Totally, Madly, In Love

I am reading a book where the two main characters talk about their respective childhoods. Neither was abusive, or bad, but one was definitely better than the other. It made me stop and reconsider my own childhood.

I tend to focus on moments when I write, but overall I had a wonderful childhood. My parents were young when they married, in love, passionate and glad they had children. In spite of my father’s boy genius status and myriad degrees, they had money problems because of the very things that made them good parents, so we moved way too frequently in attempts to find better paying positions for a man who would have loved to simply teach.

With all the insecurity in my life, I always felt my family would last forever. That is a priceless gift.

Yesterday I went to the park with Lennon and my son. Lennon assumes all grown-ups would like to climb on the toys and go down the slides. He called me over and began teaching me, step by step, how to climb up and it truly saddened me a bit to have to explain to him that because my muscles “hurt” I could not do that right now. Still we went for a walk by the river later on and explored the paths, discussed the bird calls and examined paw prints in the mud. It was a fabulous afternoon.

Last night he and I had dinner and a movie while his parents went to a friend’s home for a game night. We watched “The Water Horse” and it was interesting to see he was really scared in the beginning when only the music was ominous, but not at all put off by the growling, charging bulldog, booming artillery, or giant water horse rampaging around when it was scared. He was a little concerned when the boy rode it underwater, but only needed to be assured that they would surface in time.

His world is secure in spite of the fact that it is much different than mine was. His life, like a three legged stool, has Mommy, Daddy and Gramma, so it is always relatively even. I am separate and distinct from the family upstairs, but a very definite part of his life and he always manages to include me in his descriptions of how things are. I am tickled about this, but I am also surprised.

I never planned on this “Gramma” thing. It’s very different from how I imagined my life. I’ve spent the past ten years living out my dreams in real time doing real things that suit my idea of who I want to be. I never dreamed of being a cookie baking, babysitting sort of grandma. It’s not my cup of tea.

Yet, there is a sort of beautiful rightness to the way Lennon and I have defined our relationship. Someday I will be part of those childhood memories he has of his own life and I wonder if he will ever know how I tried to avoid it before I fell totally, madly, in love with him?