Toy Story

I have some favorite toys among the many J.P. and Joe have accumulated over last decade.  Occasionally, when they outgrow a toy that's one I love, I'll stash it on a shelf at the top of my closet.

Strange, right? 

With some toys, I can't bear to part with them.  Why?  I think it's because particular toys remind me of a time in our lives - in our boys' lives and, well, in our life as a family.  In my life, too. 

J.P. had a Teddy Bear that a co-worker of Jude's at Renewal House gave her at a baby shower just before he was born nearly 11 years ago.  It plays music or, if you punch a different button, makes the sound of a heartbeat or just white noise.  The idea being, of course, that you can place the Teddy Bear in a baby's crib, turn it on, and the baby will sleep. 

We never used the Teddy Bear that way.  However, I can recall - clear as day - coming home on evening in our old house, when J.P. was between an infant and a toddler, and walking upstairs.  It was quiet and as I got the top of the stairs, I looked to my left.  There, I saw Jude and J.P., sitting on the rug in the floor of "the nook."  Jude was playing with J.P. and the Teddy Bear was sitting next to them, playing music.

I can still hear the song as I sit here right now.  I'm not joking.  It was that kind of moment.  Powerful, beautiful and memorable, forever etched upon the hard drive that is my brain.  I have no idea why, but it is.

If I were to find the Teddy Bear - it's in a basket with other "lovies" in Joe's room - and play that song right now, it would be like climbing into a time machine.  I would instantly be transported back to the evening in our old house, to that place and time. I've done it and it's happened. 

Jude knows we can never part with that Teddy Bear.  It's link to time a time that's passed.  A simpler, more innocent time in many ways.  Well, in all ways.

What we have agreed to part with, however, is the Thomas the Train table.  We're giving it to Jude's brother and sister-in-law, James and Megan, and they're 4 and 2 year olds children, Caroline and James.

I can remember putting the Thomas the Train table together on Christmas Eve in 2010 when J.P. was almost 2 years old.  I can see myself - as I sit here, now, drinking a cup of coffee at Crema on a Saturday morning - sitting on the floor of our den in the old house, in front of the fireplace assembling the table.  Jude smiled bemusedly as I struggled a bit to line up the edges of the table and tighten the screws.

I felt fatherly in a way I hadn't felt before.  Assembling a toy - er, a table - late at night on Christmas Eve, so my son could see that Santa Claus had brought it to him when he got up the next morning.  It was an ebullient feeling to finish it, just knowing how excited J.P. would be the next morning when Jude brought him downstairs.  Sure enough, she did and he was.

When it was just the 3 of us in our little family, some afternoons at work I would walk over to the toy store on Main Street.  It's closed now, like so many of earlier merchants, a victim of rising rent.  It was an old school toy store that had been there for years.  I used to browse the Thomas the Train section and, often times, bring home to J.P. a new train.  Percy (my favorite), Diesel 10, the musical caboose (also my favorite).

A thought about the musical caboose.  J.P. used to insist in taking it with us when I took him for Saturday and Sunday afternoon neighborhood walks.  As I pushed the stroller up Acklen Street, headed to Bongo Java, then crossed 12th Avenue - way before 12South was a thing - J.P. pushed the button and played the caboose music over and over again before falling asleep for his afternoon nap.  If I pause for a moment, I can still see his looking up at me through he plastic window in the City Elite stroller's cover, smiling and holding the musical caboose, the music it played echoing in in my mind.

For a while the Thomas the Train table was upstairs, outside J.P.'s bedroom.  It was a tight fit, though - our old house was small.  Later, we moved it downstairs into what had been the office.  J.P. and Carley, our nanny, spent a lot of time playing with the trains on that table.  Building and rebuilding the tracks and driving the trains around the table.

By the time Joe was born, J.P. was almost 4.  In a short time, J.P. was moving out of the Thomas the Train phase in a Puff the Magic Dragon kind of way.  Growing older, into to different things.  Well, that was fine, because suddenly Joe was way into Thomas the Train, maybe even more so than J.P. had been.  And I loved every single minute of it.

The Thomas the Train table was great for a 2 year old because it's the perfect height for a toddler to hold onto it and, well, toddle around while playing with the trains.  That's part of the genius of the train table, I suppose.  Now, I hear young children have Lego tables.  It's just not the same thing.

Joe's love of Thomas the Train - born at that train table in our Elliott Avenue house - extended to books, television shows and movies.  At one point, I downloaded an entire album of Thomas the Train music on to my iPod (there's a blast from the past) and Carley used to play it for him in the kitchen, in the mornings, when she arrived to our house.

For a couple of years, we even went to see Thomas the Train and ride on him when he came to the Tennessee Central Railway Museum.  Joe was way, way into trains.

So, this week, I made the call I had been dreading.  I telephoned our handyman, R.J., and asked him if he could stop by and disassemble the Thomas the Train table that I so lovingly assembled a lifetime ago.  He agreed and, sure enough, the table is in pieced upstairs in the playroom just waiting to be boxed up.

And, in some ways, my heart is in pieces, too.

My boys are growing up.  Jude and I are growing older.  My mom is not really my mom, not the way she used to be.  My sister's daughter, Kaitlyn, is off to college.  In a year, Matthew will leave home for college, too.  And on and on it goes.

For sure, I take solace in knowing that our Thomas the Train table will be loved, again, by Caroline and, especially, James.  Watching them play with it when they visited us over the holidays made me happy.

So long, Thomas.