Reopening the Door to Childhood

The Boston Globe

We play this game, my grandbabies and I. "How old are you?" I ask Lucy and Adam. And they say sometimes, when they want to "2!" And they will hold up their pointer and their middle finger and grin, the pair of them eager and earnest and proud. Then I say, "I'm 59! " And I count, 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8 . . . all the way to 59. And they gape at me, not because I'm old to them anyone bigger than they are is old but because I can count all that way.

And that makes me the smartest person in the world.

I love this. I love seeing the look in their eyes when we sing a song and I know all the words. I love naming things never mind that I'm reading the names of animals and insects and birds (What is a yellow-bellied marmot, anyway?) out of books.

I love that I can reach into a cabinet, take pots and pans, turn them upside down, and bang on them with a wooden spoon and make the babies laugh and want to play "drums," too. I love that they're impressed because I can do a puzzle (Fisher-Price) and blow huge bubbles. And make Play-Doh people and do "Plainsies, clapsies, roll-the-ball-tabapsies" without dropping the ball.

I love being smart and adored and on a pedestal again.

I was there once, a long time ago. I was brought dandelions and buttercups plucked from the yard. I was waved to from a school bus, rushed to after a morning with friends: "I miss you, Mommy." I was feted with pictures and notes and I-love-yous, in block print and red crayon, and chosen always to be the one to sit next to on the couch, at the movies, in a restaurant. I was the sun and the moon and the North Star to each of my children gentle arms wrapped around my neck, hair that smelled like the outdoors in my nose. "Watch me, Mommy." "Look!" "I need." "I want." "Don't leave me.”

I watched. I looked. I gave. And I stayed for as long as I was allowed.

But children grow up, and one day the child who swore you were the best mother in the world, who couldn't get enough of you ("Are you going out again, Mommy? Please stay home.") wakes up and wants nothing to do with you. ("Will you please not kiss me goodbye in front of my friends, Mother? And could you not stand at the door and wave?") The perfect little child who thought you were perfect, too, suddenly sees nothing but your flaws and realizes that you don't make the best pancakes in the world and that you don't know the words to all the songs and what kind of music are you listening to, anyway? 

The door to childhood closes not with a whimper but with a succession of bangs. Thumping up the stairs, a bedroom door slam ming, and noise, a.k.a. music, drumming from that now distant room. And the dandelions in the front yard, flowers for so many years, with the banging of that door turn into weeds again.

But what you don't know, what no one tells you, is that the door to childhood isn't locked. Turn the handle and there's magic again and you're magic again. But the trick is that only children can open the door. And adults can enter only when a child takes their hand.

My grandbabies have taken mine. They have led me back to a place where I lived when I was a child, where I stayed for many years when my children were young, and where I visited all the summers my young cousin came to stay.

For it doesn't have to be your children or your children's children who take you to this place of coloring books and crayons. Take any child's hand and you're there. Adam grabs my neighbor Katherine's watering can and says, "Yook! Water!" and she's there, on the top of the pedestal, too.

It's a fine place to be, and I am grateful every time my grandbabies put me there. I know it's not permanent. But I like what I see, my grandchildren, their childhood, my children's childhood, and pieces of my childhood, too.