Pint-Size Time Machines

I was an only child who wanted just one thing. A brother. A sister. A baby in the house. I wished for this my whole childhood, on every first star, on every dandelion gone to seed, on every wishbone, on every word spoken in unison with someone else, and on my birthday every year when I blew out the candles on my cake.

Eyes squeezed shut and fingers crossed, I prayed. too. But I never got what I wanted.

Or so it would seem.

Except that now, many years later, I have exactly what I wished for back then. Not just one small person who thinks I'm wonderful, but four of them. A little boy to play "Go Fish" with. And do puzzles. Three little girls who like it when I put ribbons in their hair. Four children who beg to be read to, to be sung to, to be pushed higher, to be tickled and chased, who see me at their door or in my kitchen and run to me and smile.

Not my mother’s children, but my children's children.

But does it matter?

What if the psalmists are right "A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past" and the universe simply doesn’t count time the way we do. Five years? Fifty years? Maybe my wishes were somewhere in space along with so many other people’s hopes and dreams that they took a while to be heard. A long while, if you’re counting the days. But if time is irrelevant?  

Then haven’t my wishes come true?

I think this as I play Jacks with my grandchildren and War. And hopscotch in the driveway. I think this as I color inside the lines (“Mimi, you do such a good job!) and as I sing "Old McDonald" and "Found a Peanut." all 9,000 verses. I think this as we watch old movies — Mary Poppins and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm. And as we run and skip and laugh and hide. I think how amazing it is and how lucky I am to be plucked out of adult life and set down in the middle of childhood.

My grandchildren are my time machine. They make me forget, for a while anyway, until they wear me out and I’m collapsed on the couch wondering how I will ever move again, that I’m not a kid, too. They make me turn off the computer and the news and turn on Dora and get down on the floor and shout along with them, "Swiper, no swiping! Swiper, no swiping!"

Lucy is 5 and Adam is 4 and Charlotte is 22 months and Megan is 19 months and every time I am with one of them or all of them, I think of the song from Big — the Musical,  "Stop Time,"  because stop time is what I want to do for them because this is what they do for me.

Last week I was with my youngest grandchild in New York City because her parents, my son, had to work and her day care was closed. My daughter, Lauren, and her daughter, Lucy, came along. And life as we usually live it, stopped. We did nothing but play for five days. We never picked up a newspaper. We never watched TV. We read children's books (Knuffle Bunny was my favorite) and we listened to children’s music and we hid potatoes under stacking blocks and dressed and undressed dolls. And we walked and walked and walked.

We walked all over the Upper West Side. We walked to Riverside Park and to Central Park where we let the kids explore. We walked to Key West Diner and to Sarabeth's where we all filled up on French toast and eggs. We walked to Barnes & Noble, where we found new books to read, and to FAO Schwarz, where there were even more books, plus toys. And to Magnolia's where we ate cupcakes and to Beard Papa where we ate cream puffs. And to the American Museum of Natural History.  

We walked. We ate. We played. We explored. We sang. And we smiled. And on the sixth day we kissed Megan good-bye and got in the car to drive home. 

But the magic didn't end there because we listened to Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella for the next 224 miles. The magic didn’t end until Lucy and her mom got out of the car. That’s when time readjusted itself. In the silence of the car.

Plucked out of childhood and back to real life, I drove home humming "Stop Time," knowing we had done that for a while.