Grandpa and Grandma had Gabriel, our four and one-half year old grandson, for five days while Mom, Rose, and Dad, our son Michael, were two hours away delivering our newest grandson Elijah James on September 2, 2010.
Make no mistake, we had a great time. There will always, and forever, be a picture in my head of Gabriel holding a little metal, medieval soldier from York, England which I gave him to keep which came from my Dad and Mom’s travels there. Gabriel knows this “gift” is from his great-grandparents.
Gabriel is intelligent and inquisitive. He lately will ask how many miles it will take to get to the grocery store or to our office or to church, etc. He wanted to know, “How many miles did the ‘soldier’ travel to get here?” I had to check and it was 4031 miles from York, England to Springfield, IL where Gabriel lives.
When we would be getting “silly” and Gabriel would ask, for example, “How many miles to Wal-Mart?” I might say, “It’s 4031 miles.” And, we would both roar with laughter.
There is almost no downside to grandparenting. It is wonderful. You get all the perks; the fun without the frustration of childrearing. You get tired and back the child goes to the parent. To every parent I have to say, “Hang in there, there are grandchildren at the end of the rainbow.”
With ninety-nine percent of fun that you have with your grandchild, there is going to be a challenge or two during your “guardianship”. You expect it (heck, you raised kids yourself), and you actually desire your grandchild to show independence, and leadership.
One day we had the company of five adult family members. Gabriel didn’t like the chili we had for lunch, “Fine, then you will eat supper.” Gabriel said, in the afternoon, “Grandpa, I am hungry, I want a snack.” I replied, “No, wait until dinner”. Gabriel had a great steak dinner.
About eight o’clock in the evening Gabriel inquired, “Did I have supper today?” “Yes”, I answered, “You ate steak, and corn on the cob, a big roll, fruit salad, green beans and dessert.”
Our daughter Debbie was also visiting from Texas, with our six-month old grandson Graham (who was upstairs sleeping). Debbie was eating a small dish of ice cream in the living rooming where Grandma Julie and I were sitting.
Gabriel said, “I am still hungry”. Grandma said you can have some applesauce and proceeded to get the individual sized plastic cup of applesauce from the refrigerator. Gabriel sat at the kitchen table; spoon in one hand and the applesauce container in the other. He slowly started to loudly slurp the applesauce from its container.
Grandma said, “Don’t ‘slurp’, use your spoon.” I added, “Use your spoon”. Gabriel and I were about ten yards apart, but were looking at each other (we both were tired). He proceeded to put the spoon straight up on top of his head as if it were an Indian feather, and continued to slurp the applesauce from its plastic container.
I said, “Stop slurping; use your spoon to eat or that’s it, no more applesauce!” Gabriel took his spoon, got a big glob of applesauce on the spoon, put the spoon close to his mouth, and while we were this ten yards from each other we were eyeball to eyeball. Then it happened. He started to loudly slurp the applesauce from the spoon.
I said, “That’s it!” I stormed over to the kitchen table, grabbed the applesauce container to the sink and dumped its contents, and then said, “Get to bed!”
Silent tears were welling. Grandma became the ambassador to usher Gabriel upstairs and I proceeded to sit back in my chair in the living room. My daughter held up her spoon she had used to eat her ice cream and in a feigned voice said, “I used my spoon.”
I let a couple of minutes go by and proceeded upstairs to hear most of the storybook that Julie was reading to Gabriel. We had our hugs and talked about a “better day” tomorrow.
I told this story to our good friends, the Blackwells, when we went to dinner last evening. They have a new six-month old grandson now, too, and were very interested in the event. Bob said, "As you will remember from the movie 'Jurassic Park', they stated that the Raptors (Bob was drawing an analogy between these vicious meat eating dinosaurs and human children) are going to challenge the electric fences". "Sometimes", Bob stated, with a knowing smile, "you just have to turn up the voltage".
