Still Being Grandma

Here is Quincy, the red head on the right, helping me be a volunteer today at Lacoochee School. We are planting a garden and have put in zinnias, black eye peas, peppers, radishes and cucumbers. Everyone had such a good time! Quincy, my horticultural side kick knows all about making a garden. Just today he pulled up a bunch of carrots he planted weeks ago and we put them in the salad. He's eager to share his expertise, and the kids are so welcoming to him, though they are four years older than he is. He is thrilled to be a part of all this, such a social boy.

He has recently left his Montessori school; a bad fit all around, and he will start a new school tomorrow where all the family knows he'll be safe and happy. He was a bit confused today. He thought that this school he was visiting with Grandma was his new school. Eager to do right, he volunteered a lot of information, and when the planting and watering was over he quickly found an unoccupied desk in the classroom. He raised his hand properly to make a comment, and when he saw a boy go into the bathroom and come out, he asked if he could visit the bathroom. (He left the door open, much to the amusement of those third graders.) "Hey, he's little," I said. Then the kids told him to wash his hands, which he did - in the drinking fountain! The other kids told me in great detail about their little brothers and sisters. Much hilarity there.

So, it has been a wonderful and exhausting five days with a four year old. Quincy is never a problem. He eats anything, sleeps twelve hour nights, is never destructive. He talks all the time and asks so many questions! For long periods he is happy with his imaginative play in the doll house, or outside with his trucks and little plastic guys on the edge of the garden I am weeding. He spends lots of time in the barn where he has his post office and delivery system. I always think I can get in a bit of work on my quilts, but there is always a new mail delivery by a small postman in a wagon, or he needs some rubber bands or has a question about armadillos. So I find my nature books and we look it up, distracted along the way by a photo of a man and child looking at something with their head lamps on. We decide we'll buy some of those head lamps and discuss all the stuff we'll see. Another morning shot with nothing purposeful to show for it but the sweet necessity of a loving and curious child.

My pedometer averages 15,000 steps these days. I think most of them are from the trips up and down and up and down the road behind Quincy's little bike. At first Quincy did not want to ride this bike. But we adjusted it so it was friendly and his feet could reach the ground. I found an objective he wanted to reach, a pile of lime rock we use to fill in the potholes on our road. We ride the bike to the pile and Quincy plants some sticks in his "rock" garden. He is thrilled to be able to ride this uncertain bike that wobbles and throws him to the ground sometimes. I am right behind him but as the trips increase he is more and more confident and I am letting go and by the end of this last day he is flying!

His speech is sometimes so unclear we come to an impasse, even after many repetitions. He wants so show me stuff: the gecko on the wall, how he's set up a game board, a restaurant he's made out of little cardboard boxes and small stuffed animals. We make a book with cut out pictures and a stamp pad for the captions. We take several trips in the golf cart each day to check out the nesting sand hill cranes on the edge of the pond. A couple of times we have seen the two very large eggs in the nest as the bird takes a break. "What is the daddy doing now?" asks Quincy. The female we have named Emily seems to be doing most of the work! We scout around and spy Bob, the male, pecking in the dirt. "I think Bob is finding bugs for Emily", I say.

I wonder how his mom, a single parent, can do this? I think back of my own new work life and childbearing and I have amnesia about it. Somehow it gets done.

Loving the silence of the evening, I will go to bed soon. I will miss the last wonderful visit to the grandchild asleep in his bed upstairs when I check his covers and that everything is well for the night. I kiss his sweet cheek close to all those stuffed animals and a bunch of favorite books we've read so many times. I think of that dimple that will show when he sees the waffles Grandpa will make for breakfast.

There are so many new adventures for the next time he's here. But tonight he was very happy to go home to his mother, as were we.