Over 50, Still Kickin'

Recently, my wife and I watched our three grandchildren, ages seven, six and three, while their parents enjoyed a four-day vacation. We soon learned why nature rarely blesses sixty-year-olds with children.

"It'll be more chauffeuring than babysitting," our son assured us. "They're in camp all day. All you have to do is feed them and play with them when they get home. They fall asleep a couple hours after dinner."

Sounded simple enough, although I sensed a potential problem when we received a color-coded spreadsheet from our daughter-in-law displaying the children's food preferences. Anna and Conley eat chicken; Willow doesn't eat meat. Two prefer rice, while the other likes potatoes. Canned peas are fine, but not canned corn. Broccoli is Anna's favorite vegetable, but the others won't touch it. Conley will eat salad without dressing. No salad for Anna. Willow likes ranch dressing.

Honestly, I thought this was a parody until we fed them breakfast. They all wanted cereal, but Conley liked his with raisins. Willow wanted her raisins separate. Toasted waffles were fine, one with maple syrup and one without. We soon discovered why we were warned not to let Conley pour the syrup himself.

While I tried cleaning the sticky goo from the table and floor, Vickie told them she was packing peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch.

"Could you cut off the ends, please?" Anna asked so politely, my wife couldn't resist.

"I like ends," Willow shouted, fearing food would be taken from her. "But only jelly. Peanuts are yucky."

Conley said he didn't want a sandwich, but we were warned if we didn't pack one he'd be mad when he saw his sisters had something he didn't.

While they put on their sneakers we added apples, cookies and juice, deciding not to ask them or check the spreadsheet.

Lunches packed, we herded them into the car and carted them off to camp. We learned why our kids had bought a minivan. Squeezed into the back of our Camry, the fights began.

"Conley. Stop touching me."

"Willow did it."

"I did not."

"Did so."

We played I Spy, but a fight broke out over whether aqua is blue or green.

Then came the questions. "If we put wings on this car, could it fly?" "How come that building is taller than that one?" "When will you die, Grandpa?"

We pulled up to their camp. They seemed as eager to escape from the car as we were to see them gather around their counselors.

That gave Vickie and me a few hours to run errands, go to the gym, relax. Instead, we drove home and napped. By the time we cleaned up the kitchen, it was time to begin the chauffeur routine. The little one had to be picked up at one; the others at three.

It was a short ride home from her camp, but we discovered if we didn't have a snack ready for her in the car, this cute little munchkin turned on us. Fast. "Feed Me!" I heard the plant in Little Shop of Horrors demand. "I'm so hungry," she whined. We stopped at McDonald's to hold her over until her next snack. Wisely, we dashed home for food before we picked up the other two.

"Don't tell your brother and sister we went to McDonald's," I said.

"I won't." She did.

So it was time for another round of McDonald's. After all, the snacks we had brought were devoured by the time we got them all into their seatbelts. Willow, the vegetarian, devoured a second order of Chicken McNuggets. She was probably right about them not containing meat.

At home, we were regaled with stories about their exploits at camp. "I swimmed all the way across the pool," Anna bragged.

"I swam," the former English teacher in me corrected.

"I swammed," she said.

We read to them, and they read to us. We roughhoused, sang songs and rode bikes. They played with each other and their friends for at least five minutes at a time. We fed them again, bathed them and finally wrestled them to bed, feeling like cowboys lassoing calves.

Exhausted, Vickie and I let the molecules in the air settle as we sank into the couch, stared at whatever happened to be on TV, and delighted in the knowledge that in just three days the grandkids would be returned to their rightful owners.

Wayne Scheer retired after twenty-five years of teaching writing and literature in college to follow his own advice and write. He's been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net. His work has appeared in Notre Dame Magazine, The Christian Science Monitor, flashquake, Smokelong Quarterly, The Internet Review of Books, Pindeldyboz and Eclectica, among others. Wayne lives in Atlanta with his wife and can be contacted at wvscheer@aol.com.

On the Serious Side

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