Playing with my grandchildren makes me happier than anything
I’ve ever done! I had lunch with a friend of mine last week and was showing her
pictures of my trip to England over Christmas, celebrating with Amelia and
Finn. She lingered on the last ones in the stack—the photos of the 3 of us
together. “You must make sure you show these to my wife because it’s the only
time I’ve ever seen you truly happy and I know she would love to see that,
too.” They have known me for 35 years.
My three weeks with the kids went quickly! We didn’t “do” a
lot of planned outings. Mostly we were at home hanging out. When I think about
the activities we did do, I remember how tired the kids got, the meltdowns, the
challenges maneuvering with the stroller and the terrifying chasing of a
“dashing away” 3 year old. It was fun to go into London, to a castle, out to
lunch, walks in meadows the countryside—but the real fun was when we were at
home.
Amelia will be 4 at the end of February. She is at the age
where she is a bit bossy, wants to be independent one minute and held and
cuddled the next. She is sweet and a bit fearless, a little shy, imaginative
and fun. We engaged in imaginative play almost the entire time I was there.
She gets terribly frustrated with her little brother when he
interrupts her imaginative ‘world’. He is infatuated with her and everything
she is doing. He wants to do it, too. She deals with him by pushing him away.
He thinks when she does this she is playing a game and pushes back. That is
when she gets the most angry and either takes her toy he has in his hands,
pushes him too hard, hits him or otherwise reduces him to tears. He, at 18
months, is devastated and cannot understand what has just happened.
I had many opportunities to explain to Amelia how you give a
little child something you don’t want so they leave what you’re playing with
alone. It became obvious that she was getting something out of upsetting him
because no matter how many times I intervened with another toy for Finn, she
preferred creating the scene and getting the negative attention.
Finn is a little “light being”. When he walks in a room
everyone smiles. You simply cannot help but feel uplifted by his energy. He is
fun, having a great sense of humor and beyond his years because of having a big
sister to follow around. His biggest frustration was not having the language to
communicate all he had to say. This would reduce him to tears sometimes, even
though there was constant help from everyone to introduce him to words that
would help him express himself.
Amelia and I met around imaginative play. Sharing that
over-ruled all the dynamics between she and Finn and her parents and her. It
gave us a platform to hang out in that grew stronger the longer I was there. It
became so sweet and connected over the 3 weeks. It was a stretch for me to go
there, as I haven’t had the opportunity for 60 years. It reminded me of playing
for hours with my best friend, Becky, starting when I was 4. I found myself
drawing from those memories as I played in my imagination with Amelia.
I found Finn beyond his age in terms of his ability to play
independently, as well as parallel play with Amelia and also engage in
imaginative play with us. He negotiated all of those levels of play easily and
seemed to enjoy them equally. He especially loved his toys and cars and balls
and playing of all sorts.
What Finn found the most exciting was singing. The whole
family sings all the time, possibly carrying on the love of music his Grammy
and Papa engendered to Shannon and that supported Shannon becoming quite a
singer himself. Finn would sit playing with a toy and start to sing, not
entirely with all the words, but in perfect pitch and rhythm. It was marvelous!
He was so happy at those times!
One special time for me I remember clearly was when we all
had a tea party. Amelia had invited all her stuffed animals, Finn, her mother
and me. She had gotten a new tea set for Christmas and we were sitting around
the living room “playing”. At one point, she poured tea for Finn and he
pretended to drink it and eat imaginary biscuits. We all loved the party!
It was searing to come back to Colorado after being there
for 3 weeks. Coming back into my life without my grandchildren seemed almost
too much to bear. I had experienced and gotten used to living in such bliss.
Amelia was feeling the loss also. She has no sense of time but decided my
coming back for Christmas next year would ease our anxiety of separation. I
just might do that!!!!!
