The Aging of Aquarius

I swear to you, this is a true story. I’m telling it with no embellishment, exactly as it happened not five minutes ago.

You think advertising isn’t effective?

It’s 6:13 on a Saturday morning. I know that precisely because I was starting my coffee maker and it has a clock on it.

Seven-year-old Isaiah appears, rubbing his eyes and telling me he sprained his groin while sleeping.

I don’t know. I didn’t ask.

A moment later he’s in our TV room as usual for a Saturday morning but instead of cartoons I hear something that sounds like an infomercial. I expect that to change to Spongebob Squarepants momentarily but it doesn’t. It’s too loud. I go into the TV room and ask him to turn it down. He does, but he still doesn’t change the channel and he is transfixed on whatever he’s watching.

“Isaiah,” I say, “why are you watching a commercial for a floor sweeper?”

“It’s a very good floor sweeper!” he explains, with a great deal of animation. “It’s very lightweight and with the Haan© steam cleaner you just add water and it does the rest!”

As the dogs are my witness.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

“Your sons weren’t made to like you. That’s what grandchildren are for.” – Jane Smiley

The boy is seven.

He hangs his clothes on the floor with no regard for whether they are clean or dirty.  He leaves string cheese wrappers in the family room, never learns to turn off the TV, frequently forgets to flush the toilet and makes his own breakfast, leaving half of his chocolate milk on the kitchen counter and Cheerios splayed across the floor.

He’s only seven.

As grandparents we are constantly reminding ourselves to be patient.  He’s still trying to learn things his father never quite got the hang of.  Or maybe he’s not trying and that’s the problem.

But it’s not our problem, it’s his dad’s.

I was pecking away at my computer one early morning recently when Isaiah came in wordlessly, picked up the phone from my desk and rang his dad’s room on the intercom.

“Dad?  Would you come get the peanut butter for me?  It’s too high in the pantry and I can’t reach it. — Okay, thanks.”

“Isaiah,” I said, “I would have gotten the peanut butter for you.”

“I know, Grandpa,” he said with a new, impressively mature tone to his voice.

“I just figured Dad needs to get up and get ready to take me to school.”

Whether you call that learning the art of diplomacy or of manipulation it is something that gives grandparents a special sense of appreciation.

Oh, yes. It comes around.

© 2010 by David L. Williams, all rights reserved

This morning our phone rang and Carolann answered. When she immediately began chattering like a demented kindergarten teacher on a sugar high I knew she was talking with our youngest grandson. Tyler was calling to ask if we could come to his house and swim with him today. While it’s true that the plot was hatched last night between his mother and me a four-year-old issuing such an invitation is a mighty big deal for children of all ages. Carolann practically shrieked our acceptance. All three of us were pretty darned excited, I can tell you.

We arrived a short time later and Tyler whooped as he ran to the door to admit us. But when he couldn’t quite solve the considerable mystery of the system of locks on that particular front door, (which stymies every adult I’ve ever seen fiddle with it,) he did what any level-headed person would do. He stepped back and settled for waving at us through the window. Mom arrived a moment later, swept away the hinged barrier, and the hugs and giggles commenced.

Carolann and I are blessed to have wonderful and loving children and grandsons. And we are doubly blessed to live near them so that we can watch and help them all grow. It is a treat that requires no purchase or qualification.

Grandparents in proper families are quite rightly V.I.P.s.

Most of us feel we somehow weren’t qualified to be parents when we were much younger and we’re right about that. As Carolann likes to say, those kids didn’t come with instruction manuals and when you’re barely outside of childhood yourself, perspective and wisdom must be earned through eighteen or twenty years of 24/7 OJT. You screw up. You learn. And generally the progeny grow up in spite of us in remarkably sound condition and showing some promise.

Raising kids is damned hard, wonderful work. And when it’s finally finished they leave you with something that feels very much like a hole in your heart. The love remains but the work is gone. You tell yourself what you already know but need to hear: that they’re gone and will never be back. Never. Not in the same way.

Here’s the epiphany:

When the children we were as new parents finish the job, we can finally continue raising ourselves.

Tyler carefully put his toes on the edge of the pool, brought his little hands together above his head…

“Watch! Grandpa, watch me! Nana, watch! Watch me!”

…SPLASH!

The air left me like the eye of a cyclone. He had never done this before! He couldn’t even swim without his floaty vest!

But that was last week and this is now.

He surfaced in front of me, a river of water pouring into eyes and mouth sputtering to open with excitement.

Tyler is a swimmer. And, a diver! And it had all happened when Carolann and I had our backs momentarily turned as Mommy and Daddy were doing their hard, wonderful work.

A friend of mine told me not too long ago that if he had known how great grandkids would be he’d have had them first.

I’m nursing a bit of a sunburn this evening. My eyes are chlorine sleepy and I’m wearing a silly grin that won’t leave my face.

About an hour after we finally left our liquid circus, as I sat in a soft, fat leather chair, my grandson climbed into my lap, got unusually close to my face, looked directly into my eyes  and asked with deadly serious amusement:

“So…how was that swimming for you?”