show him a picture of Mt Rushmore and he points to the extreme right and says "Lincoln". And his "Ok"s are always "Okie Dokie donk". (No one has a clue where the "donk" comes from).

So we head to Toy's R Us, which is like heaven on earth for young mother's and kids and we pick the largest, awesomest train set we see. 500-piece, imaginarium train set:D It took a total of 2 adults, one teenage kid working at the store and one hyper baby to get that box into the car. By this moment I am delirious and can't wait to see the expression on my brother's face. Rehearsing my various opening lines "HA! Take thattt" seemed most appropriate. What ensued was a complete antithesis.

We opened the box and realized 500 pieces, they were not kidding:O Everything had to be assembled. Planks of wood, nails, tools, and boxes and boxes of countless little things. Nothing was "playable" without the assembly. Completely disheartened, I went downstairs and asked my brother to help me. Of course I got a "HA! this is a 3-day project. Are you crazy! There is no way I can do this now!". Damn, serves me for getting so carried away at my so called conquest of a life-long problem :) And then I decided I'm going to do it. I'm going to build this thing on my own. I took the tool box from the garage and locked my self in the room. I realized that I didn't feel so driven to take on something and complete it in a long, long time. I just wanted to see my nephews expression, it was as simple as that. I wanted to see the look of amazement on his face when he saw this thing. This massive structure of fascinating objects that moved, climbed mountains, went through bridges, through train and gas stations, moved cargo, and made their way home to the roundhouse assembly.

I built the table, I built drawers, used tools I never had even seen before. Learned about different types of nails, screwdrivers, wood and symmetry. It was absolutely joyful. And I kept going, kept going. Then finally I put the plank on the table and started to build the various stations, the assembly line, the bridges. Once all the pieces were built, I started laying down the tracks. They were of 7 different sizes and had to be laid out in a certain order. My sister-in-law joined me on this final lap and we looked at the map and started laying down the tracks.

Finally, after approximately 8 hours of sweat, toil, incredible learning and hard-work later, we sat back and watched the magic unfold. It is hard to explain in a few words (or even in plenty of words) what the look on my nephew's face was. He held the trains and moved them along the tracks. He recognized that they stuck to each other and tried to understand why. There were small circular magnets that allowed trains to stick together and form a trail. He recognized that this similar circular object was atop the cargo boxes and used the crane to lift them and unload them on the train. He let the trains speed up down the mountains and slowed down near the station. His small hands tried to collect as many trains as possible and line them on the tracks. His tiny feet moved quickly alongside the table to keep up with the train. All this, while we just stood back and watched him grow by the minute. I felt like we had brought a whole new meaning to his little life :)

Of course, my other a-ha moment came when my brother saw the fruit of my labor and said "WOW! Now that's how you give a gift :D May be you were so driven because...YOU BROKE MY TRAIN SET"!!! :O Sigh! I guess, some things will never change. While other things will change us forever. :)