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Short and Very Sweet
My Texas granddaughter is short and very sweet. She is the 13th member of the exclusive club whose 15 members get to call me ”Grandpa.” We traveled to Dallas for her gala second birthday. She is seen in the pic on the right with a small fraction of her birthday loot. She now has just enough hair for pigtails but is already girlishly aware of her clothing choices. Tireless, bright, and energetic, she seemed to know the names of every animal and much else in a visit to the marvelous Perot Natural History Museum.
I find that with my grandsons (as with my sons) that my disposition to them when they arrive is colored by impatience for when they are old enough to throw a ball or bait a hook, and we mostly just roughhouse in the meantime. I sometimes think that the father-son relationship is mostly a series of initiation rites.
The sheer sweetness of little girls is something to enjoy in the moment unconditionally. I have always been a little awed by my daughters from the moment each arrived.
From the outside, caring for and about children can appear burdensome, but time tends to erode the memory of the hassles and stresses and intensify the abiding satisfactions of love and the awareness of what a gift it was to experience all that.
And getting a birthday hug from that short, sweet little one is an amazing gift all by itself.
Published in Group Writing
Since I don’t have grandkids, I relish stories of grandparents here on Ricochet. Thanks for giving me a tiny taste of those relationships, OB!
This.
I don’t know if it’s genetic or something that happens in utero, but my unscientific observation of dads and daughters (and to a lesser extent granddads and granddaughters) is that girls come out of the womb with dad already wrapped around their finger. Including my own daughter (now 37 years old), who is otherwise not very girly.
We just returned from a week at the beach with our 5 year old grandson and 3 year old granddaughter (and their baggage handlers / drivers / cooks / schedulers / parents, our daughter and son-in-law). Our grandson kept wanting to get bounced around in the waves on the ocean side beach, while our daughter wanted to build sandcastles on the calm bay side beach.
My father-in-law had eleven grandchildren. His first grandchild was a granddaughter. Then the next seven were boys. Then my daughter was born. He said, “It is so nice to have a soft little girl after all those boys with their sharp knees and elbows.” :-)
Truth!
This conversation is part of our Group Writing Series under the August 2022 Group Writing Theme: “Short and Sweet or Sour, Maybe Spicy.” Stop by to sign up and share your own short observations.
Interested in Group Writing topics that came before? See the handy compendium of monthly themes. Check out links in the Group Writing Group. You can also join the group to get a notification when a new monthly theme is posted.
And thank heaven for.
Little boys are fun. They promise an adventure. Playing, being their personal jungle gym, listening to their imaginative stories.
Little girls are adorable. You want to cuddle them like a friendly pet. You feel protective. You know they are mischievous but part of you does not care.