Felix Is In Charge

Our lives and routines have been tossed into the air this week. The pieces lie scattered on the floor like toys, and I hardly recognize them. It’s the long-awaited visit of our grandson Felix. There is no way I could have been prepared for his impact.

I’m not complaining. This is the way it is when wishes come true. Their complicated dimensions begin to emerge, and you start to realize that this is going to involve work and a bit of deprivation, and in your bed at the end of the day, you scroll through the unchecked to-do list in your mind, wonder what you did to make you so very tired, and worry more fervently than ever about the kind of future your little time traveler will know. But you savor the joys, of course, and marvel that you have been so blessed, and you say it in your head again and again: Our grandson is here. I have a grandson and he is here, in the house next door.

I have no picture of my favorite moment from yesterday, but I will never forget it. A little boy with golden brown hair in a rust-colored fleece jacket knocked on our door early in the morning. In his chubby hands, he held an orange he had picked. He wanted to cut it and squeeze it into juice, and we obliged him as quickly as we could.

That’s what we do. We oblige and accommodate, taking care to protect, anticipate, and instruct, of course, but mostly deferring to him. He is very good at making his needs and desires known, and as the mother of his mother, I must have done this long ago, but I’d forgotten how abruptly and thoroughly the parents’ desires are eclipsed. I’d forgotten this mixture of enchantment and exhaustion.

One of my goals has been to successfully put him down for his nap, and yesterday I achieved that. It was preceded by plaintive cries for Mama and Dada, and I had to lift him back up from his playpen-bed more than once, but he settled on my lap and I read him a story, and gradually I felt the weight of his dear heavy head falling against my arm.

How new the world is now! The green hills are shimmering, the cows are objects of awe and delight, a lot behind the dumpster full of rusting trucks and tractors is a virtual amusement park. How fraught with risk and danger, too––so many steep hillsides and sharp rocks, so many breakable objects, so many possible missteps.

He will appear soon, and I’m sitting in this space of quiet, typing while I can and gathering my thoughts. I see that I had built a kind of fortress for myself, with walls made of aspirations, rules, and goals. I see that I was paying insufficient attention to birds hopping on branches, the gleam of machinery, the good clatter of pots and pans. I’m not at all sure what I was hurrying to, but my pace was usually brisk.

I might as well dismantle the fortress. It wasn’t working anyway. Today I’m going to wash my hair and try not to trip on toys.