Grandma Isn't Happy

Grandma Isn’t Happy


We have had our two Grandsons with us most of this summer, they are here now.  Michael and Cade.  They are 8 and 10 years old.  They have worn Grandma to a frazzle, not that they are bad kids or anything, but they are kids.  They have such tremendous energy.

This is their first summer in the country, and it has taken them some adjustment, but they are adjusting.  They have been used to staying inside and playing video games and watching TV in summers past, what with being city boys and all.  We live right smack dab on a river bank.  The river here is wide and shallow with a gravel bottom and crystal clear water; it is summer heaven for little boys.  With the river in the yard, they have had a constant entertainment package, staying occupied for hours on end.  They also spend a lot of time on dry land playing "army" with stick guns that they made.  It seems to be a universal truth, that little boys are born warriors and naturally play war games.  Turning the whole world into an obstacle course to run their maneuvers on brings them no end of pleasure. Going off into the bamboo thicket seems to be a big hit with them too.  Grandma isn't real happy about them going into the bamboo though as it is kind of snaky looking, but she grits her teeth and smiles.

I wish we had taken before and after pictures.  They have slimmed down and are lean and bronze colored.  Grandma feeds them about 8 meals a day it seems, making them sandwiches and cookies and all kinds of treats, and a big meal each evening after their baths.  It seems to me that Grandma is busy all day long, one way or another, with these two guys.  She washes their clothes and kisses their bruises and gently fusses at them to brush their teeth and does a thousand other little things for them all day long and then she sings them to sleep each night.  Her days seem happily full.

Now the boys have clear skin and bright eyes and dry noses and draw deep clear breaths and are barefoot and bare-chested most of the time.  I have never seen them so glowingly healthy in their whole lives.  The amount of arguing between them has gone down a good bit too.  They actually play together all day now, and with a minimum of bickering.  Not that there isn't any bickering, just that it is a lot less than it was before this summer break.  The bickering doesn't make Grandma happy, so that may be why there is so much less of it. 

I do believe that they have both grown at least an inch, maybe two.  Michael has become an avid fisherman.  He has caught several bass and blue gills.  Cade can’t sit still long enough to fish, he has to be chasing dragonflys or something equally serious all the time.  This weekend the boys and their cousins found a section of a nice thick log floating in the river.  They took turns trying to stand on it and get it to rolling, in the one waist deep spot in the river; they had a lot of fun with that.  It wasn't long though before one of the kids let us know that Cade had decided to do this in the nude.  Grandma wasn't happy when she was told.

We have a new puppy too, an outside dog that is just a happy little girl.  She is pretty big, weighing about 30lbs, and I guess that she is about 4 months old.  She has the outsized feet and head they have at that age and is puppy clumsy and awkward.  There is not a mean bone in her body.  She helped the boys' Dad change the oil in his truck today, crawling up underneath it with him.  She helped me fix a leaking sprinkler pipe the other day too.  Every time I would get down on my hands and knees to reach down into the hole in the ground she would put her head up under mine to give me advice.  She is just as full of energy as the boys and plays with them constantly. 

There is something indescribably special about young boys and young dogs romping through those endless summer days.  They entertain each other, and seem to have the same ability to get into mischief.  The boys chase her and she chases them and often it is hard to tell who is doing the chasing and who is running away.  She will grab a stick or a ball and play keep away from them, dancing just out of their reach as they try to out speed and out maneuver her to take away whatever object she is teasing them with, she always ends up letting them catch her, but she only does so out of courtesy; and only when they are just about to give up. 

They play army and the pup has apparently become their scout.  I am sure she has been given a high rank in their army as she is intimately involved in all of their ambushes.  This past Sunday Michael was down in the river using a diving mask and had taken his glasses off and laid them down on the rocks.  The pup grabbed his glasses and took off running with them,  playing keep away.  Grandma had to chase the pup, up and down the river bed to get the glasses back.  Grandma wasn't happy.

Watching the boys, I am amazed at how much extreme physical exercise they get every day.  They never walk anywhere.  They run, but they don't run in a straight line - they take a circuitous route so that they can climb over obstacles.  They frequently come in and out of the house to tell us exciting things, sharing their discoveries with us.  Sometimes they come in too much with what seems a constant opening and closing of the sliding glass door, and that makes Grandma unhappy.

I don't believe that a top notch Olympic athlete could keep up with them for a full hour, much less all day long.  Amazingly they seem to sweat very little.  They are well hydrated and well fed and seem to have an endless supply of popsicles and cool aid, Grandma sees to that, but other than a slight sheen and damp hair they don't seem to perspire.  I can stand still in the shade and will get soaking wet, losing buckets of water by the minute, but they run and jump and play in the sun and are hardly damp.

It has been fun watching them and listening to them and sharing their excitement over toads and grasshoppers and catching fish, and worms and dead birds and the million other wonderful things they have discovered.  But they have to leave soon to go back to school in the big city where there is no river to play in, or bamboo thicket to scout for enemies in, and no big clumsy puppy to chase them while they laugh in the sun dappled shade and no Grandma to run to.  When they leave, I guarantee that Grandma won't be happy.