Grandparenting- Paradise Regained

June 10, 2005

The Boston Herald

He loved them instantly, more than all the other wind-up things in the room. He looked at them in wonder, the way his mother did when she was his age. It was the first time I saw the baby she used to be in him.

The old notes trilled, “Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?'' while two ceramic pigs, the size of my grandson's thumb, twirled and danced on a tiny ceramic stage.

And he watched and smiled.

His mother used to watch and smile with the same look of wonder. The pigs lived in a glass cabinet in the front hall, back then, with other singing things: Little Lulu, Mickey and Minnie Mouse, an Irish step dancer, a kilted Scotsman, with a half-dozen little music boxes and a big lacquered one. But the pigs were her favorite. My other children hardly noticed them. She couldn't get enough of them.

“Dat?'' her son says now whenever he's close to the shelf where this object of his affection sits. And I take it down and wind it up and the music plays and the pigs whirl and he laughs and claps his hands.

He has all kinds of toys that do all kinds of things but it's the twirling pigs that fascinate him.

And this tugs at me.

People tried to tell me about this feeling. For years I kept hearing how being a grandparent is  “the best.'' But I never believed because I knew for certain that I'd already had the  “the best'' - being a parent. And that nothing else could come close. 

And then my first grandchild, Lucy, was born.

She's almost 2 now, the age her mother was when I would walk her in her carriage all over town pointing out things, saying the words out loud: ``Tree. Flower. Sky. Bird. Truck. Car. Dog.'' I felt like Adam in the Garden of Eden, giving things names, discovering new things.

Now, walking Lucy, I feel like Adam again, rediscovering. Returned to the garden. Paradise regained.

“Tree, Flower. Wall. Sky. Birdie,'' I say to her. And she smiles up at me. Her mother's smile.

I savor these moments because I know how fast they go. I linger where I used to hurry. I pay attention to everything.

I wind up the dancing pigs and my grandson laughs and when they stop dancing I wind them up again. I sit with Lucy on the stone wall in front of the high school and we look at the trucks and the cars going by. Dinner waits. The overgrown grass waits. Everything waits.

This is the gift of grandparenting and why grandparents say it's the best: You find yourself back in Paradise. You find yourself, because of a little girl's smile and a little boy's awe, back in a perfect place you never thought you'd return to and that you never want to leave.