Maggie and Grampy
It really is the sweetest of things to see: Maggie discover all the goodness that is my dad. As a child, I thought my dad knew everything. He can answer the simplest of questions, as well as the most confusing and hard-to-wrap-your-brain-around ones. He also always seems to be able to fix anything that is broken, and not only is he handy with the duct tape, but he’s been known to use a tool or two. Growing up, he claimed to know one of my favorite book characters, Babar. My brother and I would fall asleep listening to him tell tales of Babar showing up on the job site or using trees to ski.
When I think about parenting and the way that I was raised, one thing that comes to mind is that I never, ever felt like I was in the way. If my mom was involved in the kitchen or her garden, I was always invited to slice, scoop and follow along. Same with my dad. He’d always include us in his workouts, projects around the house and had chores if we got ‘bored.’ I can remember sitting on his back as he did push-ups and him tirelessly teaching me to fold the jump rope in half so I could do high jumps with him.
He even included me in shaving, letting me put shaving cream on my face and use a butter knife to peel it away. Another example is how my friends and I would dress up in my mom’s clothes and adopt personas and go hunt down my dad wherever he was on our land, knee deep in a project related to building our house. (If my memory serves correctly, we had really creative names like “Candy” and “Sandy”) He’d always greet us as if we were visiting from a far off land and ask us a million questions about our travels, our lives and even our funny accents. As a kid, I thought we were so very clever. As an adult, I wonder how annoying we were. There are countless inside jokes between the two of us that only he would understand (Ray-Tay-Kay-Pay-Are or why the kitchen light looks weird….).
My parents had us when they were very young and they had lives beyond raising children – work, building a house from scratch, etc. Chances are, they weren’t always patient, and I do have some of those memories as well, but most of all I remember my mom and dad both being extremely present in my life. Always.
Seeing my parents as grandparents is nothing short of delightful. Practically from the start, Maggie has been enamored with my mom and is her ultimate helper when we go to visit. I nearly become invisible when my mom comes around. Maggie has always loved all her grandparents, but lately she’s discovered my dad and it is utterly heart warming. A few weeks ago when we went to visit, they spent hours on the back porch hammock chatting, eating chips, reading, singing, and even snoozing. They also discovered Bill the Butterfly – a fictitious butterfly that is now their version of Babar and Ray-Tay-Kay-Pay-Are. I know that my dad could have shooed Mags away and taken his own nap or read his own book, but he, just as he did all those times with me, chose to spend time indulging Maggie in some one-on-one time.
And I know the list will continue to grow of events, jokes, and special moments between Maggie and my dad. Because even as an adult, my dad and I are still cultivating inside jokes and sharing special moments. If something needs fixing or I have a complex question to answer, I often turn to him. Because I know he’ll always make time.
All Good
TIMEOUTS
And she’s back in full force – better than before, if that was possible. The last two days have been perfectly perfect, with hilarity found in the most random places – a roll of tape, the bath tub, and even timeout. As she’s regained her energy back, she has decided to test the limits. Which makes me both proud and frustrated.
She’s landed herself in timeout a few times for simple things, like not helping to put away a puzzle, to really big things, like hitting. When I tell her she has to “go sit by herself” her reactions vary from devastated to ho-hum-la-de-da. The highlight of this new phase, aside from the conversations that follow, is the singing that she belts out from the rocking chair. It comes at show-tune volume, even through the bedroom door. So far her specialties have been “Puff The Magic Dragon” and “Take Me home, Country Roads,” her latest two favorite song books.
I have to work very, very hard to gather myself before going into see her – because if she’s singing, she’s in a hilarious mood and I love a hilarious mood. She now grasps the concept of time-outs and so far it has been effective, we’ll see when it needs to happen in public sometime, which I’m hoping won’t be for a long, long time.
FAMILY LOVE
I meant to write about how amazing both my mom and Barry were last week, during The Week That We Shall Forget, and maybe I did? But both of them were rocks. Barry was calm, steady and reassuring, as always. He also spent his days divided between home and work, a stress in its own right. My mom was all of those things as well, but in a flurry of activity – prepping food, wetting cloths, and jumping at a chance to hold Maggie. I felt kind of like a wet rag, full of emotion and on edge, just wanting it all to be over.
When it seemed that we’d finally turned the corner for the better, my mom came down again and Maggie finally was alert enough to appreciate her presence. This meant that I got to take a long, long shower and even go to the store. When I was showering, and even when I was at the store, I kept thinking to myself how similar the feeling I was carrying was to having a newborn. That shower made me feel like a million bucks and being at the store made me feel like I’d flown around the world in the hour I’d been gone.
When the clouds cleared and our house started to feel like the same old house again, we started to get visitors. My grandparents arrived with jam and a bouquet of flowers from their garden, my grandmother claiming that she’d held my grandfather away as long as possible. They played hoops in the backyard and we all ate popsicles.
Greg came by as well and worked with Maggie on her sticker book and went over the ins and outs of playing catch. Maggie delighted in the attention and was zonked out after both visits – still recovering. Aside from having visitors, we also started to revisit toys that we’d forgotten about. Maggie worked on covering her rocking horse in tape and we dug out some old favorites, but it’s hard to beat some simple cuddle time with Papa….
