I just discovered that September 9th is Grandparents' Day. I didn't know this holiday existed until I passed a bus shelter and saw it advertised. I don't know why I wouldn't have expected there would be a Grandparents' Day, since everything else is celebrated in America.
I'm assuming that the day has been created to honor grandparents, but truthfully I don't want to celebrate it that way because there's something too passive about it. I'd rather use the day as a jumping off point to talk about the joys of having grandchildren.
Some of the pleasures are shared by many people who have grandkids. I know this because they pull out the pictures and do the bragging: how smart my grandson or granddaughter is--that's a big one.
Some are more personal and idiosyncratic. I've always enjoyed quirky people, and my grandchildren have quirks that endear them to me in particular ways, as people.
My two-year-old granddaughter, for instance, is known for playing in the kitchen--not with pots and pans but with oil and vinegar bottles. She likes to take them out of the cupboard and lay them down in a row, then cover them with a towel, and tell them to take a nap. She calls them by the names of people she knows, the names varying with the day. After two minutes--enough of this!--she claps her hands, pulls off the towel, and commands, "Everybody up." Naptime is over for the bottle brigade. Bless her mother for having such faith in her ability to keep the bottles unbroken.
Then there's my four-year-old grandson. He loves playing with language, even though he still has trouble pronouncing certain consonants, "g" and "k" especially. So he'll remove the first letter from every word--and I mean every word--in a song or story and replace them with one letter of his choice. So "baa, baa, black sheep" can become "paa, paa, pack peep," and so on all the way through. And of course he's such a ham that he's waiting for you to laugh and join him. Try doing it, by the way; it's guaranteed to make your eyes cross.
My other grandson, who is four and a half, tries to be the family negotiator. About six months ago, he and his sister and mother were in the grocery store, in a slow checkout line. It was late in the day and his sister was restless. A woman just behind them in the line became quite irate when his sister kicked her. (We're pretty sure it was an inadvertent kick.) His mother apologized, but the woman still felt entitled to scold his sister rather harshly. He piped up with, "She's little. She's just learning." Then he appealed to the cashier, "We're all just learning." The cashier smiled; the woman didn't. In fact she followed my daughter in law out of the store to snarl, "You have terrible children." Although his attempt to defuse that situation was unsuccessful, I see the good intention behind it.
Those are three stories that, for me, encapsulate the personalities of my grandkids right now. I'd love to have other people tell their stories here too.
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