It’s all about time between generations

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/08/2023 (1013 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I am increasingly aware of time and its passages, as I have a 2 1/2-year-old grandson and I am 73. I think of the long line ahead of him, and the short one ahead of me.

I am smitten and have been from the moment I discovered he was set to arrive. His zaida (Jewish for grandfather) never met him. He died a few years before this little one entered the galaxy, but this baby boy was given both his zaida’s and his great-zaida’s name; when I first saw him, I felt the light of past generations sparkling as present.

It is a tradition in my culture to name children after the departed; it is a privilege to enjoy the legacy such naming inspires.

My grandson is, of course, adorable. This is the first commandment of grandmothering — of grandparenting generally, I think.

It’s not that when he loses his temper, his affability, his equanimity that I don’t adjust the adorable (somewhat), wonder how I might contain, redirect, counter the digging-in of heels. I do, trying diversions, tricks, sometimes a bribe that involves a foray into the fridge. He is very fond of the fridge.

This little boy is mercurial with a tremendous enthusiasm for almost everything except naps and vegetables. That enthusiasm can lead to the throwing of things. Not a day goes by without a toy — or a cellphone if he can get to it in time (he’s quick) — flying by someone’s head. Calm, seated, focused on arranging his toy cars one minute and then, swoosh, he (I feel it as gleeful), picks something up and throws it.

Is it a bid for attention? Considering he is mostly adored in all things (except the throwing, the hitting and the biting), I can’t imagine he’d want more attention. When a missile takes flight, his parents caution. I caution. He settles. For the moment.

If we are near his bath time and bedtime, he might find it too difficult to embrace the gentler approach we suggest. Another flying object. A meltdown as he is swooped up into a parent’s arms and up the stairs.

Removed in this way, often he can still find in himself a moment of recovery — a bit of smile, a twinkling of the eye, a willingness to endure a baba’s request for a hug or a kiss on his way toward the ending of his day. He melts. I melt.

At 2 1/2, he has become very fond of emergency vehicles. If my phone rings, he is sure it is a dire event of some kind and runs from window to window looking for a fire truck, ambulance or a police car. If I am driving him home from his daycare, he calls out the names of every kind of vehicle he sees on the road.

If there’s a cement truck or a front-end loader he is beside himself with glee. If there are crews working on his street building/fixing houses, he sits himself down on the curb, enthralled.

Every moment — the comparing of our bumps and bruises, the flash of a rabbit running across the front yard, the wave of spring grass greening, the possibility of a visit to the blue park, a purple Popsicle — comes with exuberance.

If there is work to be done — the unloading of groceries, the watering of plants, the preparation of a meal — he is at the ready. Does it matter if the groceries are upended, the plants strafed by the garden hose, the meal prep anarchic? He is so sure his is an essential service.

If there is an adult conversation occurring at the dinner table, he contributes, often repeating the phrases he hears, sure that is his input is vital. And in this way, he has meetings and appointments, paperwork that should be filed and mail to be answered. He takes his responsibilities seriously.

As legions of little people have dreamed possible, he believes he will grow up to be a firefighter. He is just as sure the best food on Earth is noodles with cheese. His most favourite word is snack.

When I arrive, we immediately build a garage out of magnets and enjoy a bowl of purple grapes. He has his spot on the floor. I have mine. He arranges the pillows for us. I get three because my getting up and down requires three. He has the smallest, a checkered one he feels is just right. His welcome, “Baba, let’s build a garage,” is my sweet music.

During the coronation of King Charles, he noted a Buddhist monk in an orange flowing robe in the procession. He thought it was me. I have the video his mother took as he called my name. I have never been transported in this way. I play that two-second video often, just as I review the collections of photos that trace his growing, the snippet of the first time he sang happy birthday to me, the first time he hung up the cellphone by pressing the red button, adding that he’d “call back.”

I will be with this little boy for a while. Grandparents, if they are lucky, get that gift of time even when time is short, for we approach our ending as our grandchildren approach their growing up into humans we may not have the time to know.

I think of my husband, who did not get a chance to meet this little boy. I don’t believe in heaven, but I believe in energy, in the glorious molecular structures that unite all matter in creation.

If his zaida had lived to share his grandson’s life, he would have been parked outside his son and daughter-in-law’s house daily, at the ready. If something his grandson expressed an interest in was mentioned in casual conversation, he would have been there on the porch with whatever item was desired — toy, sleigh, skates — just as he had for his granddaughter eight years before.

His unbounded enthusiasm for life shines now in this little boy; as I can, I bring that spirit to every baba step I take, believing I am tending to the miracle of my grandson as his zaida would wish. I tend with devotion to the moments I have. I think, with every encounter, about how I am being experienced, what I might leave behind as memory and how the love I give freely might expand the universe in which this little boy lives.

Winnipeg writer Deborah Schnitzer explores life lessons from women in their Third Act.