Let me brag about my grandsons. If you don’t want to hear this, then run away. Save yourself. I’m about to be insufferable, and there’s nothing any of us can do about it. It’s in the DNA to brag about our descendants, so we just must listen to new grandparents every once in a while, sort of like having to eat rubber chicken at conventions or white knuckle teaching teenagers to drive.
When my daughter first told me she was expecting, she informed me that I could start making a baby quilt. So I gestured for her to follow me to the quilting storage boxes to show her the stash of fabrics I’d already bought for it. I was quite ready to be a grandmother. I began sewing immediately, and rushed to finish the quilt before the due date. By the time it was done, Michael was ten days old. The thing was a simple appliqué block covered with embroidered flowers, in bright batiks and a rainbow of floss. Seven months of needlework, and I rushed the last bit of embroidery.
Michael is, as of this writing, Six years old, and he’s my first grandchild. His brother, CT, just turned four. They are, of course, adorable. According to the law of infants, Michael was a Gandhi and CT a Churchill. Now that Michael is losing his front teeth, he occasionally looks like Alfred E. Newman, but in an adorable way. CT is one of the most photogenic little boys I’ve ever seen. He’s got eyes the color of a blue-eyed dog’s, and everyone who sees them goes, “Ooh, those eyes!”
I think it’s rather odd to have descendants once removed like this. I’m daycare every other week, so I get flashbacks of the days when my own children were that size. Old reflexes kick in, and I surprise myself that I remember how to do any of it.
But then when they are with their father, I find myself occasionally looking around and going, “Where are the kids?” Oh, yeah. Odd to have such a life-changing thing and be such a small part of the larger picture. But that’s part of maturing, I guess, and at my age I should be a lot more mature than I really am.
I’m lucky in that in the afternoons they sometimes let me take a nap. I try to make sure at least one of them is also asleep, otherwise I would wake up to a fully trashed house. Or else one of them (usually CT) outside and wandering around in the front yard where neither is supposed to be.
Sometimes I read to them. I have saved all the best children’s books my own kids enjoyed, and have recently acquired a full set of Winnie the Pooh books. I also have all the old Disney Classics on DVD, which they sometimes like but more often they want to see Thomas the Train or something involving LEGOs. They are skilled with the remotes and can watch whatever they like on the Kids’ account, so long as it doesn’t have a dollar sign on it.
They call me “Granny.” Like in the Beverly Hillbillies? I don’t think so. More like the dowager countess in Downton Abbey. Picture the oldest daughter saying “Grannehhhh…”
In Other News
I heard from the Who Wants to be a Millionaire? people yesterday. They said, essentially, Thanks but no thanks. Better, I think, to have a definitive rejection than to wait until gradually you are forced to realize you’ve been rejected. They also warned me that there was a limit to the number of times I can attempt this. After five rejections they say I should take a hint. Apparently they get a lot of people throwing themselves at this wall.
Um…I think I’m good. I’m certain that whatever it was that made them reject me isn’t going to change any time soon. I’ll just sit in this corner over here and pretend I didn’t really want to be a millionaire. What? Comfort and health care in my old age? Not for me.
Julianne Ardian Lee 