These days, it feels like the world crumbles around us.
The headlines scream, and chaos grows more and more.
Every day, there is more harm and destruction: Online hatred, brother against brother,
and, suddenly, we find ourselves at war.
Some nights, I avoid sleeping until I am so tired I’ll surely be asleep instantly, just to avoid lying there and thinking on my pillow for too long.
Some days it’s hard to picture the future and feel hope in it.
Sometimes I can’t even see it clearly anymore.
Some thoughts lead me to grief over what’s been lost and carelessly discarded.
Some lead me to anger I have never felt before.
But there is one thing that is keeping me tethered, and I can hear the rumble of her often, coming up the rock path every day to burst through my door.
My granddaughter, Mavis, is 2.5 now.
Her voice will say she “needs to see Grammy,” and I will brace myself for her as she runs at me to ram into my kneecaps with a hug, full-force.
Within seconds, my house will look like a bomb went off.
She will be sitting beside me doing her favorite activity: Strongly huffing a candle in a jar.
She will grab a mixing bowl and put one ice cube in it, which she will then carry around with an odd reverence, as if it were a time-honored ritual.
She will bang things, spin in a circle, stab a plant, spill water, and exclaim to herself,
“Oh, Mavis! What have you done?!”
She will grab out my copy of “Adorning the Dark” and my pocket-sized Constitution.
While I put them back, she will secretly slather a large amount of my expensive lotion on.
She will grab the entire bag of Cheez-Its.
She will lick something that no one should lick ever,
Then, as fast as she came, she will rumble back across the rock path to her own home, leaving me smiling and spinning, with only the knowledge that it will be more of the same thing tomorrow.
She has become my entire world.
I never expected my life raft to have a chocolate mustache and be wearing lavender crocs with rainbow charms,
But, I have realized there are two kinds of chaos:
The kind that chips away at, and the kind that actually anchors you.
She leaves the rocks she collects on my ottoman.
They work as a visual reminder that within her palm lies all that is solid in the whole world.
I watched her the other night so her parents could go to dinner.
She played in the bath with the new toy I had bought for her Easter basket, but that she had discovered immediately upon entering the house (though it was hidden) two days before.
She came carrying it to me, smiling.
I gave in and just opened it up.
She used her charms to get extra dessert, an extra book, and a few extra minutes to play
before I took her into her room to rock her, sing, and say prayers with her.
I just smiled at her as I zipped her into her sleep sack, and taught her to answer “Grammy” when I ask her, “Who’s your bestie?”
We practiced it until I was sure she got it.
Then, I held her in the dark, and everything in my life made sense.
She kept looking up at me and smiling, as if I had told her.
It was like both of us shared the same understanding of needing to pause and take in the treasure of it all:
Her felt letters that spell her name, and her favorite books on the wall, her plastic ice cream set, and her farm animals, scattered around us like the day’s evidence.
Funny how much that scene has the power to ease the worries of the outside world.
I think the reason grandparenting is so special is that, by the time you do it, you’ve realized just how much of life is unnecessary pressure that has been added on.
You’ve learned better what things don’t matter at all,
and what types of inconsequential-seeming moments really aren’t inconsequential at all.
You know that one day, as they grow, it’s the scattered toys, just like that, and the rocking in the dark that you’ll end up missing the most.
Then, one day, you suddenly go back to having it all again with a little person that even looks just like one you missed holding.
Same button nose as your baby did.
Same little swirly cowlick.
I’m convinced grandparenting is a time machine with the dial set to your favorite moments.
When you’re a Grammy (and a Bestie), you know how to recognize the treasure of time.
You recognize better when to let go and when to hold on.
By the way Mavis looked at me in the dark that night, I think that she even understood it.
She is a minister, a hero, a Guardian of Joy.
The world outside crumbles, around me, hot lava,
But she provides stepping stones through it, made out of dandelions and driveway rocks.
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
