The Grandpa memo

We got home last night from the Outer Banks where we spent a week with our sons, Ben and Stuart, daughter-in-law Heidi, grandsons Teddy and Isaac, and Stuart’s donkey-size dog, Topanga, a Great Pyrenees/ greyhound mix.

The beaches were beautiful. The weather was perfect. We played endless games of Scrabble. But the main attraction, as far as my wife and I are concerned, were the grandsons.

Isaac, who turns six months old today, is at that awkward age somewhere between newborn and toddler. He can’t talk, barely babbles, hasn’t yet learned to crawl, and his head bobbles crazily when you hold his dimpled hands to help him stand on your lap. He eats heartily and often, as is evidenced by cheeks a Campbell’s kid would kill for, multiple chins, and thighs that resemble both in size and fat content the Hormel pork tenderloins you see in the supermarket meat case. He jams one fist – sometimes both – into his mouth and drools a lot because (we’re almost sure) he’s teething. He can, however, roll over and has learned to make his baby bouncer bounce by kicking his legs up and down. He has started smiling and, when his brother throws a ball or does something else he finds amusing, he giggles. 

Teddy, who turned 30 months old yesterday, is a pint-sized dynamo. Make that a “half pint-sized” dynamo. He is downright tiny for his age – just 24 pounds compared to 17 for Isaac who, if he continues growing at this rate, will outweigh Teddy by the time he’s 10 months old. Teddy was a preemie, is allergic to dairy products so his menu is severely limited, and does everything within his power to avoid eating. My wife thinks his aversion to food is because there were tubes down his throat during his first three weeks of life which were spent in a neo-natal intensive care unit, so he associates anything he has to swallow with pain. She may be onto something there. God knows his parents have tried everything to convince him to eat.

Teddy's huge personality more than makes up for his small stature. He knows how to work a room to make sure he’s always the center of attention, charming everyone in the process. His vocabulary is enormous – almost scary big for someone his age – but he, as all toddlers do when learning to talk, makes grammatical mistakes. He has trouble with the words "am," "are" and "is" which he sometimes uses incorrectly or omits altogether. He also hasn’t quite mastered the pronoun “I” which he often turns into a possessive, pronouncing it “I’s.”  For example, “I am watching tv" might come out “I watching tv” or, more frequently,“I’s watching tv.”

Early one morning his dad staggered into the living room carrying Teddy, who was wearing his Mickey Mouse pajamas. Ben looked exhausted. “Do you want to go back to bed?” I asked, thinking I could watch Teddy while his hard-working dad caught some much needed shut-eye. Teddy, assuming I was speaking to him, replied emphatically, “No! I’s just woke up!”

Walking alongside the wagon in which he was being pulled back to the rental house after an afternoon at the beach, I asked Teddy if he had had a good time. “Grandpa,” he replied with a look of concern, indicating his arms, legs and swimming trunks, “I’s sandy.”

One day Teddy was wearing a horizontally striped blue and white shirt. “You look like a little French boy,” Stuart told him. “I’s not a French boy,” Teddy said defensively. “Yes you are,” Stuart teased. “French boys wear shirts like that.” When I walked into the room a moment later Teddy announced with as much enthusiasm as if he had just been notified he had won the lottery, “Grandpa, I a French boy!”

As we were leaving Sunday, I asked Teddy to give me a hug which he did – Teddy is generous with hugs. “You’re a good boy,” I told him, holding him tight, knowing I won’t be seeing him for months. “You’re a smart boy.”

He pushed back from my embrace, looked me square in the eye, and reminded me of something else he is that someone had obviously told him but I had failed to mention. “I’s a handsome boy, too!”

I spent my adult life concerned about providing what I thought my family needed. I obsessed about my career, spent nights and weekends at the office when I should have been home and worried about acquiring and taking care of possessions that, I now realize, have no value. Being a grandpa was never on my bucket list. I figured it might happen one of these days and assumed that if and when it did I’d find the kid(s) amusing but that I couldn’t possibly be more than minimally invested emotionally because, after all, there’s only so much love a heart can hold and mine, I was certain, had already been topped off years before.

Nobody ever warned me that, the moment I beheld my first grandchild, my jaded old heart would instantly sprout another chamber and be filled with an altogether different kind of love that, in its own way, is as intense and profound as anything I’ve ever experienced.

I’s so glad I didn’t get that memo because the overwhelming surprise and wonder of it all is the joy of my old age.