Sugar, spice, snails, puppy dog tails

Insanity and plain craziness

Anyone who wants to find excellent examples of insanity needs to follow grandparents around for a few weeks. Where would one find people, and what people, who physically can't stand cold, damp weather outside, running (or hobbling) across wet, marshy, yucky fields in chilly drizzle? Grandparents at a youth football game watching grandsons become mud balls is the answer.

I used to be a very refined (well, a little bit refined), mature, relatively sane (no one who makes a career of teaching can be entirely sane) individual. I never was a person who thought all babies and small children were adorable. I liked my own children as babies and youngsters and children of some friends (some 'friends' had brats, not children). I preferred children when they became older, when I had at least a chance of reasoning with them (I've always had a good imagination). Then the grandchildren came into my life.

I'll never forget walking into my daughter's hospital room twenty years ago this past August. In her arms was the most adorable bundle, comparable to my daughter and two sons, I had ever seen: Macayla. She gave us the names all our grandchildren (except the ones added through marriage) call us, and which her son calls us: PaPa and Granny.

Her father's mother, shocked that I would accept such a name when I was't quite 40, asked, "Are you going to let her call you that?"

Of course, I was; at least she was calling me something, and 'grandma' seemed more than she could manage at less than two years old. She was a beauitful baby and is a beautiful young woman.

After Macayla came her sister Keri. One time, something frightened her, and she ran to her PaPa.

"Scare me, PaPa, scare me," she sobbed as her little puggy arms nearly strangled him.

Our next two grandchildren are also our daughters children. We enjoyed them for such a short time, only six years, before they were ripped from our lives, but, oh, the memories.

I'll never forget the last time we visited them, a bit over a year before we lost them. We loaded up the car with two granddaughters and all our paraphernalia and headed southeast. School wasn't out in Florida, yet.

My daughter, who taught at a private school, took her two oldest daughters to school with her those last few days, and Faris, who was in preK also had to go. Meena,four at the time, however, didn't have to attend daycare, and I asked her to stay home with me. Each morning, after the others left, she would climb in my lap and go to sleep.

One evening, every chair, sofa spot, and most of the floor area was occupied. Meena looked around with a small frown and asked, "Where can I sit?"

I motioned for her to join me. "You can sit on my lap."
She backed away. "I'm not sleepy!" she announced.
I hid my laughter as I told her she didn't have to go to sleep to sit in my lap.

"Oh, okay," she chirped as she hopped into my lap.

Perhaps I should have called this entry "Sugar and spice," since I've mainly jotted notes about three of my granddaughters (I'll have to add my other two in a separate entry). Of course I gave a brief intoduction to my grandsons and great grandson earlier; so, I'm not playing favorites.

Favorites, hmmmm, no, I don't have any. Each child, each grandchild, and the only great grandchild has a special place in my heart. Not one is more important or more loved than another. I'm just as crazy over one as I am each other one.

Maybe I'm just crazy. Why else would I tramp out into the cold, wet evening to watch two young boys become mud balls?


Viv

Sugar, spice, snails, puppy dog tails  (ASR) Jots of thoughts as they flit through the rummage of my mind. #551218 by Vivian

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