2008, Brooke and Matt had their second child, a girl. Not long after my son and his family moved to Vancouver, Canada. They not only had the nerve to move, they took my grandchildren with them—and this is their first time back. Brooke and the kids have been visiting Sonoma for a month. Satchel is six but tall enough to look like eight. We do our favorite things: cook eggs (he scrambles), play dominoes (he wins), draw dragon pictures (he makes good castles, I make good trees), bake chocolate chip cookies (he does it all, “let me, let me,” other than cracking open the eggs as eggshells in the batter are a drag), and eat at his favorite restaurant, The Red Grape.
Last week we had lunch there. Pemba greets us at the door. He remembers Satchel and is pleased to see him again. They make small talk, he seats us, and then returns to take our order. “What would she like?” Pemba asks. I stick my head behind the menu, lean in and whisper, “He.” Flustered, Pemba apologizes to Satchel and says he’d gotten confused and had thought he was a boy, and…
Satchel says “That’s okay,” and as Pemba walks away, my grandson mutters, “That is sooo irritating.”
“Well, I can see how people get confused. Why do you think that is?”
“My hair,” he says, which is now down to the middle of his skinny little back.
“Okay, what could you do about it?”
“I could cut it.”
“And when do you think that might be?”
He pauses, considering the question. “When I’m ten.”
“So here’s the deal: upon occasion for the next four years, you get to be irritated.”
We play tic-tac-toe (he wins) until our order comes.
July 2009
Sparkles ~ My granddaughter is a year and three months, all tutus and sparkles. She waves frantically hello as if she’s truly happy to see you, and kisses you sweetly goodbye as if she truly loves you. I think both are true. New at walking, she careens like a drunken sailor and every fifteen minutes like a clock pinging the quarter-hour, cracks her head on something, howls for nine seconds, and is up and staggering again, exploring her two-and-a-half-foot-high world on the run.
She adores her brother and is as cute as cute can be, but is no shrinking violet. He gets in her face and when she’s had enough, she lets out a banshee wail and latches onto his cheek or arm like a five-clawed lobster, digging her adorable little painted fingernails right in. She did it to me once, and I see why he stopped bugging her. It’s brutal, and no, I wasn’t teasing her. I think she was just letting me know for future reference who might be in charge if the question were to arise.
Between head nodding, signing (quickly tapping her fingers together for “more”), and a vocabulary sufficient to get one through any domestic area or foreign country, she communicates succinctly and clearly.
She finally has hair, soft tufts of blonde. Her mother cut it so you could see her little neck. Wrong head. I now have one grandchild who is constantly mistaken for a girl and the other who could be taken for a boy.
They are returning to Canada in a few days. Their poppa misses them terribly. I know exactly how he feels.
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