When I first met our eldest granddaughter, she was minutes old. I had forgotten how tiny, how fragile a newborn seems. Wiggly. Strange. Wonderful. A bundle of future hopes and prayers. I was awestruck and did what any grandfather would do. I promised her a car right on the spot.
Nowadays, one year and 364 days later, Haydyn is a human dynamo, an unstoppable dervish who never breaks stride, who zooms through life at 100 mph and who already has perfected the wocka-wocka-wocka game (it takes too long to explain). She even exhausts the schnauzers.
I met our youngest granddaughter, Raegan, just a few days ago. She was only a few weeks old and had just discovered her thumb. Or kind of. She was batting about .500, thumb to mouth. She turned, looked at me with her huge eyes, and smiled. OK, it could have been gas, but it looked for all the world like a grin to me. What could I do? I promised her a car, too.
When I'm snuggling them in my arms, I think: This is it; part of the payoff for being a parent -- absolute, unequivocal joy for no particular reason.
It was not always this easy. You have your kids and, for years, you worry and struggle and try your best -- too often in the crush missing the absolute joy of it all. You are a mom or a dad, a protector, a disciplinarian, an enforcer, cajoler, taxi driver, worrier, referee. Remembering to laugh sometimes is hard. You have to make decisions; draw lines. You feed them. You put them to bed. You fret about their friends. It seems life and death, even if it most certainly is not.
Too often, you are the bad guy; the dope. You push, drag, guide. At night, you wonder what you could have done differently; or maybe better; or not at all. You think about all the things you wish you could take back. Sometimes it just goes wrong. Sometimes, for reasons you cannot fathom, it goes right. They inexplicably make the right decisions and grow before your eyes. You are a parent, hip deep in the daily fight to create a decent human being -- and it ain't easy. It's close work, and messy. The battles come and go, and sometimes years pass before you know whether you won or lost the war. At my house -- and I claim absolutely none of the credit -- we won.
Our boys have grown into men anyone could be proud of and now our eldest and his lovely wife will have their turn in the barrel, raising two beautiful girls. It is the inevitable flow of things, I suppose. But when I watch them with the girls, I cannot help but think they are better at this raising kids thing already than I ever was. More patient. More understanding. More everything.
It would be easy, what with a world gone completely insane and out of kilter, to panic about prospects for the future. Nuts in Iran. Killers in Afghanistan. Self-serving politicians in Washington, D.C. Bombs. Murderers. Zealots. A nation seemingly losing its resolve. The future at times seems bleak, dark. A war and years of police, court and investigative reporting have left me more than a little wary about what people are capable of doing to one another. On my desk years ago, I kept a placard that read: People are no damned good! For the longest time I embraced that -- even though I knew it was wrong -- because that was my world. Sex offenders. Scum. Crooks. People who could do the most heinous, unthinkable things to innocents and never miss a nap. I look at the girls and wonder what kind of world we are leaving to them and I shudder.
But the reality is that it is not as bad as I think and that their world's reality will be theirs, not mine. It will be up to their very capable parents to get them where they need to go.
My job nowadays is to be grandpa -- known as PaPa to the most important people in my life -- and to watch, as a gleeful noncombatant, these tiny lives blossom.
I could worry and fret about what is; what might be, but it would do little good. The time would be better spent trying to figure out how I'm going to pay for two cars.
Paul Jenkins is editor of the AnchorageDaily Planet.com.
PAUL JENKINS
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