Love

Happy unBirthday, dear granddaughter!

~ Cheryle Gardiner ~ Leave a comment

It’s been one of my life’s greatest joys to live near my youngest son, Ben, his wife, Briana, and their children, Grandson Addison and Granddaughter Drew.

From shortly after the kiddos were born until they reached the age when they could go to preschool – about two years old – I was privileged to be their “Granny Nanny.” I have not only had the pleasure of watching them grow and learn, but have established a closeness with them that fills my heart. We’ve established traditions that I’ve worked to maintain. One of those traditions is that each year for each child’s birthday, their gift from me is a day of shopping followed by an overnight at Gran’s house. It’s always been great fun for me and, I think, for them.

Since Addison’s birthday falls just before Christmas, we usually have our birthday outing sometime during the week after Christmas, although it’s sometimes been as late as mid-January. Drew, however, was born in June, shortly before my own birthday. That has always meant we could plan her birthday treat some time during our shared birthday week.

Until this year: The Year of COVID-19. Which was closely followed by my son’s diagnosis of liver cancer. Needless to say, there have been no overnights due to my current lack of sleeping space, and COVID has been preventing me from wanting to go into a mall for shopping or a restaurant for lunch.

Drew has been extraordinarily patient – not at all the way I was at age 11 – and we decided several weeks ago that part of her belated celebration would be to watch “Hamilton” together – her choice. Last week we planned to celebrate in two parts, since we couldn’t have an overnight, and that we would start this weekend. So this morning, her dad brought her to my house for Drew’s unBirthday, Part I.

First, we made and decorated cupcakes – because what’s a party without cake? Besides, her uncle had wanted white cake and I had bought a mix and some icing. After deciding what colors we wanted for the frosting, Drew and I went to work.

While the cupcakes baked, we shopped online for her very late birthday presents. She already knew what she wanted – books – so we cranked up MeowWolf.com for the first one, then over to Amazon.com for three more. She’ll be getting books for the next four days, and she kept her purchases within her birthday budget. As an added bonus, our Amazon purchases resulted in a donation to my church.

After the cupcakes had cooled, we created some vibrantly-colored deliciousness – a few for us to have here and the rest for her to take home and share with her family. Of course Uncle Martin will have his share, too!

After all our hard work, we fixed lunch and plopped down in the family room to start watching “Hamilton.” We only made it about halfway through. before it was time to take my girl home to get ready for her cousin’s fourth birthday party. Neither of us minded too much because it just means that we’ll have another day together to finish watching the show!

When we got to her house, she told her parents that she had gotten four books and made cupcakes for her unBirthday – and that she’d gotten a “birthday President.”

Funny. Smart. Creative. Curious. Loving. Compassionate. That’s my girl. I’m blessed in so many ways.

 

Genesis

~ Cheryle Gardiner ~ Leave a comment

July 6, 2001

It’s been a long time since I’ve watched him sleep – not since he was a very small boy. I’ve seen him sleeping – in bed, on the sofa, in the car, even on the floor – but I haven’t really watched him sleep for years.

You know the kind of watching I mean: watching the play of dreamland across his face, mouth twitching into a smile or frown, foot jerking in some unknown race or in time to unheard music, fingers waving in greeting or farewell. That kind of watching.

Parents do it all the time when their children are small, wondering which of life’s momentous experiences are playing out on the theater screen of baby’s sleep. Our minds are as curious about their world as their minds are about ours. With a kind of awe we watch them sleep, trying to memorize and hold fast to those things that we know are transient and destined to live only in our memories.

As they grow and chisel out their places in the world, we become less awestruck and more impatient. Go to bed. Go to sleep. It’s time to wake up. You’re going to be late. I want to take a nap, play quietly or lie down with me.

They grow, we grow. We stop watching so closely, accustomed now to their presence. The newness is gone, the baby is a person – still loved, still lovable, but not so mysterious. This person has a world that intersects with ours, but we are no longer their universe, nor are they ours. There are events, perhaps, that are captured in the photo albums of our hearts – first steps, the first day of school, losing the first tooth, first love, first big disappointment, first important achievement. But soon, too soon, the baby is the adult and the film of his life is as choppy and scratchy as the old home movies we used to watch when he was small. Not quite in focus, some parts in black and white, cut off where the projector stalled and burnt a hole in the fragile film. Memories stored, to be recalled in quiet times, in lonely times, in happy times – whenever some event or place tickles and a faded memory bubbles to the surface of the mind. They’re there, these memories, waiting to be bid to rise.

Today they came flooding back as I watched him sleep. When the corner of his mouth curled into a fleeting smile and his chin twitched in response, I didn’t see the day-old growth of beard, now flecked with gray, but a sweet bow-mouth and fat rosy cheek. When his foot flexed and briefly jerked, it wasn’t the foot that had been cut on a piece of glass on the day of his senior prom, but the foot that I kissed and tickled while peals of laughter rang throughout my world. The dark lashes that lay softly curled on his cheeks were as wondrous to me as the day he was born. And the tousled hair that barely covers his head was, in my mind’s eye, the baby-soft hair of a newborn.

And as I sat next to him while he slept, I remembered and I cried. As we waited – he in his world of dreams, I in my world of pain – for the test that would tell us how badly damaged his liver is, I watched him sleep. And I was so grateful.