Jingle All the Way

"I told you it was outside, Granma," Adella said.

And so it was. Marshall's favorite Christmas book, Jingle Bugs. For two days I had been looking for the book. I had sorted through three baskets of my one hundred Christmas books. (Yes, my Christmas book addiction is due for an intervention.) I looked under the couch and in the toy baskets. But it was just as Adella said. When the snow cleared, there was the book in the middle of my front lawn. According to Adella, Marshall had dropped the book on his way to the car. If only I had listened to her. If only she had just picked it up.

I am sad. This book is important. It is the first book that Marshall will sit and read with me cover to cover. I like to think it is because Granma's lap is warm and cuddly and my engaging rendition is worthy of a Grammy. But I know it is really because two-and-a half-year-old Marshall likes to be in control. He enjoys pulling the tab that reveals Santa Bug jumping out of the chimney. He likes lifting the beautifully wrapped present flap that reveals three different sizes of Gift-wrapped Bugs. He especially loves the final page, which has a yellow, shiny Starbug at the top of a Christmas tree that flashes on and off as "Jingle Bells" plays, for we always play a little game, a sort of singing version of musical chairs. When he pulls the tab out to start the music, I sing along to the first verse of "Jingle Bells." When he pushes the tab in to stop the music, I stop singing. We play back and forth, starting and stopping, for several rounds. Because the song is cued to always start at the beginning, I rarely make it past "Dashing through the snow." Only if he is distracted do I make it to "Jingle bells." We enjoy our little game immensely. Marshall enjoys controlling how Granma responds. I enjoy sitting before a book with my grandson, my first step in teaching him to read.

The retrieved book is very wet. Two days in the snow will do that. I am sad. Very sad. I love Jingle Bugs. So much so that I replaced my original copy of it, the one I used to read to my own children, after a rather unfortunate mishap three years ago. On that fateful day, Adella, who was two, had pulled out the music tab on the final page so far that I could not push it back in, creating a "Jingle Bell" hell. It was truly "The Song that Never Ends." I tried and tried to push and pull that worn tab to stop the music. All to no avail. 

Then when I could not silence the book, I tried muffling its sound, certain its battery would soon die. I put the book between the cushions of my couch and under several pillows on my bed. I even hid it in the garage. But I could not escape the noise. Oh, the noise! So I confess that I, an avowed book lover, then committed bibliocide, ripping and stabbing the book, crushing its very innards until it was silenced.

After a day of drying, Jingle Bugs 2.0 is very fragile. We sit down to read it. Marshall unintentionally pulls off the wings of the Snowbug, and we cannot unstick the tab that moves the Jingle Bugs on the mistletoe. But the battery is still strong. Perhaps too strong. The snow has not short-circuited it. The book still plays "Jingle Bells" and its star still brightly flashes. As we play our game, Marshall pulling the tab and me singing, I begin to worry. How long will this tab, weakened by two days in the elements, last. Will Marshall repeat history and launch Jingle Bugs 2.0 in an endless round of its theme song?

I carefully weigh my options. I can distract Marshall and then hide the book. But, I think, what's a grandmother for if not to teach her grandchild to appreciate books. Or we can read the book until it breaks. But such a step risks my very sanity. 

Or I can simply order Jingle Bugs 3.0. And so I shall. True Christmas classics never die. Thanks to batteries and Amazon.

Christmas Calendar Remorse

Granma cheated. Adella asked to open a second present from our family Christmas calendar similar to the one Pop Pop had as a child--a blue Danish calendar with twenty-four red numbers and little rings for presents. Granma had missed the mark with Adella’s first present, a glitter pen. Because we were a day behind, both Adella and Marshall opened a present that day. Adella looked at the glitter pen and then at the light up Paw Patrol ball Marshall opened up. She was not satisfied. So, Adella, being Adella, asked to open a second present. Granma, being Granma, said “Yes.”

Adella tore into the second package, a small Paw Patrol coloring sheet and crayons. It far better suited her expectations. But almost immediately she began experiencing Christmas calendar remorse. I had allowed her to skip ahead, breaking tradition by opening a present two days early. One present per day was a hard and fast rule in her five-year-old mind, and she had defied the true order of Christmas.

Adella pouted in her remorse until she came up with a solution. “I know Granma,” she said. “We can wrap this and put it back up on the Christmas calendar.”

“Well. . . ,” I said.

“I promise I won’t remember what it is,” she added.

Highly unlikely. But I understood her remorse. I often experience remorse. Usually after a major purchase like an appliance, a car, or a house. Any remorse over a Paw Patrol toy, however, would be related to my succumbing yet again to a heavily hyped, mass marketed cheap tchotchke.

“Don’t worry,” I assured her. “I am sure we will have enough presents.”

I knew what Adella did not know. First, she did not know that I abhor wrapping presents. I was not about to wrap a present a second time to assuage her remorse. Second, she did not know that the traditions surrounding the Christmas calendar are not as codified as she believes. During the busy years when her mother was a teenager, the presents almost never got wrapped and attached to the calendar. I simply threw trinkets at my three kids. Third, she did not recognize the generous margin of error in Granma’s Christmas calendar, for Adella is not at my house everyday in December. And in case of raging sibling rivalry, I have a generous stash of extra presents in my bedroom. And finally, she did not know (and perhaps will never know) that one year early in my marriage, I ate all the chocolates in an Advent calendar my mother-in-law sent me in a single sitting.

I do not know what happened to the Paw Patrol coloring sheet and crayons. It mysteriously disappeared. More than likely it found its way into one of the myriad of backpacks or suitcases that Adella dutifully totes between my home and hers. But I do know that her remorse was short-lived. Today, without pause or remorse, she gleefully opened a new present.

That Damn Car

Adella and I are cuddle bugs. We are cuddling in the comforter on Uncle Daniel’s bed with a copy of Where’s Waldo? Adella keeps poking me because I keep nodding off. She wants my help. Even after thirty years of practice, I still need a few minutes to find Waldo on any given page.

Adella keeps chattering away about her upcoming Christmas visit to Grandma Kemp as we search. Her chatter is soporific--I am battling to keep my eyes open. I am not winning.

Then Adella says it.

“I wish I didn’t have to go in that damn car,” Adella says.

I sit up in bed. I am now wide awake.

“Which car?” I say calmly. I darn well know which car. But I want to give her a chance to correct herself.

“That damn car,” she says.

No doubt about it. She has most definitely said damn. Damn effectively expresses how she feels about the interminably long six-hour ride from New Jersey to Ohio. (Sometimes eight hours, when you add in all those potty breaks.) Adella, however, does not sense the weight this word carries.

I do not want to draw attention to the word, making it all the more tantalizing. So I employ that time-honored parental technique--I choose to ignore her colorful language.

“It is a long time to ride in the car,” I say. “But isn’t it fun when you get there?”

And as she chatters about her Christmas plans in Ohio, I wonder just where she has learned this word. Adella is only five. Except for preschool and church, she spends nearly every waking moment with either her parents or me.

Adella’s foray into expressive language reminds me of a car ride twenty years ago, a routine jaunt to the preschool to drop off my three-year-old son Daniel. Startled when the car in front of me suddenly stopped short, I slammed on my brakes and sucked in an enormous breath of air. And then, without skipping a beat, Daniel shouted out from the backseat, “Damn it!” 

That day Daniel reformed me of peppering my language with an occasional salty word like hell or damn.

Where did Adella pick up her first four-letter word? Was it at preschool? Probably not from the nuns or her teachers. Another child on the playground? Perhaps. But I sure as heck know, it wasn’t from me.

Lost and Found

At the time, allowing Adella and Marshall an hour’s worth of playtime in Granma’s bedroom seemed the best way to allow the cable installer an unobstructed hour or two to run wires throughout the house. But as I surveyed the aftermath, I began to question the wisdom of that decision. An entire deck of cards was strewn about, two side chairs had been moved to a corner in order to create a display shelf for a pretend store dealing in paperweights and Happy Meal toys, the bench at the foot of my bed was overturned, the quilt on top of it spread over the floor, the rug was littered with toys, and the bed, a temporary trampoline, was disheveled. Needless to say Adella and Marshall had a blast, but chaos reigned in my bedroom.

After the installer left and their father had collected Adella and Marshall, I considered my good fortune that I had never been required to share a bunker with these two cherubs during a zombie apocalypse. Then I set about restoring order. As I was vacuuming, I stopped to rescue Buzz Lightyear’s Spaceship (circa 1995) from under the dust ruffle that had valiantly fulfilled its purpose collecting dust. While I was down on my hands and knees, I decided I might as well vacuum under the bed. After rescuing a few coins, collecting a few crumpled scraps of paper and  two cellophane wrappers for juice box straws at the border of the bed frame, I pushed the small vacuum attachment a little further under the bed. Then I saw something dark blue. I was not sure what it was. I reached in a little further and pulled it out.

“Aha, she cried as she waved her wooden leg into the air,” I said out loud. I have no idea what the phrase means. But my grandmother used to say the phrase whenever she was pleasantly surprised. So when serendipity surprises me, I too use the phrase. It gives me some sense of satisfaction to say it. That is, if no one else is around to question my sanity. Then I only exclaim it in my head.

There it was. A miniature blue plastic New York Yankee batting helmet, just about the size to easily fit Beverly Cleary’s beloved mouse protagonist Ralph in The Mouse and the Motorcycle series. (Did I have a mouse taking up residence under my bed?) It also fits neatly on a square of a checkerboard. It was the twelfth and final helmet to complete my checkers set. I had found it.

The helmet was part of a checkers game my two sons had given my husband several years ago for his birthday. Twelve Baltimore Orioles (my husband’s team) helmets and 12 Yankees (my sons’ team)  helmets. A few months earlier Adella, Marshall and Jim had found this checkers set. They loved playing with these helmets, sometimes placing them on Sheriff Woody or Buzz Lightyear, sometimes testing how high they could stack be stacked, but usually they danced on fingers or were dropped off the landing in the front hall. And I usually collected the helmets at the end of the day and put them in their box.

Some days, I collected complete sets of helmets for both teams. Other days one or two errant helmets would escape under a chair or a dresser, hidden until a cleaning spree. But it did not matter. Marshall cannot count. And although Adella and Jim can count to twenty-four, they have not yet developed a one-to-one correspondence with numbers that large. As far as they knew twenty helmets looked the same as twenty-four. And they did not yet know how to play checkers. They did not need to line the helmets in two rows on the checkerboard because the checkerboard was irrelevant to their play.

The missing helmets always seemed to return home. Like homing pigeons. I might not find all the helmets on any given day, but eventually they all come home to roost. It had been some time since I had possessed a complete set. But here it was. The last Yankee helmet. I felt as joyous as the woman in the parable of the lost coin. True I had not been searching for the helmet. True it was not as valuable as a piece of silver. But, nonetheless, I was overjoyed at my discovery of something that had been lost and now was found.

In fact, in my home, it seems that most toy parts eventually find their way back. I still have a complete set of twenty-four Christmas mini-books, even though my grandchildren scatter the books throughout my house all year. Last week I found the black knight, no more than an inch high, under the living room ottoman. It fit snugly into its spot in the magnetic folding chess set my children inherited from Aunt IV twenty years ago. After three children and three grandchildren, the set was still complete with all thirty-two miniature chess pieces.

I am not sure why these toys always seem to find their way home. My home is usually a sinkhole for household items. Spoons and forks disappear, requiring me to restock my utensil drawer every few years. Unmated flip flops proliferate like bunnies in my mudroom. My coat closet is home to a basket of mismatched mittens and gloves. And in my basement, for twenty-five years, a lonely argyle sock that belonged to my father has sat at the bottom of an entire basketful of socks waiting hopelessly for mates. And yet my toys always seem to be found.

Why? Are there alternate universes in my home? If my husband is to be believed, aliens are responsible for all those missed socks. And I have long suspected munchkins wreak havoc in my home during the wee hours of the morning. But when it comes to the toys, does Toy Story have it right? Do Sheriff Woody and Buzz Lightyear really come to life whenever I leave a room?  Is it their mission to return my toys? If so, I admire their true grit, for my Woody is a double arm amputee--one at the shoulder, the other at the elbow-- and my Buzz is missing a leg. Actually I suspect a transgenerational toy karma, a sort of cosmic cause and effect, is at play in my home, restoring order to my world of toys. The more beloved and used a toy by a child in one generation, the more assured its position is in the next generation. Hence, older, worn, treasured toys are more likely to survive the chaos of my home.

A few months ago, I thought my luck had run out. The vintage Holgate block set my mother-in-law Alberta had given me was missing its twelfth block, a blue cube necessary for the colorful rectangular and square blocks to fit snuggly into the green little pull cart in which they were stored. Week after week, when I brought out the cart with only eleven blocks for my grandchildren, I felt great guilt. Alberta had entrusted me with this heirloom, the blocks she had stacked and the cart she had pulled as a child. The same blocks both my husband and our children had stacked whenever they visited their grandparents on holidays and vacations. And now, each Sunday afternoon, my grandchildren were playing with an incomplete set.  

I was baffled. In the past, lost blocks usually had usually resurfaced every week or two. But not this time. So I cleaned my house in earnest. I searched under couch cushions, rugs, and the kitchen table, behind curtains, chairs and the piano, in toy bins and book baskets, even throughout the refrigerator and under my pillow. But I could not find that block. I was considering the closest match on ebay, but $125 seemed a bit steep for an iffy match. And then it happened. My daughter found the block, which had migrated upstairs to a spot behind her bedroom door. The link between four generations was restored. Clearly transgenerational toy karma.

Now, after all that sturm und drang over a lost blue block, logic would dictate that I store those antique blocks in a closet for just a few more years to preserve them for future generations. (As I have done with the dominoes Scott’s great-grandparents used each Sunday afternoon.) But I do not. I continue to bring out those blocks each Sunday afternoon. And Marshall and Adella and Jim continue to stack those blocks and knock them down and to chase whoever is pulling the cart up and down my halls and around the kitchen island. And each Sunday night, we continue to collect those blocks. Sometimes I do not find them for a day or two. But despite my temporary lapse, I now have confidence I will always find them.

I have now been the guardian of the blocks for two years. None has been lost on my watch. Yet. But Adella and Marshall and Jim did not care. They do not fret over lost and found blocks. They just want to play. They do not realize the mystical staying power of the blocks nor do they realize they are building far more than towers and towns. They are finding their place in a family beyond their self-centered preschool wants and wishes and their sibling and cousin rivalries, beyond their parents and grandparents who praise and scold and love them, a place with their great aunts and uncles, and grandparents many times great, whom they have never met. A place worth far more than the price of vintage blocks on ebay. A place where no matter how lonely and lost they feel, they will always be found.

Breakfast Particulars

When I hear my daughter’s ring tone so early on a Saturday morning, I am expecting an emergency.  Instead, when I answer the phone, I am rewarded with a question a grandmother delights to hear.

“I fixed oatmeal for Marshall this morning, and something wasn’t right. It was as though he had certain expectations,” she says. “Is there something special you do when you eat oatmeal with Marshall every morning?”

My daughter does not like oatmeal. Or any hot cereal for that matter. But she does keep a few packets of instant oatmeal on hand. And when she made some oatmeal for Marshall this morning, he seemed to launch into a foreign ritual.

I smile.

Usually it is I who query my daughter about Marshall’s habits and preferences in order to minimize the number of his toddler tantrums when I care for him. But this fine morning, this very fine morning, my daughter is asking me.  I feel like a village elder who has waited patiently years for the tribesmen to seek him out to learn the wisdom of the ages.

“No, not really,” I reply. There is nothing particularly special about our morning bowl of oatmeal. It is just a bowl of oatmeal.

And yet . . . .

“Maybe there is,” I begin. “I do follow a bit of a routine. Maybe that’s it.”

I am a creature of habit, you see. After many, many years of eating breakfast, I have become particular. Every morning, I prepare and eat a bowl of oatmeal in a particular way. I scatter a scant handful of raisins in the bottom a particular bowl, a rimmed stoneware soup bowl with a shallow broad bottom. Then with a particular scoop, one leftover from Daniel’s utilitarian days as a Soylent liquid meal adherent,  I measure a ½ cup of oatmeal, rolled not quick, that I scatter over the raisins. I add just enough water to cover the flakes, and microwave the bowl for exactly three minutes. 

I then carry the bowl carefully by the rim, as the stoneware bottom is very hot, to a particular spot at the end of my kitchen table and place it on a placemat next to a jug of milk and a soup spoon, not a teaspoon. As I stir my oatmeal, the sound of my spoon clinking against the stoneware bowl--a sound so distinctive my son can identify it over the phone--alerts Marshall that it is time for breakfast and he comes running. By the time he has run to the silverware drawer to retrieve a teaspoon and climbed into my lap, I have pushed the oatmeal to one side of the bowl and poured milk into the other.

Then together we eat.

I cut my spoon into the oatmeal I have mounded on one side, scoop it into the milk on the other side of the bowl and then take a bite. By pouring the milk using a just-in-time method, adding only what is needed for a few bites at a time, I preserve the warmth of the oatmeal until the last bite, ensuring the perfect balance of warm oatmeal and chewy plump raisins and the coldness of the milk in every bite. 

Marshall, on the other hand, just sticks his spoon into the bowl and gets whatever he can balance on it. Sometimes he gets a huge lump of oatmeal, other times just a spoonful of milk. Sometimes he uses his other hand to pick up a raisin or two or a lump of oatmeal and place it on his spoon. Marshall’s spoon-to-mouth skills are still evolving and often some milk is lost to the placemat or either his legs or mine. When his spoon has arrived to his mouth empty a few too many times, I feed him a few spoonfuls, which he happily accepts. Sometimes, when he is not very hungry, he directs a few of his spoonfuls towards me. And if I am quick enough, I slurp up his offerings before they land on my lap.

When Marshall finds the milk in the bowl too scant, he points to the milk jug and waits for me to pour some more. And if I do not pour enough to satisfy him, he points again and says, “More.” And so we spoon and pour and eat. More often than not, when the bowl is empty, when there is no more oatmeal nor raisins, he points again at the jug and demands more milk until I pour it. I am not sure if he is still hungry, wants some more milk to drink, or is using a ploy to extend the moment. I usually pour just a bit more milk, then, leave him on the chair while I put the milk away. More than once I have caught him putting his face into the bowl to slurp up the last of the milk like a kitten.

So, yes, I guess there is something special about how we eat oatmeal together. We do have a routine. It is unusual. Crazy, perhaps. Particular, to say the least. But it is the prerogative of a grandmother to be particular. And though I have come by the particulars of my breakfast rituals on my own, they remind me of both my mother and my grandmother, for both ate hot cereal for breakfast. 

I see my mother in her later years, padding around her kitchen, retrieving from her cupboard a misshapen tin cup to carefully measure first Cream of Wheat and then water into her bowl before microwaving it. And I see my grandmother bustling at her kitchen stove quickly stirring through the steam her pot of cornmeal mush and raisins. And I see them both sitting at their kitchen tables with large tablespoons eating their steaming bowls of hot cereal with milk. The flavors of our morning porridges vary, but I come by a breakfast routine naturally.

I have not always eaten oatmeal for breakfast. As a child I ate my fair share of Alpha-Bits and Cap’n Crunch. But Marshall does not know that. He does not know that my particular routine yields the perfect ratio of warm oatmeal and chewy raisins to icy cold milk. All he knows is that he likes to eat oatmeal with me in my particular way. He does not know that next to the oatmeal in my cupboard I keep my mother’s tin cup or that in a corner of my silverware drawer, next to the spoons we use, I keep my grandmother’s engraved silver tablespoon, sorely in need of polishing. All he knows is the warmth of my lap.

Life Unencumbered

“Oh, no,” Adella says as a box of Kix cereal slips from her hands and scatters all over my clean (for once) kitchen floor.

“Don’t worry,” I calmly assure her. “We’ll clean it up.”

And then I hurriedly rush to sweep up the balls of cereal. It is a race against time. Adella’s cry most certainly has alerted Marshall, who is in the family room, that something has happened. I know Marshall will soon be in the kitchen to investigate. I also know how much Marshall would enjoy the crunchy sound of stomping all these little balls of cereal.

I empty my dust pan into the trash and breathe a sigh of relief just as he arrives. Today, at least, I was faster than Marshall. He surveys the kitchen and then sees a lone Kix in the middle of the floor that I had missed in my sweep. But rather than stomping it, he falls to the floor. He lies flat, arms at his sides, his face next to the ball. For just a second, he stares at it, then he inhales it, gets up, and is off to play with Adella.

I laugh. (I did say my kitchen floor was clean.) I admire his ingenuity and efficiency. I would have bent over and picked up that lone, errant Kix ball. But he cut out an unnecessary middleman--his hands--and sent that Kix straight to his mouth. Unconstrained by adult convention and expectation, he dealt with that cereal ball in a way I never could have imagined. The world he sees is far different from mine.

A few days later, Marshall has found the tall, bright yellow, Fisher Price plastic sorting canister his mother played with three decades ago. He shakes it up and down, delighting in the rumble the shapes inside create. I too am delighted, for I sense a teaching moment. Perhaps I can eke out a little more value from an overpriced educational toy I had purchased as a poor student when I could ill afford it.

I empty the canister, dumping out the red, blue, green and yellow cylinders, rectangular prisms, and cubes onto the floor. I replace the blue sorting lid. Then I show Marshall how to sort the shapes into the canister. First, I pick up a blue plastic cube and exaggeratedly try to push it first through the circular and rectangular shaped holes in the lid. Then I smoothly slip it into the square hole. The cube kerplunks into the canister.

I clap. “Hooray,” I say. Marshall giggles and claps as well.

I hand him a yellow cylinder. He tries pushing the round peg into the square hole. It does not fit. It does not fit through the round hole either. Marshall lacks the dexterity to align the cylinder with the circular hole and push it through. So I help him position it directly over the hole, and together we push it into the canister. It kerplunks into the canister.

“Hooray,” I say again. Together we clap. I hug him as he giggles.

I hand him a red cylinder. I watch. I have modeled how to sort for Marshall. We have sorted together. He is in his zone of proximal development. I am curious to see if he can now match the cylinder to the circular hole and push it through himself.

He randomly tries pushing the cylinder through all three holes without success. Then he pauses. He looks carefully at the bucket and its lid. Then he does the obvious. He pulls off the blue top, drops all of the remaining shapes into the bucket, replaces the top, and begins shaking the bucket again, returning to what he had been doing before I had interrupted him with a teaching moment. Once more, he delights in the rumbling of the bucket.

Thus two-year-old Marshall schools me. Twice. And “my heart leaps up.” For he reminds me to behold life as a little child, unfiltered, without the constructs of adulthood. To see the world fresh and anew. In those moments, “the child,” Marshall, “is the father of the man” (me).  

Of course, the most frequent interpretation of this oft quoted line is that the adult Wordsworth hopes to retain the awe and Joy he felt for Nature as a child. The quotation is also often used to convey the sentiment that an adult man (or woman) is the product of the behaviors and habits he (or she) has developed as a child. But when I think of this line I think of my grandchildren and how they teach me to view the world more simply. Marshall and Adella and Jim teach me to cut through the clutter and constraint of my adult life to see a world of Joy and whimsy. And this is why I revel in being a granny nanny.

My education continues every day. This morning Pop Pop left for work as soon as I emerged from my shower. I can hear Marshall babbling in the family room, so I take a few minutes to throw on a bathrobe, brush my teeth and quickly run a comb through my wet hair. By the time I walk into the family room, however, I can no longer hear him. Adella is absorbed in her menagerie of Littlest Pet Shop pets, carefully arranging them on the coffee table for what looks like feeding time.

“Where’s Marshall?’ I ask.

“Don’t know,” she replies, distracted. The animals are restless.

I immediately begin calling for Marshall. I expect to hear a giggle or a babble in response. But there is none. I go upstairs to the bedrooms, downstairs to the play area and laundry room. I look in the living room and the dining room. Still no Marshall.

My threat level moves from yellow to orange. I redouble my efforts. I check favorite hiding spots--the curtains in the dining room, the kitchen cabinets, a favorite nook behind a chair in the family room, my laundry basket, and my bedroom closet. I check the backyard and the basketball bin in the garage. Still no Marshall. Only a deafening silence. I am worried. Two-year-olds cannot not giggle when hiding.

My threat level rises to red as I consider possibilities. Has he crawled in some nook where I cannot hear him? Or is it possible that Marshall slipped out the garage door unnoticed when Pop Pop left for work? Is Marshall roaming my neighborhood?

Then Adella, who has left her pets to join in the search, yells through the kitchen door. “I found him. He’s on your playground.”

I rush outside onto the deck. And sure enough, there he is. Hidden inside the Little Tykes play structure in the backyard, he is merrily playing. He has escaped through the kitchen door someone has left unlocked.

From my perch on the deck, I try to coax Marshall to leave the play structure, climb the stairs and come inside. I am still in my bathrobe and I do not have the luxury of a secluded backyard. Only a split rail fence separates my backyard from those of my three neighbors. I am really hoping they are all at work.

Sensing my frustration, Adella offers a solution.

“I know, Granma,” she says. “Let’s just play outside.”

“Great idea,” I say. “But I’m not dressed yet. I’m still in my bathrobe. I need to put some clothes on before we can play outside.”

I continue practicing the art of gentle persuasion on Marshall. He is not not swayed. He continues playing.

I up the ante. “I have fruit snacks,” I say.

Marshall still does not budge. I am resigned to going down the deck stairs and marching across the yard in all my sartorial glory to grab Marshall. I imagine his kicking and squirming as we return to the house, creating a wardrobe malfunction à la Janet Jackson. Should I offer ice cream?

And then from behind me I hear Adella triumphantly say,  “Here you go, Granma.”

I turn. There she is proudly holding a pair of my jeans in one hand and one of my T-shirts in the other. She has retrieved both from my dirty clothes basket.

“Here’s some clothes for you,” she continues. “Now we can play in the backyard.”

Problem solved. No matter that the clothes are dirty, stinky and wet. No matter that she neglected to bring me any underwear, clean or dirty, along with the clothes. No matter that I do not have the slightest inclination to give my neighbors on three sides, who I am still hoping are not home, a peep show as I dress. (Although when the headliner is as old and wrinkly as I, can it truly be called a peep show?)  No matter. Adella has taken my seemingly complex adult problem, reduced it to its bare essentials, and solved it ignoring the constraints of my adult conventions.

Life simple. Life stripped. Life unencumbered.

And my heart leaps up.

Declaration of Independence

If, as parents, we do our jobs correctly, we teach our children to become independent. We learn not to rush to our infant whimpering in the wee hours of the morning, hoping she will learn to soothe herself back to sleep. We do not corner the Little League coach who relentlessly yells at our son. And we sit back, hoping for that “aha” moment, when our college-bound co-ed realizes she must reconcile her dreams of the perfect dorm room with the reality of her college budget.

Denying our parental instincts to protect our young requires great patience. And if we are honest, we never really want our children to be completely independent of us. For if our adult children truly no longer need us, no longer seek our opinions nor our help, they have probably warehoused us in a long-term care facility, where they visit us once a month. Which is why Pop Pop and I found ourselves babysitting Marshall and Adella for two days. Our daughter Chrissy and her husband Christian needed us to watch their two children for a few days while they celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary.

As grandparents, fostering independence in our grandchildren is even more complicated and requires even more patience, for there are two sets of parents and children in play. And while we grandparents are older and wiser (?) and more experienced, we are also older and more tired and more curmudgeonly. Pop Pop’s and my weekend adventure in babysitting, which began simply enough with a trip to the grocery store, quickly reminded me how difficult it is to muster my reserves of parental patience when a preschooler persists on declaring her independence.

It all started the moment we drove into the Shop Rite parking lot.

“Granma, see those red carts,” Adella says pointing to the bright red child-sized shopping carts with a “Customer in Training” flag at the end of a gray pole. “Them are what us want.”

“Yes, I see them,” I reply. “And you can have one of those carts. But I am going to put Marshall in one of the shopping cart cars.” 

Marshall is just barely two. He is not prone to follow instructions. A green, two-seater with seat belts over the top part of the cart is just the ticket. The child has the illusion of driving the cart, but the adult has complete control.

“No,” Adella wails. “Granma, Marshall needs a red cart like me.”

I do not respond. I park the car. I hope that by delaying, we will at least get across the parking lot without drama. And there is always the off chance she will forget.

Adella, however, senses the urgency of her mission and the need for speed. She quickly unbuckles her booster seat while I fumble with Marshall’s car seat buckles, and soon has Pop Pop by the hand rushing to the little red shopping carts.

“Over here, Granma,” she calls as I am crossing the parking lot with Marshall, who is totally unaware of the brewing drama. He is just happy to be free of the car seat.

“We have the carts for us,” she adds, her hands on two carts. The urgency of her situation, I note, has somehow improved her grammar.

I walk toward the two-seater shopping carts. What did we do before all these child-friendly accoutrements, I wonder. Then I remember. Do-nuts. Today I would certainly be mommy-shamed for my parenting choices.

“No, Granma,” Adella insists. “I have a cart for Marshall.”  

I drop Marshall into the driver’s seat. He starts spinning the wheel.

There is a sliver of an alley between the regular shopping carts and the wall of the building. Adella abandons her red carts and runs down the alley. Then she flops down on a small ledge, where she sits, arms defiantly crossed across her chest, lips pouting.

I cannot squeeze into the space to grab Adella. I must try to talk her out.

“Adella, I need you to come out. We need to buy some food to eat.”

“I’m not coming,” Adella replies.

“Don’t you want to shop with your cart?”

“No,” she replies.

“Vroom, room,” Marshall purrs. The car rattles as Marshall rapidly spins his steering wheel.

Unwisely I have begun this weekend’s adventure in grandparenting without a stocked refrigerator. I want food. I need food. And I have no more than thirty minutes to get it. The clock is ticking on Marshall’s patience. I need Pop Pop’s help.

I am not exactly sure why Pop Pop has accompanied us to the grocery store. On the list of places he would least like to go, the grocery store ranks third, behind the dentist’s office for a root canal, and the doctor’s office for a colonoscopy. He hates the rows and rows of unlimited choices. He hates the uncertainty of a checkout line. (Did I choose the right line? Did I forget anything? How much will it cost? When will we be done?) Perhaps he has joined us as a result of the residual effect of my birthday the day before. Frankly I do not care why. There are two of us. There are two of them. We can divide and conquer.

“You deal with her,” I say to Pop Pop. “I’ve got to get some groceries.”

So Marshall and I disappear into to the store.

“Vroom, vroom, vroom,” Marshall sputters as we steer the cart through the produce section. Quickly I set about selecting Jersey Fresh peaches and plums, tomatoes and peppers. Then I look up and there is Adella. She is pushing two little red mini-carts. Smiling triumphantly. Pop Pop has caved.

“Oh, Marrrr--shullll,” she says with a tantalizing lilt. “Look what I’ve got.”

Suddenly Marshall, who has been blissfully unaware that a mini-shopping cart was an option, is standing up in his car. In my haste to get in the store, I have not strapped him in. He throws his leg over the side. Marshall wants out. Now.

I give Pop Pop the death stare.

“You asked me to deal with her,” he replies. “I did.”

“Then you get to watch them,” I reply to Pop Pop. Obviously Pop Pop has not been in a grocery store for years. A man continually lost in his world of numbers and lines of code, he has nonetheless neglected to calculate the risk of setting Marshall free.

I start shucking corn. I try to pretend I do not know Pop Pop or my grandchildren. Which is worse, I wonder, being identified as that grandparent, the one who allows an unruly grandchild to run rampant or as a dementia patient escaped from a long-term care facility, navigating a grocery store with a kiddie cart with no child in sight. Pretty much six of one, half a dozen of the other, I conclude. But it really does not matter because I do not succeed in my ruse. Marshall views me as some sort of anchor point to which he keeps returning, whipping back and forth past me as he pushes his cart. He is not unlike a kamikaze. Except that a kamikaze has an intended target and strikes only once.

By the time I reach the meat section, Pop Pop has put two and two together and finally realizes the folly of the two-preschoolers, two-cart shopping adventure. So, with ninja-like stealth, Pop Pop swoops up Marshall and  deposits him in my cart. I strap Marshall in before he even realizes what has happened.

I do not say, “I told you so,” although I want to. I do not even bother with a second death stare when I realize it is Pop Pop’s intent to just abandon the little red cart, mid-aisle. Instead I throw some chicken into my cart and sprint toward the dairy section away from the red cart. Just as Marshall believes himself invisible whenever he covers his eyes with his hands, so I believe if I distance myself from that abandoned cart, if I can no longer see it, then no one will identify me as that inconsiderate supervising adult who has allowed it to be left behind.

A quick pace is crucial for Marshall. If I move quickly, he seems placated. Perhaps he thinks we will catch up to Adella and Pop Pop, who are just ahead of us. He is steering his car once again, but he makes no happy motoring sounds. Indeed I sense how fragile his satisfaction is: each time my cart slows, his steering slows and his squirming increases. So I dash through the dairy section, haphazardly throwing items into my cart. Milk. Orange juice. Yogurt. Cheese. Eggs.

And then, in the freezer section, I stop for the slightest of seconds to consider my frozen lasagna choices. As fate would have it, I pause at the exact moment that Adella and Pop Pop turn the corner, disappearing from Marshall’s view. All hell breaks loose. Marshall starts howling and alternately straining forward, reaching after Adella and then contorting backwards towards me, trying to twist his way out of his seatbelt.

I unstrap Marshall, throw him under one arm, quickly swing my cart around the corner, and speed toward Pop Pop, who has just helped Adella pick out a carton of lovely Party Cake ice cream. I shove Marshall at him. We look at each other. It is ten minutes past we-should-have-left-the-grocery-store for Marshall. Fifteen for Pop Pop.

“Let’s just go,” I say.

Pop Pop does not need to think twice. He turns toward the exit.

And then an innocent, sweet little voice, one reminiscent of Cindy-Lou Who confronting the Grinch on Christmas Eve, rings out.

“But Granma,” Adella says, “What about the Play-Doh?”

The Play-Doh. That darn Play-Doh. So clever I had thought myself promising  a cheap, non-sugary reward in exchange for good behavior while shopping. A pox upon my promise, I want to say. But her question is like Kryptonite, decimating my resolve for a quick exit. For I have always prided myself on being a parent who kept her word to her children. I was not about to start with my granddaughter.

“Let’s find that Play-Doh,” I say.

And off we trek to the toy aisle at the exact opposite end of the store in a single file, Granma maneuvering a large, childless kiddie-cart, followed by Pop Pop wrangling a frustrated, whimpering Marshall and Adella bringing up the rear, intently pushing her completely full red cart.

Then, just as I am about to turn down the toy aisle, Adella calls out.

“Oh, Grannn-maaa. . .”

No, I think. She has stopped. We cannot stop. We must not stop. We must keep moving.

I stop. I turn around.

Adella is standing next to an abundant end aisle promotional display deliberately positioned on the lowest, kid-friendly shelf, no doubt. She is holding aloft a package of Jumbo marshmallows.

“We need to hurry Adella if we want to find the Play-Doh,” I urge, my throat tightening as I force my bubbling impatience deep down into my large grandma heart that was shrinking three sizes that moment.

“But, Granma, I need some marshmallows. Can I have some?”  she pleads.

I do not understand her need for marshmallows. With an entire grocery store of decadent offerings, why does she want a simple bag of marshmallows? Marshmallows are sticky, gluey blobs. I do not for one minute believe the results of the Stanford marshmallow experiment. What planet were those researchers on? Simple marshmallows do not tempt young children. How can we trust their results quantifying children's abilities to delay gratification. Mallomars, marshmallows dressed up with a crackly dark chocolate covering and a graham cracker bottom, yes. Plain marshmallows, never. And yet. The marshmallows on a kid-friendly shelf have surely tempted Adella.

“Pleee-eeaze,” Adella asks.

I acquiesce. For efficiency's sake. She perches the marshmallows on the top of her full cart and rushes to catch up. We then reach the toy aisle only to discover it is no longer the toy aisle but the wine section. And after a promise to stop at Walmart for the Play-Doh, we trek back across the store towards the checkout stands.

I turn down an aisle. Hallelujah, I think. I see a checkout stand, just beyond the end of the aisle. It has no line. I lean into my cart. I quicken my pace. My cart with the driverless car speeds towards that check out stand. I see only it. And just as I am about to cross the finish line, Adella calls out.

“Look Granma. The Play-Doh!”

And so it is. An entire wall of Play-Doh. Or so it seems. So we stop just short, at the end of the aisle. Delighted, Adella immediately launches into a monologue discussing the merits of each color.  Who knew there were so many colors of Play-Doh from which to choose?

Pop Pop looks at me. He looks like a man dying of thirst who has crawled across the desert to an oasis only to discover it is a mirage.

“I’m taking Marshall to the car,” he declares. 

Happily, I throw him the car keys. He has fought the good fight. And he is taking Marshall with him.

After much deliberation, Adella decides on blue. (Was there ever any doubt? Blue is her favorite color. Even her imaginary best friend Inga is blue.) And we finally make it to the checkout stand where I begin unloading my groceries.

It is clear this is not Adella’s first rodeo. She quickly unloads the groceries from her cart onto the conveyor belt and then heads to the bagging area. (Gotta love New Jersey: the only state where it’s illegal to pump your own gas but cashiers expect you to bag your own groceries.) Adella climbs the small stoop, leans over the end of the conveyor belt, and begins collecting her goods, which she returns to her little red cart. I throw my last few items on the conveyor belt, pull out my reusable grocery bags (You go, environmentally conscious grandma!), and hurry to Adella. I shake open a bag, and then reach into her cart and pull out a family size box of Go-Gurt and try to put it into the bag.

“Noooo,” Adella cries, grabbing the box back from me. “You can’t take those. I got them. They are mine. They belong in my cart.”

“But,”  I calmly reply, “we have finished shopping. Now it is time to put your things into a bag.”

“No, no, no,” she sobs.

I continue, “How will we put them in the car if we don’t put them in bags?”

But she will have none of my reasoning. So I calculate my tolerance for her stubborn independence. I am a grandma. I am used to my own ways. For forty years, I have carefully separated my ice cream from my salad, my meat from my cereal, and my eggs from canned goods, bagging my groceries so that I might most efficiently transfer them to my cupboards and refrigerator. I am not used to sacrificing the efficiency of my habits for the sake of nurturing the independence of a four-year-old. And what, I wonder, is the line between independence and recalcitrance? I am the grandma, the elder, who knows best. And yet I am still just the grandma, not her parents.

In the end, independence triumphs in this battle of efficiencies: it is more efficient to nurture (indulge) her burgeoning independence than to insist upon my need for efficiently bagged groceries. And my need for an efficient exit clearly trumps all other efficiencies. I want to go home.

So Adella loads her cart and I bag my groceries. And soon we are merrily exiting the store. As we exit the automatic doors, she spies a line of little red carts, waiting for other “Customers in Training.” She stops. She thinks a minute. She realizes she must leave her cart here. She is perplexed. She looks to me.

“Granma,” she says, “How will we get my things to the car?”

And that long dormant parental restraint kicks in, for I am thinking, “If only. . . . If only, you had listened to me in the first place.”

But I say, “Hmmm.”  

Then I pause. For effect as well as to contain both my laughter and my frustration.

“Why don’t we put them in one of my bags?”

Which we do. And as I help gather the plums, the “club size” box of cotton candy Go-Gurt, the marshmallows, the frozen (literally), Frozen (branded) popsicles, the Paw Patrol string cheese and the Party Cake ice cream, I begin to wonder. First, I wonder what planet I was on when Adella filled her little red shopping cart. But then I wonder about the nature of my own presumed independence and the patience of those who love me. For I depend upon my husband and my children, upon friends and benevolent strangers. I still depend upon my parents gone more than twenty years. And I depend upon Him who “lend[s]  [me] breath that [I] may live and do according to [my] own will . . . even supporting [me] from one moment to another.”

“There’s Pop Pop and Marshall,” Adella cries out, interrupting my reverie. Pop Pop is in the passenger side of the car engrossed in his iPad. Marshall is in the driver seat, “driving” my car.

Soon the groceries are loaded into the car and everyone is secure in their carseats. After a minute or two on the road, I finally heave a sigh of relief. Marshall has a popsicle. He is happy. Adella has her marshmallows. She is happy. Scott is out of the grocery store and calculating on his iPad. He is happy. Everyone is restrained. Once again I am truly in control. I am happy.

It is time once more for conversation. I start.

“So, Adella," I say, “You must really like marshmallows.”

"Yes," she promptly replies. "And I asked Mom to buy me some, but she was disrupted by cleaning the house. So I had to buy some myself."

I stifle a laugh. I do not know which amuses me more--imagining my daughter Chrissy disrupted by cleaning or the presumed independence of a four-year-old who bought marshmallows herself.