As the father of an only child, I assumed grandfathering would be more complicated with twins. And it was — whenever they headed in different directions as toddlers — but they survived and turned into a forged unit.
I never expected to have any more grandkids, but my son’s second marriage has produced Charlotte, aka Charlee, who is now 3. What we call her depends on her mood. Sometimes she’s in formal mode, sometimes casual. Sometimes I’m tempted to call her Charlotte O’Hara. Like her nickname-sake Scarlett, she has a talent for melodrama. And like Scarlett, she also has an unconquerable sunny side. Tomorrow, after all, is another day, the best of all possible days.
My honorary, and honorable, grandson is Trevor, 11, Emily’s son from her first marriage, who has become a terrific older brother after eight years as an only. Dylan and Emily’s blended family makes me a blended grandfather. And there are days when I definitely feel like I’ve been through the blender.
Tyler and Bryce, meanwhile, are 12, going on 14, making that awkward leap into adolescence, which adds another layer of complication. Kristen has been an extraordinary single mom, but just as her twosome sometimes went in different directions as toddlers, they’re now starting to bifurcate in other ways. Tyler, I think, wants to stay tethered. Bryce, however, is itching to resign from twinhood and head off on his own. This leads to battles. I love both of them dearly. I like each of them better on their own.
When they’re not re-enacting Cain and Abel, they still enjoy riffing off each other’s imagination. Bryce has discovered an entire world in his navel. He calls it Belly-Button World and, as their god, he keeps reassuring his micro-figs with his utopian mantra: “The prophecy is being fulfilled.” I tell him he needs to write all this down or he’ll forget, but he’s too busy governing the Belly-Button people. Tyler, meanwhile, is working on a story about two bats in a dugout who get married. One, named Fernando, has a Snidely Whiplash moustache and wears a sombrero. School laptops, these days, make it easy to create such graphics. Let’s hope they don’t get too graphic. The other bat is named either Mildred or Bertha. I don’t think he’s decided. I tell him Big Bat Bertha sounds like a good name, but my opinion doesn’t carry as much cache as it used to.
So it goes. Bryce plays volleyball. Tyler plays baseball. They’re glad to be on separate teams in different sports. In the sixth-grade band, Tyler plays alto sax while Bryce blows the trumpet. Both play piano, but never four-handed.
Spending the day with Miss Charlotte is a change of pace, simpler in many ways, more complicated in others. She is of the female persuasion for one thing, which is new for me. Took a while to get used to, and it took Charlee some time to get used to my arrival, but after Charlotte O’Hara takes her leave, Charlee and I have a good time together, playing hide-and-seek with Bluey and checking in with the Spidey Kids.
She can be bossy – up to a point. I let her know when she’s reached that point. For the most part, I let her call her shots. It’s her childhood after all. So we go off on imaginary adventures together, I the dutiful Sancho Panza to her Quixote, jousting with the windmills in her mind, digging for gold rocks in the sandbox and molding castles with the wet sand underneath. When she gets frustrated, her decibel level climbs precipitously to preposterous proportions, so I try to be her calming influence.
Like many kids, she narrates her play scenarios out loud, and I am her designated playmate. To accomplish this, my 73-year-old self must get reacquainted with his inner 3-year-old and see the world through those eyes. A therapeutic exercise actually. This must be what people mean when they say that kids “keep you young.”
As she rambles on, she surreptitiously slips in a few asides like, “I love you, Papa Ken,” but does it so quickly I wonder if I heard her correctly. On one of the first sunny days of early spring, while narrating her way around the playground, she stops and says, “Papa Ken, I have a lot of best friends.” Then she looks up and says, “The sun is my best friend,” showing real promise on the poetic metaphor front.
Never take her for granted though. My son tells me that, on a recent drive, they passed a wind farm and he said, “Look, Charlee, windmills!”
She corrected him. “Those aren’t windmills, Daddy. Those are wind turbines … for energy.” Her brain sponge is fully functional. Who knows how they know what they know? The absorbent child mind is an awesome thing to behold. Sometimes I allow myself to believe we really are raising the generation that will save the world.
But for now, she’s content to joust with her windmills … and her wind turbines.