Trip

Tonight at bedtime I explained to Parker that I am going on a trip tomorrow and he won't see me again until Thursday. When you're going on a trip, the most important thing to mention is the airplane, which I did.

I also explained that I was going to a city called Denver. He has a vague grasp of the concept of cities, and knows that Daddy has taken trips to Chicago and to Boston, so I wanted him to know the name of this trip's city. It took him a while to say it properly, and he said Venver, and Vender a couple of times, which we both thought was pretty funny.

And then he announced, "Ted is going on a trip tomorrow, too. And I won't see him until Monday."

"Oh really? Where is Ted going on his trip?"

"But Lion is not going on a trip," he assured me.

"Well, that's good. But where is Ted going on his trip?"

He stared at the wall for a moment or two, his eyes almost as wide as his grin, and then he said, "He's going to...Tree...grass." He said it exactly the way someone making something up on a sitcom always does, like he was sort of suspicious of the words as they came out.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, Ted is going on a trip to Treegrass." He was very confident when he said it the second time.

"He's going to Treegrass?"

"Yeah. Treegrass."

I couldn't get him to give me any of the pertinent details about Treegrass, or any of the activities Ted might undertake while there. But the look in his eye when he said the name made it sound like a pretty nice place.