The Best Time in Life

We spent time with our grandchildren on Friday, much as we do every week. Eric is retired, and I’m able to work remotely. This enables me to work my schedule around having a day to just enjoy being grandparents. Our day consisted of the following:

• Building the latest favorite characters out of Legos
• Blowing up balloons and releasing them to blow around the house
  • Blowing up balloons and rubbing them on each other’s hair
  • Blowing up balloons, rubbing them on each other’s hair, and watching them stick together from the static electricity
• Feeding the fish
• Painting the balloons in a variety of colors and realizing that balloons don’t hold paint well
• Feeding the fish again
• Going to 7-11 for free Slurpees since it was in fact, 7/11
• Saving the couch from a free Cherry Slurpee
• Feeding the fish again
• Realizing that fish are getting really big for goldfish and are now resembling koi
• Running through the backyard grass
• Watching my granddaughter bring my Minion Mug with all my pens to the table since she wanted big people’s pens
• Running to remove all the Sharpies from the pen cup before my granddaughter permanently tattooed herself.
• Dumping out the games from the toybox so the kids could hide from grandpa.
• Looking surprised every time we found them in the same place.
• Sorting through all the game pieces to put them back in their boxes before putting them away.

Somehow, that short list filled six hours. We drove the kids home and did our typical routine of stopping by the front window on the way out to do fist bumps through the screen, and then yelling “I love you” until we were in the car.

We may have startled someone with their window open as they drove by…wondering why a senior citizen was yelling “I love you” to them.

I realized that nothing we did on Friday was super special. We didn’t go to Disneyland. We didn’t even go to the indoor playground, although we offered. We just played around the house. We probably didn’t build any core memories that they will carry with them forever.

I remember my own grandparents. My siblings and I were with them almost daily. My grandfather walked me to kindergarten. We had Sunday dinner together most weeks. We attended the same church. I can’t remember any particular days with my grandparents. I just remember this complete feeling of being loved.

Maybe making huge memories isn’t our role.

Maybe our role is to give them that overarching feeling of being loved and accepted for who they are. Maybe the memories that we give them are built week by week, doing simple things, and giving them the undivided attention that is so hard to give when you’re the parent.

Parenting is hard. It’s 24 hours a day, filled with trying to make ends meet, getting homework done, making sure that dinner is on the table, and trying to build good humans while you’re just trying to make it through the day. I remember. I did it well some days, and some days I failed miserably. I’m sure my mother felt the same way. I believe we all do.

So maybe our role is to be the stabilizer in the chaos. To do the silly stuff that parenting doesn’t always allow time for.

To paint balloons and make fat fish.

This is the best time of life…

I’m off to buy more paint…and more balloons.

And more fish food.