John Henry / Hazel
We have six grandchildren—real ones, I mean—in addition to an indeterminate number of imaginary ones on whom this essay may briefly touch if I have time. The grandchildren range in age commodiously from twenty-eight to seven, one full twenty-one- year span of childhood by the old legal reckoning. Five of them are of the female sex, including both the eldest (Sophia) and the youngest (Hazel). The plethora of granddaughters has been for me a special blessing. In my family of birth there had been only sons, three of them. The faint mysterious hint of a daughter, stillborn when I was two, a shadow and another sorrow is a mother's hard life, was barely even a spectral presence. I regard the tutelage provided by so many highly accomplished girls and their mothers a special gift of my mature years.
I have somewhere a little pewter plaque with the following assertion: “Happiness is Being a Grandfather”. Not too long ago at the bottom of the yard in one of several now long-established weed beds, I stumbled upon a similar ensign claiming that particular little plot to be “Granpa’s Garden.” You are surely familiar with the genre, which is widely to be found in its various forms on bumper stickers, belt buckles, sweatshirts, and coffee mugs throughout the land. Call me a snob. I ordinarily recoil from outsourcing proclamations of my sentimental life to the indentured rhymers at Hallmark cards or the proprietors of Interstate rest-stop tchotchke-sellers. But the relationships between grandparent and grandchild actually does provide an opportunity for felicity sufficiently potent to overcome even the saccharine annoyances of American commercialism.
Just at the moment we are enjoying a Covid-delayed visit from the Montrealers—that is, Luke and Melanie and their two kids, John Henry (8) and Hazel (7)—our only grandson and our youngest granddaughter. I suppress political commentary in this blog, and so will not comment upon the combination of personal self-righteousness and practical incompetence with which the smarmy Canadian Prime Minister has supervised the pandemic in his land, leaving much of his unvaccinated population in lockdown behind a closed border. Personal opinion. In any event, it has been a long time since we have been able to visit with this family, and we are reveling in the opportunity. The first thing that strikes one is that kids do grow. Furthermore, their mental and ethical growth is as notable as their dramatic physical expansion. They get more and more interesting and delightful. They move from cute to acute. They become great companions.
On Monday, Luke and I set out with the two kids on what I think of as my “regular” walk. Later on their mother Melanie, taking a slightly shorter route, caught up with us about half way along; we then proceeded together. This is a hike of approximately three miles, most of it through lovely sylvan glades above the lake and along a short section of the Delaware and Raritan Canal. Though they spend a lot of time in the great outdoors of Québec, John Henry and Hazel are of course city-dwellers for whom the zoological opulence of suburban New Jersey might as well be the Serengeti. We set out with the conscious intention of cataloguing the animal and bird life we saw on the walk, and in the first five hundred yards we were able to record chipmunk, deer, groundhog, rabbit, and squirrel. The birds were too numerous to count. One special treat came when, looking down from the height of a cliffside path, we could clearly see four or five turtles, some of them quite large, sunning themselves on the trunk of a dead tree fallen into the water. I was disappointed only by the absence of the cormorant that often joins them. For the kids, the permanent interest of the natural beauty is at the moment complemented by the diminishing remnants of the cicada phenomenon of which I wrote in a recent post. Everywhere along the beaten forest track are hundreds of the little holes from which the critters have emerged in their prehistoric exoticism. The little corpses of the thousands which have briefly fulfilled their last full measure of procreative devotion lie scattered promiscuously everywhere, sometimes in such numbers as to create unpleasant whiffs of decomposition.
Walking along the canal paths, we pursued a somewhat eccentric mission. Our house has a small atrium, with its own tiny pond and turtles, through which a short path leads from the glass door to my study to a wooden exterior door on the other side. I am trying, very slowly, to cover this path with a layer of the white sea pebbles to be found throughout this part of Jersey in much of the topsoil and practically all gravel. I try to pick up a small bag full of these pebbles on every walk. If I had enough grandkids, we could do it on an industrial scale!
Yesterday was the hottest day of the year to date, both broiling and muggy. I wasn’t feeling all that great, and I probably should not even have undertaken such an ambitious walk under the conditions. I was soon huffing and puffing badly, and finding it difficult to carry on. My son Luke was sensitive enough to intervene. When we were a couple thousand yards from home, he suggested that he run home and fetch a car, while the rest of us await his return, sitting in the shade on the abutment of a bridge over a little creek. I agreed with relief; I am gradually having to accept such necessary humiliations. Young John Henry, not yet nine years old, was a little distressed on my behalf and tried to pretend that he, too, needed the relief. Partly because my only grandson and I are both named John, and partly because a fragment of a recent sermon came to mind, and partly because I seem to specialize in bizarre patterns of thought, a certain Bible text text (John 3:30) leapt to my mind. It is one that identifies John the Baptist in some well-known medieval and Renaissance paintings, including the unforgettable Isenheim altar-piece: Illum oportet crescere, me autem minui (“As he grows greater, I must grow less”). Volumes of puzzling medieval exegesis were devoted to this puzzling verse, but I finally understood what it means, or at least what it means to me. It is a simple truism of biological and historical life. And a very comforting one at that. Our vital continuity is that of our posterity.
All grandparents probably think that their grandchildren are superior beings. I certainly do. I refer, of course, to my real as opposed to my imaginary grandchildren. Many of my readers will be puzzled by the very concept of imaginary grandchildren, though I suspect that several of my fellow seniors will know immediately what I refer to—a grift vaguely related to the “Spanish prisoner,” the “Nigerian entrepreneur,” and various telemarketing schemes involving aluminum siding, ornamental plaques, or John Wayne memorabilia. Not too long ago the AARP featured it in their popular “Geriatric Scam of the Week” feature.* I got my first call about five years ago, then two or three more each year since. I picked up the landline and said “Hello”. The immediate response, in a youngish adult male voice that I might place as originating somewhere along a line from Beaumont TX to Morgantown WV, was interrogative: “Grampa”? I didn’t think so, as my only grandson at the time was about three. “I think you have the wrong number,” I said, utterly without effect. “No, Grampa,” he said. “It’s me. I ran into some trouble, and I need a little help.” After a few more confusing remarks, I simply hung up. But at length--by the fourth or fifth such call-- I had grasped the concept and developed my own little line of dialogue. “I’d love to, but thing is, George, Butch double-crossed me on that last delivery, and the cartel is after me. Watching every move I make.” That was pretty good, I thought; but I could do better. I finally settled on “I’d love to help you out, Sonny, but I spent my last damn dime bailing out Granny. Possession with intention, initial hearing in about a month. I was actually hoping to borrow a little something from you. And, honest, this time I’ll pay you back.” If you are simply trying to round out your scumbag credentials, breaking into the alms boxes in impoverished country churches is all well and good; but prostituting the impulses of grandparental love really is beyond the pale.
*https://www.aarp.org/money/scams-fraud/info-2018/grandparent-scam-scenarios.html
