Catherine Sevenau is a writer and storyteller who is out to capture your skittery mind. She's penned three books, compiled numerous collections of family genealogy, and has been a regular columnist in the SUN since 2016. She can be reached at [email protected].
Tales of Grandchildren: Matching red noses
My grandson is three and this is my second time to have him for an extended period at night. His parents are in San Francisco, returning around 11p.m.
We spend the afternoon and evening cooking, eating and reading the books I read to his father and his Uncle Jon when they were his age.
Getting him into his dragon pajamas, I tell him it’s time to go home.
“NOOOO! I want to stay here!”
“C’mon. I’m supposed to have you home and in bed in an hour.” Satch throws himself on the floor, kicking and screaming, possessed. I’m surprised, as he’s such an even-keeled little guy. I scoop him up and head downstairs. Trying to escape, he nearly throws us both down the staircase. Then he hurls himself to the floor.
“Satchel, get up and stop it.”
His screaming escalates. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to smack your bottom.” What I really wanted to do was take a fire hose and blast him, but I didn’t have one handy.
“Okay. I warned you.” I lift him up by his skinny little arm and give him a swat on the butt. He’s so shocked, he stops his caterwaul. He then melts down, well beyond the point of being able to get ahold of himself.
Driving him home as he hiccoughs through sobs in his rear car seat, I pass my friend Rhonda’s house, and think, maybe a third person can snap him out of this. Thank god she’s home. We pick figs and pears and slice them up on her back porch. Then she brings out a box of magic toys and Satchel and I put on matching red noses. She takes our picture, noting we look quite a lot alike. He’s calmed down, though is still not himself.
It’s well past sunset by the time I deliver him home, but as I try to put him to bed, the tears return. For the next hour and a half, I sit on their front porch steps in the dark, rocking him, his wracking sobs punctuate his drift toward sleep.
When Matt and Brooke return, I relay how the evening went. I silently hand him over, they tuck him in his crib, and I’m out of there, as exhausted as he is.
Matt calls the next day, not happy with me. “We don’t spank him. you know.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Did you spank us when we were kids?”
“Apparently not enough,” I respond.
“You did too, you spanked us with the wooden spoon!”
“I did not, I chased you with the wooden spoon. I never spanked you, not once, and Aunt Liz was the first one to spank Jon, an event he’s still not recovered from.
“Look Matt, I want to honor how you raise your child. But I’m telling you, if he ever pulls that again, you’re coming to get him. And by the by, what do you suggest I should have done?”
“We put him in his bedroom and hold the door knob so he can’t get out.”
I didn’t see Satchel for a couple of weeks. Supposedly he was still miffed, but I’m pretty sure kids don’t hang onto things that long. The small kids, anyway. When he returns, we go to the park and I push him in the swing.
He asks tentatively, “Oma, can we go to your house?”
“Forget it. Last time we were at my house you got upset and I got in trouble.”
Looking up with the same brown eyes his father had when he was little, my grandson says in a soft voice, “Then maybe can we go next week?”
“On one condition. When I ask you to do something, you don’t throw a hissy fit when you don’t get your way. Deal?”
“Deal!” he promises, and we solemnly shake on it.
