I haven’t been feeling all that well lately. Blame it on Mr. Bronchitis and all the little friends he brings… Mrs. Cough, Miss Body Aches, Ms. Exhaustion.  And let’s not forget his best friends, Dr. Keep-me-up-all-night and Nurse Nausea.  But I have a tough time “resting”…

So what’s to do when your body says NO and your mind says YES?  I got my answer through 2 of my grandchildren.

It was a day of parent/teacher conferences, and our son asked if I could watch 9-year old Maddie and 6-year old Jake for a couple of hours mid-afternoon.  Of course, if he didn’t mind the contagion.  But I am an obsessive hand-sterilizer… well, everything sterilizer… and careful about just about everything relating to germs… but anyway, the kids came to my home just after lunch.  Maddie had brought her American Girl doll along, so we braided her doll’s hair a few times, in different styles, of course.  I had marshmallows ready for a dessert I was making, so they had a few marshmallows.  I laughed as they each tried to maneuver some exercises on my exercise balls… but the balls are so big, and Jake’s body is too small to reach both his hands and feet over it.  That didn’t prevent him from trying, though, and he had a few pretty awesome falls off those balls.  He loved it.  Then a puzzle or two before…

… the train set.

I’ve been collecting little trains and wooden tracks for years and keeping them stored in the big drawers in my living room coffee table.  When all 9 of the grandkids are at our home, it is tough to design and build a great big railroad… with bridges and tunnels and stations and little people… that doesn’t get destroyed as soon as someone steps the wrong way or one of the littlest guys wanders in to “help.”  So when Maddie and Jake wanted to design and build a nice, big railway… I was ALL ABOARD!

We all got down on the floor and began hooking track to track to bridges to tunnels… past houses and people and even sharks and both farm and jungle animals.  They were loving it… but it is astonishing how much I loved it, too.  The movement, the building, the imaginary piece.  The talking and agreeing that the coffee table should be the GIANT tunnel.  Designing the beginning of the railway… which required a lot of time to find just the right piece of track… the one that curves downward.  Finding the end of the railway… only to discover there was no end because we had built several loops that perfectly wound together.  We hooked the little magnetic trains together and went for the ride of our lives…

Rest? Nah.  I went on a journey that took me all the way back to my childhood.  A journey that made me forget all about Mr. Bronchitis and his friends for just a little while.  And that made me feel like a brand new person.