Being Grandma

This is a grandma blog for sure. We have spent the last three days with Quincy who's a young three. We are tired grandparents tonight. We had three children of our own, and lots of other kids who came to live with us for months or years. Our house was always full and we were beyond busy. We kind of forget.
Our three oldest grandchildren lived in our area for a year and it was pure pleasure to see them every day and revel in the minutia of their growth. We were sad to see them move far away. The other two grandchildren live thousands of miles from us, and the travel is hard.
So we are inured to the idea that we probably won't really know most of our grandchildren
though we visit back and forth a few times each year.
So, Quincy, who is at hand, gets the benefits of doting grandparents. I have always wanted to have a grandchild who really really could love this ranch and the magnificent part of the world that is central Florida. It was so wonderful last night when Quincy and I took our first ever night hike together. We had our flashlights and his tiny hand was tightly curled into mine. This was an adventure! It was very dark and the stars were stunningly bright. I showed him the constellation of Orion and we looked at Venus. Then, we poked our flashlights down the gopher tortoise holes to see if anyone was there. "Turtles down there?" he asked. But there weren't any to be seen this night.
He's had a big day with incredible energy constantly expended and so he was ready for a story and bed. He's been on the go since seven this morning, ate a huge breakfast of pancake stacks, had to clean out the barn, fix the tractor, water the vegetables, and hook up his wagon to the trailer hitch on the truck. The minute breakfast is over, he's off to be "outside and go down to the barn". My kind of guy!
What all of us grandparents forget or have a certain amnesia about is how totally there you have to be for little kids. You can't really do any of your own routine because there is this small someone who either dawdles or runs way ahead. You spend some time thinking that you truly do NOT want to wait one more minute while your grandchild very laboriously picks three oranges or counts stones or whatever. You think you might be able to complete a small part of a project, check your e-mail, read the paper or a chapter of your book while you are awaiting toddler developments. No way! You look up and find (while you took only five seconds to check the e-mail) , that your grandchild has clambered up a dangerous ladder and is now in the high barn loft, doing god-knows-what with the crud you stored there, can't remember what it was, but you know it is riddled with poisonous spiders, wasp's nests and god knows what else. Quincy is a lot more agile than I am, but I do not want to return him to his parents, maimed. I supervise his descent.
"Quincy, it makes Grandma crazy when you do that! Don't go up that ladder anymore!"
I might have liked to spend a little time with the morning papers. No way! I am monitoring this amazing small person who is constantly and relentlessly doing all sorts of scientific and social experiments to check out the world he inhabits.
It's hard for us to have this charming little person completely ruin our routine. But there is nothing so satisfactory and so affirming as having this little visitor come often. Today in the late winter afternoon's long shadows, Quincy, and we and the dog, all went out in the golf cart to inspect the latest born calves. We all leaned into each other, just being in the moment. We watched hawks circling overhead and Quincy remarked on a snag of a pine tree that "all it's flowers have falled down."