The light at the end of the tunnel is indeed a train coming.
My Grandpa, who passed away when I was sixteen years old, was a railroad enthusiast. He was an engineer. Not a guy who drove steam trains down the tracks, but an electrical engineer who worked for Ma Bell his entire forty-two year career. I believe he enjoyed his job. His love was trains.
He and Grandma took a month-long honeymoon, mostly by rail that included the Grand Canyon and other sites. Christmas and birthday gifts were easy to settle on, so long as we could find a book or video about trains. He and I once visited a model train show at our convention center. We took a ride on a train that traveled to nowhere and back so you could have dinner and enjoy the ride.
It’s only natural he would decide to build a model train, and he did. In 1967 he took the plunge and began construction on 320 feet of portable train track in his back yard. The rail was purchased from a specialty company in Michigan, the authentic trucks (wheels) and couplers from Pennsylvania. Taking his cue from catalogs, magazines and blueprints provided by manufacturers, his first car was a hand-cranked hopper, suitable for riding.
This allowed diversion for the grandchildren while he focused on building an electric power engine with a diesel facade. I’ll never understand why it was bright orange, but we’ve kept it that way ever since. The wiring inside is a mystery to us but each time we pull it out of the garage, attach two 12-volt car batteries and flip the seemingly ancient wooden lever it comes to life. Soon there was an additional flat car and a caboose built from a toy box.
This past week we set up Grandpa’s train again, leaving out 60 feet of track to get it to fit in the smaller yard, and discovering that it made no difference. My eight-year-old daughter was eager to be the chief conductor, her cousin was always in the same seat anytime it ran and, true to form, my four-year-old became enamored only after a couple of days of study, consideration, introspection and, finally, leap of faith.
I had a bit of a moment when my daughter told me that her stuffed animals would be riding in the caboose, heads sticking out. That was where we had always put our as children but I hadn’t even prompted her it was the right thing to do.
And I drove the train. Almost as much as my daughter did. The electric motor whirrs like no other sound in my life; grinding in the low gear to get the slippery wheels turning and humming in the high position with a ferocity that provides a low growl to the ear and steady buzz in the seat. The rails have a song of their own, a futuristic swoosh like how I imagine those electric cars might run when I read Popular Mechanics many years ago – but much more real, a true ringing in your ears. Yet it is ethereal, too, beyond anything near to my daily life. I hopped on one afternoon when everyone else was occupied and let the sounds take me …
Once the track is set the ride will run for hours, and often did. Five grandsons would pile in and ride the wild rails. Smooth and fast (it seems), it never got boring, even though it was the same view over and over again. We could chase baseballs with bats, pretend to be going coast to coast or just lay down in the long flatcar and rest while the sunlight danced on our lids. It has a light for night driving; a near mystical experience of cool air, lighting bugs and blinking stars behind the trees. Sometimes the rides would end only once Grandma came and literally pulled the plug; reaching in to seize an enormous, outdated fuse that makes the entire contraption work, or not. We all knew where it was kept, but when it had been commandeered in this fashion it would require permission to be retrieved, inserted and bring the beast back to life.
I turned forty years old this year and I am in the interesting state of being anxious about the future and drawn to the past. It’s not a unique phenomenon. Books and essays have been written about it for ages. The trick is to discover what strengths of our history we are being called to utilize without being stuck there and simultaneously have enough faith in the future to belie our self doubts about the impact of our lives. This occurs to me while I am taking innumerable revolutions around the circuit, focusing, as I did years ago, on the rails just in front of the cab; watching the ties fly past and the rails guide the unseen wheels without fail. The white noise and gentle rocking (perhaps aided by the glass of wine previously consumed) led me to simple meditation in motion.
And this, among all the memories of bats and balls, construction and mechanics, childhood enthusiasm and exhaustion was the memory that rose to the top. It is not the blithe, almost cliché concept of being able to “act like a kid.” Finding the joy of childhood is a folly, for we are never that child again. Even when we are still a kid, we are not the same kid. When the train is set up again and I am twelve instead of nine or six or four, it’s an entirely different experience. When I am fourteen and helping Grandpa set it up, just him and me, for what will be the final time it is new all over again. When I am forty and suddenly responsible (in association with my own Dad, who helped the original designer bend the rails from straightaway into curve by hand) with making the contraption safe enough for the small children who will run from far and wide to take a ride, it feels like an anachronism. Can I really be in this role?
In meditation, I am all of these roles at the same time. It is not youth I am seeking; it is permission to spend time exploring the space between things and between activities. I was fortunate that Grandma didn’t come out after just a few minutes to slow the action, claiming we must engage our minds more. She came long after we were allowed to go beyond the simple tasks of playing. There, without interruption or even wondering what we were doing and, especially, without asking why we were doing it, we found peace and contemplation and expansion and mystery and joy and enlightenment. Rhythm, light, motion, noise, blur and mechanics combined to allow us transcendence.
Now, reaching back from atop that bright orange machine tracing a track built by loving hands before I was born, I find renewal. Enough blasé commentary about midlife and how it should make me feel; here is the tangible question, action and answer all in one odyssey. What should I remember? Why this desire to reflect back on my life? By building a train, literally, we take action. It is tangible in the present and based on the past. It serves others and ourselves, if we let it. It teaches: Remember not the emotions, but the connections and fundamental insights that all people have and children retain closer to the surface. The emotions are a siren, calling us back to the knowledge that we are One and capable of all things. Take action to recall these talents, this fundamental strength, the empowerment of man by God.
Sometimes spiritual action looks like play. It’s not. It’s the work of living openly, honestly, lovingly, and emotionally. All aboard.
We Can See Clearly Now
There was a time when glamour and image ruled our decisions. The “coolness” factor went a long way when it came to personal care. Those twenty years are gone. We’re forty now and the economy is in the tank, besides. Time to play smarter, even in fashion. So when the time came to have my daughter’s zillion dollar fashion frames repaired and buy a back-up pair for times like these, we started to ask around instead of just zipping back to Ossip Optometry.
We’ve liked Ossip for some time. They have cutting edge frames and the docs were all good. In fact, when times were good, the service we got there was always above grade. It did seem curious to us how we’d still spend a billion dollars for a pair of glasses, even with my wife’s very good vision insurance. Ossip vision masters are, after all, brilliant sales people as well. Man, can they up-sell. “Oh, you’ll want this special lens or your daughter will look like a bug. I’ts only $200 more” and “Oh, you have to get this coating or the glasses will dissolve in sunlight. It’s only $45 extra.” and “Oh, if you don’t pay this extra $90 they sometimes put tinfoil in the frames instead of glass.”
So we decided to ask around to see if we could get a better deal. For us, it’s helpful to ask people inside the industry and we have a friend who is an eye doctor in the area. We soon learned Ossip has a terrible reputation within the business. Not only are they traditionally just plain snobby, but they refuse to give prescriptions over the telephone to competing companies (a common courtesy for most offices) and, allegedly and are pretty much defrauding some major insurance companies by ignoring their policy requirements and just giving a flat discount. The rumor within the industry is that they are struggling in the tight economy.
Well, no wonder, I discovered as we came in with the broken glasses. Even the customer service that we had come to expect is out the window! A rude and somewhat disgruntled employee informed me the pair “is broke!” I knew that because of the way the two sides were no longer joined in the middle by that part that goes over your nose. She informed me they would have to go to the lab – to be returned in 7 to 10 days. Rushing the order seemed to annoy her enough that I thought I might have to wait 14 to 21 days after I brought it up. She’d have to check on that because their lab only allows them to do that once in a while. She made no move to check on that right then, however. I guess it would just be a happy surprise if I got them back early. I reminded her that when these glasses came the first time the office neglected to call us. We eventually had to call ourselves and kinda rush in late near closing time. She just stared at me.
Now, I’ll need a pair of back-up frames. We’re really looking for the most inexpensive, fully covered by insurance thing you’ve got. Pointing to the shelf behind me she declares, “Everything on that shelf, except the pair you got the first time, would be covered.” That is beyond explanation, so we moved on and picked a pair of little pink glasses. Of course, my daughter’s prescription will require different lenses, so the total will be only half a zillion dollars. And they would be ready in 7 to 10 days. When I told her we’d look somewhere else I got a look that said I’d be lucky to get my repair back in 30 days.
So we went to Lens Crafters, where a very kind woman doted on my young daughter and we found the exact same little pink frames for her to wear. They didn’t take my insurance, unfortunately, and were still $70 less than Ossip. And, after a brief stroll around the mall, we had them to take home “in about an hour.” Wake up, Dr. Ossip, cool billboards and staff dressed all in black isn’t going to keep you afloat in this economy. You’re going to have to kick your customer service into high gear and accept that many people will be shopping for value. I wish you good luck. If the opinion of your peers is any indication, you’re gonna need it.
Keeping Track of Books
I love that my daughter reads voraciously. It makes for easy gift giving for the family as well. Thing is, the books she likes to read come in series. The Magic Treehouse books are up to number 47 or something like that. I think there are eight hundred or so Lemony Snicket books. We borrow them from school, the library, friends and such, so I’m never exactly sure which ones she’s read or not.
So I go to this great bookstore near us – a locally owned, quaint little place just for kids – the likes of which I’m supposed to support in the ongoing fight against “Big Box” retailers. Another great idea smacks me in the face. I say to the kindly school teacher who’s working there part time, “Have you ever considered having a registry. You know, like a list of what my daughter has read in a series of books. I would send people here specifically to buy stuff if I knew they could consult a little 3×5 card and find out which she hasn’t read.”
She looked at me like I was from another planet. I couldn’t be ignored since I was standing right there, but my idea was casually brushed away like an annoying piece of lint on her sweater.
