Slice

This is the world according to a child. A piano is where all of the stuffed animals need to line up and stay put until the weekend is over and someone else puts them back in the box.

They look happy there and, oddly, it makes me happy seeing them there. So I don’t fuss about how my granddaughter ought to collect them up and put them away at the end of the day. I don’t care.

This is the fundamental essence of being a grandmother – not caring about the stuff that took the joy out of being with children when I was the parent. Each time I’m left alone with one of my granddaughters, I feel like I’ve been dropped in a little joyful conspiracy to do whatever we want, talk, not talk, make cookies, buy them, walk in the neighborhood, lie on the couch, pretend we are dogs, take naps in the sun. It’s intergenerational decadence, the not caring what we ate for breakfast when we’re hungry for lunch. Being little girls’ grandmother is a devilish, joyful thing.

I have two granddaughters – one is the adopted child of my biological daughter and the other is the biological daughter of my adopted son. This fascinates no one but me. Moreover, to make it even more interesting and somewhat improbable, one of my granddaughters is Chinese and the other is Laotian and Nicaraguan. If this was a poker hand, you’d throw up your hands and run out the door.

You want to have my luck? You can’t have it.

While I revel in all this, I wonder what my granddaughters will remember about me. I recall my grandmother as always being glad to see me. That is a plenty fine thing to remember. There are rare people in your life who are always glad to see you.

Beyond that one wonderful thing, I don’t remember much about my grandmother. She drove a very old Chevrolet, one with a curved roof and a polished pearl grey finish that was so lovely that you’d want to pet the car every time you walked past. We drove in her car out in the country to fetch my cousin from where she lived over the gas station. The two of us, cousins, would hang out with Grandma, play Chinese checkers, and read a worn copy of Ripley’s Believe it or Not. We’d sit on the counter in her ancient kitchen and watch her peel potatoes, every few minutes she’d offer us a slice of raw potato at the end of her knife.

That’s what I remember – that feeling of being always welcome. That, and the potato. It’s something to shoot for.