Who's Driving this Passenger Train

My son always loved trains.

Seriously loved them.

For a while I thought he might become a real-life engineer.

I had images of him shoveling coal into a firebox, fueling steam locomotives. But then I reminded myself that we don’t power trains by coal anymore.

We had more Thomas the Tank Engine trains, wooden tracks, and VHS videos than one kid should reasonably have. It kept him entertained for hours.

I remember dropping him off once at my parents’ house before my hour-long commute to the city. He was only 18 months old, and within two minutes of us arriving, he was immersed on his set on the rug.

I called to him, “Duncan, Mommy has to go to work…”, thinking he might jump up, cry, and run to me with outstretched arms. But he looked up, waved, and went back to connecting puzzle pieces of track together.

Sadly, he is now turning 25 this week. Pretty much over the obsession.

I asked him last weekend why he used to like trains so much. Without hesitation, he said, “They can only go in one direction. And I always knew where they were going.”

Ahh, wouldn’t it be nice if life were a bit more like that?

That we always knew where we were going, and for the most part, it would be forward?

Instead, life can be a squiggly, somewhat confusing, hilly and sometimes painful two-feet-forward-one-foot back kind of journey.

Duncan also pointed out that sometimes someone else switches the track up on you. You can be merrily moving along, and suddenly a train controller in a mysterious office somewhere leans on a giant lever and bam! You’re suddenly on your way to Arkansas, asking, “What the heck just happened?”

Ever have that happen? You thought you were going to Boston, and then all of the sudden you are not?

Or ever find yourself on a train headed for a land you don’t want to visit?

Perhaps you are on tracks laid by generations before you that you don’t feel free to question or move.

This weekend, I helped Duncan move into a new apartment. After a trip to IKEA, we proudly assembled a new queen bed frame and headboard following a multi-page instruction booklet.

I thought, “This is the first piece of furniture we have ever assembled together!”

Another first—just when I thought we had run out of them.

But I’m no longer helping him build an elaborate track—we’re on to assembling structures for his adult life.

Sometimes I wish I could roll our train backwards to those times when he was four or five, wearing an engineer’s hat and carrying around a wooden whistle. But life is moving forward in just one direction.

Duncan did share that the other thing he loved about trains is he could design his own path.

“I loved bringing my own creativity to it,” he said, remembering, and smiling.

Maybe this is what life is about after all: Imagining the village and world we want to live in. Creating that world one building and one car at a time. And then laying down the track piece after piece in front of us, well enough in advance to avoid derailment or danger.

You can choose which cars you want to hitch yourself to. And then there's the brilliant freedom that comes with all of that to design our path from here.