Trains

From where I sit, I can hear a fountain bubbling outside, birds screeching and voices raised as the grownups try to find a bandage for a toddler's booboo.

"Mama," he said. "I tore the skin on my hand."

On his arm, a tattoo of Thomas the Train smiled cheerfully, oblivious of booboos.

"He has a booboo," his 2-year-old sister affirmed in an almost incomprehensible 2-year-old voice.

"What, honey?" his aunt asked. "Oh, you're right. He does have a booboo."

"I have a booboo on my leg," she said, lifting her little, capris-clad leg and croc-covered foot up the stairs and into the house. She placed a hand on the wall to steady herself and I imagined a trail of tiny, shin-height hands lining the fresh white paint. She, too, had a Thomas on her arm, remnants of the morning's adventure, of a shiny red caboose and balloons twisted to look like trains and bears, hats and swords.

We'd played with Thomas and his friends the previous night as the 3-year-old brought the roundhouse, the engines and a cash register out to deck.

"Can I buy one of these?" I asked, holding up one of the cars.

"No, they're on sale," he replied.

"They're on sale? Then, I'll take two."

"No, you can't have them. They're on sale," he replied. "You can buy the roundhouse."

He counted out his pennies.

"I'll buy it for you," he said and opened the drawer. "That's one vanilla and one chocolate milkshake and one straw… one st… one stra…"

"Stawberry?"

"One strawberry," he said. "Which one do you want?"

"I'll take chocolate," I said.

"It's not chocolate," he told me. "I call it chocolate milkshake."

"One chocolate milkshake," I repeated and he handed me my change, his change, the cost of a roundhouse or a frothy ice cream drink in the form of a gold plastic coin. I wasn't sure which – he was 3 – but we continued to play with the register, the imaginary shakes and the trains until his mom called him to bed.

After that, the adults played with dominoes, making up our own rules and racking to remember distant games of Mexican train. We read the rules and understood even less, but I didn't mind. I won.

In the morning, as the kids waited in line for caricatures, my friend and I slipped into the museum to see the photos of O. Winston Link, of the last steam engines, brilliantly lit, brilliantly shot pictures of the Norfolk Western at night.

We returned to the museum, my friend and I, to see a documentary on train car graffiti, a film 18 years in the making. I picked up a copy of the filmmaker's book and asked for his signature. He drew his own car art on the title page.

As we walked through a day filled with trains, I'd think of my grandfather, who built miniature steam engines with hand-tooled pieces. His trains were donated to museum in North Dakota when he died and I have copies of his Popular Mechanics magazines with covers about flying cars and the race to the moon.

He would have enjoyed the photographs, telling me how things worked even though it wouldn't understand it. He would have enjoyed the documentary, the fact that I bought a roundhouse with dairy coins and the fact that I bought a book for myself. He would have enjoyed the time with family, even though it wasn't our own, and he would have loved the trains.