The kids pose by the TRE train outside Dallas Union Station

My youngest son loves trains, so recently when we took him on the Trinity Park Mini train, he didn’t think it was enough. He wanted to go on a REAL train. So I decided we would go on the Trinity Railway Express (TRE), just for the fun of it. We set a day — yesterday — packed a lunch, and set off with his brother (12) and sister (9). It would be a far more meaningful trip than I initially expected.

Taking the TRE to Dallas could hardly be easier, or cheaper. You go to the T&P Park and Ride station on the Downtown side of Lancaster Blvd. very close to where the I30 crosses the 35W freeway. Do not go to the main station, called the “Intermodal Center,” because there is no free parking there. Get your all-day ticket for $5 (children $1.50) which gets you on not only the TRE but the DART trains (and buses) in Dallas. Now sit back, probably on a double-decker passenger car, and enjoy the ride.

We ate lunch in the ornate courtyard of the Trammel Crowe building, which was beautiful and serene.

My youngest son loved it, as did his older brother and sister. Of course, once we got to Dallas, we had to do something to justify the effort of going out there. I wanted to take them to the Dallas World Aquarium but it was too expensive. So I went for the high value/low admission price route: museums. We visited the Crowe Museum of Asian Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, and the Dallas Museum of Art.

The Crowe Museum was all right, but the Nasher was the prize of the day. Finally, after years of taking kids to art museums and having them not “get it”, the kids began to actually participate in the experience. Part of the thrill was the garden setting of much of the art, and the lowering of the tension surrounding getting too close. Most pieces are still off limits to touch, but it’s much more on the honor system than in, say, the Kimbell, which has the jumpiest guards I’ve ever seen.

Much of the kids’ enjoyment seemed to be the puzzle aspect of the art, which was “modern and contemporary” (that means, generally, that it was created in the last 100 years.) They wanted to know what the artists were thinking, what they meant when the built the art, and what it represented. We spent a long time going from statue to statue, talking about them.

Brand very much liked this "Quantum Cloud XX (tornado)" sculpture by Antony Gormley. The statue is constructed entirely of small steel bars, and looked at from the front, without shadow, the man inside can be difficult to make out.

After finishing with the Nasher, we went on the the Dallas Museum of Art, though were were pretty tired by that time. If my husband had been there he would have insisted, probably, that we stay until midnight (the museum was apparently having some special event that allowed visitors that late) but we satisfied ourselves with a visit to the interactive room where the kids were provided with art supplies and told to create their own “works.”

kids enjoyed creating their own works in the Dallas Musuem of Art's creativity room.

We stayed in this place for a long time. The materials offered were tape, sea shells, cardboard, gold foil paper, and pipe cleaners. Before you say “this is the silliest thing I’ve ever heard of” let me tell you the kids found it very meaningful, and Angelo spent the entire time building a Japanese Spider Crab, he said, out of the pipe cleaners and gold paper, with mini-sea shells for eyes.

I eventually had to drag them out of there because we were going to miss the train we were planning on catching.

As we rode the DART light right to Union Station in Dallas to catch the TRE back home, I noticed we were passing Deally Plaza where the Kennedy Assassination occured, and 6th Floor museum … and we hadn’t even stopped! Clearly, another visit to Dallas was called for.

Reflecting on all this now, the time we spent in Dallas seems magical. I felt for once that I was not alone in the community, that I was part of a greater group of people, which included not just my children, and my region, but my world — and they weren’t all different, they were united through this common world of what I think used to be called “the sublime,” but which I have termed, more often, “the world of ideas” or “the life of the soul.” We came, we saw, we shared in some kind of discourse. For one day, fear and worry were banished, and all I thought about was ideas and creativity. What a great moment.