Caring for Baby's a Timeless Pleasure
/The Boston Herald
Sometimes I pretend I'm her mother. That's OK, isn't it? Sometimes, when I'm walking my granddaughter all over town, I look up and see how much the town has changed in 35 years and how much I have changed, too.
But sometimes I think how nothing has changed. How it's all the same, really. The world, my town, the sun rising and setting, a permanent backdrop. And for a few crazy, giddy seconds, time slips out of sequence and I pretend that the baby in the carriage isn't my granddaughter at all, but mine.
The carriage I push is different, of course. It's multipurpose and sturdy. So is the car seat. Lucy can go from being driven to being pushed without being disturbed. And the baby in the carriage? She's dressed in pink, and the first baby I walked was all in blue. I see this.
I see all the physical differences. There are so many more houses and fewer trees than there used to be. The groan of traffic is loud and steady. So many things are gone: the old wooden bridge, the woods behind the football field, Pozzo's, The Acorn Shop. And so many people are gone, too - Mr. Durkee, Father Driscoll, Mr. and Mrs. Bernazzani, Mr. Bright.
But I also see how much remains the same.
I'm the same. I may not look it but I'm the same person I was when the carriage I pushed was a big English pram, a gift from my mother-in-law, and the child in it was my firstborn. I feel the same joy heading out the door - excited, happy, proud, the ground underneath me, the sky above and the air I breathe no different now than they were then.
So what that the teenage girl who used to babysit for my children is a woman now with three children of her own. I see her waiting for the school bus with her oldest daughter and I wave and think, ``She's all grown up.'' I understand this. I understand that my youngest daughter's best friend - who used to be the total tomboy, do cartwheels on my front lawn and eat everything in sight - is 26 now and all female and beautiful. I understand that the clock has been ticking and time has been passing and those decades have come and gone.
But it's hard to believe in time when you're pushing a baby carriage and the air is as clear as it always is in late October and the leaves are falling as they always fall and you're looking down at a baby, and not into a mirror or back at the past.
The shape of the streets is the same, straight in some places and all curves in others. The stone walls. The old houses. The churches. Even the people are the same, just older now - or younger.
Life is short. That's what you hear over and over, but that's what you don't believe. Not when you're young, because when you're a kid it takes forever to get from Thanksgiving to Christmas, never mind being 30 someday. And then when you're 30 - how did you get to be 30? - you begin to think that maybe there's something to this. Maybe life is shorter than you think.
But the days are long and you're busy and you're always tired because someone has a cold and someone else has a project due and someone is always awake in the middle of the night. There's work and meetings and it is impossible to believe for more than a minute that life is short when a single day can feel like forever.
I walk my granddaughter down the streets where I walked my own children a quarter of a century ago.
“What's that?'' I played with my youngest. ``What's that?'' she said pointing to the sky. ``Sky'' I said, answering her.
“What's that?''
“Tree.''
“What's that?''
“Fence.''
I felt like Adam naming things.
Lucy is too young to play ``What's that?'' But I play it anyway. ``That's the sky,'' I tell her, pointing up. ``And this is a leaf,'' I say, tickling her face with an orange one. ``And what's this?'' I say, sticking my head in the carriage. ``This is a Mimi,'' I tell her.
Mimi. Not Mama. But sometimes for a little while on a little walk, I pretend they're the same.
