Trains

Four words have been running through my head, pretty much nonstop, for the past 36 hours. Depending on how the moment catches me, that little sentence can feel like a warm summer sun or an icepick to the vitals. Mostly the icepick, though.

The four words are “Daddy pick you up.” That’s how my two-year-old son, Michael, tells you he wants to be held. He says them in a staccato, cadence-calling tone, so you can almost hear the hyphens: “Daddy-pick-you-up.” Never “Daddy-pick-me-up” — always you. I guess he hasn’t learned “me” yet.

This past Monday and Tuesday were my two days a month with my son. Since his mother moved with him to Florida, it’s all the time I get. At any rate, Monday and Tuesday were my days this month, and I made the trek to Florida with my parents, who live and breathe for Michael, to see him.

We picked him up from his maternal grandfather, Bill. Bill and I have an interesting relationship. It has progressed over the last 15 months from white-hot hatred to subdued mutual loathing to grudging acceptance to, finally, a cautious sort of friendliness. I think he finally realized I wasn’t going away, and I finally realized that he was actually a very conscientious grandparent. And we both realized that we each loved Michael more than anything else in the world. He actually acknowledges me as “Daddy” around Michael now, whereas for months he pointedly avoided the word.

At any rate, when Bill pulled up and Michael spotted me through the car window, as always, he started laughing and straining against his safety harness. Bill undid the child-seat restraints and got Michael out of the car, and Michael ran over to me with that funny jerky gait of his, held his arms out and said, “Daddy-pick-you-up.”

I was impressed. Last month it was just “Daddy-up,” and the month before just outstretched arms and an imploring look. Bill gave my parents and I the ritual Michael update, and we all stood around for the ritual exclamations about my little boy’s brilliance. Then we packed Michael into the car and drove the two hours from Bill’s hometown of The Villages, Florida, to my brother’s place in Winter Park.

We stopped on the way to Adam’s apartment to pick up a Fudgy the Whale birthday cake from a Carvel ice cream shop. Adam and Michael were both born in January, so we celebrate their birthdays together. I wish I could report that the Fudgy the Whale confection was out of deference to Michael’s tender age, but in the interests of full disclosure I must admit that it was my 27-year-old brother, the managing editor of a national magazine, who requested this ridiculous item. We’re looking into assisted-living communities.

My father, Michael and I waited in the car while my mother went in to retrieve the embarrassing dessert. A large truck rolled slowly through the parking lot, its proximity siren beeping a warning.

“Big truck coming,” Michael remarked conversationally. “Beep-beep.” The truck rolled on by. “Bye, truck,” Michael said. My father and I burst out laughing. Michael looked at me like I was the world’s biggest idiot. “I was only being polite,” the look said.

My mother came back to the car with the cake. We dropped it off at my brother’s apartment, and asked Michael what he wanted to do.

“Go park,” he said. The kid is an absolute fiend for the park.

“What do you want to do there?” I asked.

“See choo-choo train.” He’s also a fiend for trains, and an Amtrack way station just happens to be located right next to his favorite park.

“We’ll do our best, but I don’t know if any trains are coming through today,” I told him.

“Go park. Choo-choo train,” he explained slowly, as if to a mentally deficient rhesus monkey. It was hard to argue with his logic; in ten months of going to that park, we had never failed to see at least one train.

We arrived at the park and Michael did laps around its border, muttering “choo-choo train,” pausing to examine the train tracks, every so often putting his surveillance on hold to chase birds or watch the cars and trucks passing on the street (and providing a running tally, “Car, car, truck, car, blue car, big truck,” as each passed). After these diversions tired him, he always went back to searching for trains. But the trains never came, and after about an hour I decided it was too cold and we packed it in.

No sooner did we get back to my brother’s apartment than Michael said, “Choo-choo train.” A second later, I heard the whistle of a locomotive in the distance. The kid has ears like a bat.

“See choo-choo train,” he said.

“Dude, I don’t think we’d make it,” I said.

“Daddy-pick-you-up,” he said. “See choo-choo train.”

Which is how I ended up power-walking six blocks, carrying a two-year-old who seemed to be getting heavier by the second, in a futile attempt to get back to the railroad tracks before the train was out of sight.

“Sorry, dude, we missed it,” I said.

Michael was philosophical about the defeat. “Motorcycle,” he remarked. “Squirrel.”

We went back to Adam’s apartment, Michael pointing out every car, truck, and squirrel on the way, in case I missed any. Adam and Melissa weren’t due back for another couple of hours, and my father announced his intention of taking a nap to recover from the previous day’s 14-hour drive. My mother and I decided to take Michael out so he wouldn’t go stir-crazy in Adam’s tiny apartment.

We ended up at Kmart, a veritable paradise to Michael, and a mistake on my part. See, Michael is one of the least spoiled kids I know. He rarely gets cranky, he’s naturally agreeable, and he has never, ever thrown a fit when told he couldn’t have something. But I simply cannot get through a toy aisle without buying him something — not because he begs, but because of the way he smiles when he sees a particular toy. On this trip, it was a little wooden train set, as a partial apology for not being able to magically produce the real thing earlier. Michael was ecstatic. He clutched the box all the way up to the register, and squirmed with anticipation when we got to the counter. He knows about paying for things, but was afraid the cashier hadn’t seen him. “Lady, train, lady, train,” he said.

We paid, stopped at the book store, and went back to the apartment. Dad was up, and Michael immediately ran up to him. “Pa, play trains,” he said.

We opened the train set and he and Pa played trains for awhile. Then Adam and Melissa came home and Michael told them about the birds in the park and going to the book store and playing trains with Pa, and eventually we all partook of Adam’s ridiculous but undeniably tasty cake. After some more time with the train set, Ma and Pa said their goodbyes and headed to their hotel and Michael was zipped into his pajamas and put to bed, and I bedded down on the couch.

The cool thing about Michael is he’ll let you sleep in. I awoke at about 6:30 to find him sitting on his little inflatable bed looking at me. “Daddy,” he said.

“Dude, it’s too early. Go back to sleep for awhile, then we’ll play,” I said, and he nodded and squirmed back under his covers and gave me a half-hour’s grace period.

At seven o’clock, however, the temptation was too great. He got out of his bed and, as I watched through half-closed eyes and pretended to sleep, he walked across the room, hefted the box containing his new train set, and staggered to my bedside.

“Daddy open,” he suggested. “Play trains.”

So Daddy opened and we played trains for awhile, until he heard Adam and Melissa getting ready for work, at which point he invaded their room and gave Melissa instructions on fixing her hair, up to and including making sure she unplugged the hair dryer. Then Ma and Pa came over and it was off to the park, where we once again failed to see any trains, then the bookstore.

Michael and I ranged through the entire store, ducking in and out of the children’s section repeatedly. After awhile, Michael got tired of walking and turned to me, his arms held out. “Daddy-pick-you-up,” he said, so I did.

The kids’ area carpet had a spacescape pattern, with Saturn being the major motif. “Daddy walk on stars-planets,” Michael said as I carried him around. I wish, I thought.

Then it was time for luch with Adam and Melissa, then playtime in the world-famous Chick-Fil-A playplace, during which Michael astonished us by glancing at a sign reading “Sneaker Keeper” and casually saying “S, starfish, A, apple.” Turns out the kid knows the entire alphabet. Then it was time to take him back to his grandfather.

We were about halfway there when I spotted something off in the distance. “Michael,” I said as I pointed out the window, “what’s that?”

He looked out the window and his eyes lit up. “Choo-choo train!” he said. “Choo-choo train!” He had gotten to see one after all. I felt unaccountably relieved. The sameness of the trip got to him soon after and he fell asleep.

Bill was waiting when we arrived. Michael awoke as we opened the car doors. He looked around and knew where he was at once. And as often happens, he immediately started crying.

It’s always bad when that happens. I feel bad for Bill, who endures it with a sense of humor, although it has to hurt that his grandchild cries when he sees him. It has to hurt, even though academically we both know that Michael isn’t crying because he hates Bill, but because he misses me. “He’s just exhausted,” I say. “He’ll probably be asleep in two minutes.” “And till then, I get to be the bad guy,” Bill says with a grin.

Yes, it’s always bad. But this time it was much worse than usual. Because Michael wasn’t just crying. He was sobbing, wailing with abject misery. He clutched at me, actually tried to leap from Bill’s arms back to mine.

And as Bill made soothing noises and strapped him into his car seat, Michael stared at me through streams of tears and wailed over and over and over: “Daddy-pick-you-up! Daddy-pick-you-up! Daddy-pick-you-up!”

Bill finished strapping Michael in and turned and smiled to let me know it was all right. I smiled back to let him know it was all right. But my eyes kept going back to Michael, who was still staring at me, still sobbing, now just crying “Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” over and over.

Bill said goodbye and got into the car and drove off. I tried to shake off that final scene. I know Michael loves his maternal family. I know they love him. I know he’s got a good support system in place and I know they give him all the affection and attention he deserves. But I miss him. Dear God, I miss him every day, and 15 months hasn’t filled the hollow in my life one iota.

I keep seeing him as I prepared to leave him yet again, keep hearing that plaintive wail of “Daddy-pick-you-up!” Please, Daddy, don’t leave again, that’s what he was saying, what he was trying to express the only way he knew how. And I left him again anyway. I left him to go back to a life I’m not so much living in as drifting through, an existence that seems shadowy and unreal without him. “Daddy-pick-you-up” … those words have been edging between me and sleep lately. I have a feeling it will be that way for some time.

At least I finally got to show him a train. I keep telling myself that. It’s not much, but it’s all I have. I’m trying to make it enough to get by on. He doesn’t ask for much, my little boy. All it takes to make him happy is Daddy, Ma and Pa, Elmo, and the occasional choo-choo train. For at least that one tiny sliver of time in the car, he had everything he wanted.