My two favorite days of the month are when I have Shannon (almost 2!) to myself on every other Friday, when Erin has to work but doesn’t have daycare. They spend Thursday night here so I get some mom-daughter time as well. And on Friday mornings Shannon goes with me on my rounds. It really is a collision of the two passions in my private world, and sometimes the joy is almost overwhelming.
We’ve been doing this almost a year, and I wonder what her toddler brain processes. Let’s see… “Nama” has a bunch of cats at home that it seems like she feeds all day… but then we get in the car… and drive into some woods and to a farm and a parking lot… and she feeds some more? As she gets older, she’ll start to understand what it’s about: compassion and love for all critters, especially those without a home.
Right now, though, for her it’s just an opportunity to go for a drive to pretty places while eating snacks in the car (always snacks!), singing songs at top volume (“Old MacDonald” and “Happy Birthday” are favorites) and seeing kee-tees! which she adores.
(The kee-tees are less enthused; they scatter when she bellows “HI!” at top volume.)
There are moments when I see in her clear and open eyes a glimmer of understanding. The other day, I opened the garage door and was about to put her in her car seat when I noticed a snail on the driveway behind the car. “Oops,” I told her, “Let’s put the snail where it’s safe.” I picked it up and she followed me over to the bushes, where I lay it gently down. She pointed to it, and looked into my face. “Snail,” she said. “Safe.” She lingered another minute, looking at it in wonderment.
And I felt a moment of hesitation. I was n-e-v-e-r as tender and woke as I am now; as a child I remember pouring salt on snails and watching them curl up and foam. I don’t expect her parents (especially her father) are at all concerned about snail safety. And maybe there’s a reason it takes most people until their senior years to have their eyes and hearts pried open; maybe children need a tougher skin to get through those critical early years. Am I doing her a disservice to model such bordering-on-neurotic reverence for life?
I suppose it’s possible, but I choose to see it as teaching her quietly, from my grandmaternal pulpit. And any minute now, she could decide I’m completely nuts, which is what kids do in every generation. I just hope some of it sinks in.
In some cultures, the grandparent is the family member charged with a child’s spiritual growth. In this one, grandparents are often not part of that inner circle, and shunted off to the side, where they’re held in the same regard as DeSoto cars and Jello-and-tuna pie. I’m lucky to be trusted enough to be the kind of hands-on grandma I always wanted to be; the kind my mother was.
I have said for two years now that nothing would make me happier than to retire and be Shanny’s nanny. But that will take a significant change of fortune (or perhaps the sale of my kids’ book?) because I live in the Bay Area and can’t afford to retire. In the meantime, I get her every other Friday and can fill her little brain with my well-meaning propaganda.
“Where kee-tee go?” she demanded one rainy morning, after Prince Harry disappeared into the bushes after his breakfast. “Wha’ happened tee-tee?” She peered into the ravine searching for a glimpse of his blond mane as I held an umbrella over her red head.
“Harry went to get out of the rain,” I told her. “Harry doesn’t have a home. It’s why it’s good that we feed him.”
She looked up at me with a wide stare, and took my hand to walk thoughtfully back to the car.