Kidtime!

There is a great scene in The Big Chill where William Hurt and Tom Berenger go down to Kevin Kline's kitchen to raid the icebox. There they encounter JoBeth Williams' (I think that is her name) rather stiff husband who apparently suffers from insomnia. While the stiff is sitting at the kitchen table eating a sandwich chased by a glass of milk, he starts talking about the kind of responsibility attendant upon being a devoted father. He mentions the needs of children and their "instant priorities" that end up controlling any decent parent's life. Hurt and Berenger, too goal-oriented or stoned to be parents (thank God) walk away from the kitchen with a new found respect for the guy.

I mention this because Katherine and I just spent the last couple of days taking care of Zach, Sammi, and Brooklyn while Christian and Christine took a well-deserved get-away to Vegas (not my choice of a place to escape the chaos and noise of child-rearing, but then that is none of my business).

The kids are easy to deal with. Zach gets himself up in the morning, takes a shower followed by a pill for ADD, comes down for breakfast, and takes off for school on his bike by eight o'clock. Sammi is a little bit tougher. She was born with a tumor the size of a small orange in the middle of her brain that was removed in a long and scary surgery leaving her slightly paralyzed on the right side and setting her back a number of years developmentally. She has a smile that melts my heart and she tries her best at everything. However, she has developed the habit of getting into bed with her parents (or her grandparents in this case) at about 3:30 in the morning and that can get a little irritating after awhile. Brooklyn, the three year old, is going to be one of those children who will pay her father back for his, let us say, rambunctious youth. When she gets mad at you, which happens whenever she doesn't instantly get her way, she crosses her arms and storms off, making evil faces over her shoulder as she leaves. I can't wait to see her (FROM A DISTANCE) when she enters the middle school years. On Friday night as I was getting her ready for bed, she looked at me and asked "Grandpa are you happy?" "I don't know; I'm too tired," was my instant answer. A few minutes later while I was in Sammi's bedroom, Brooklyn ran into the room, put her arms around me and said, "Grandpa, I love you." All was forgiven.

The point is that even though the kids were easy and comfortable to deal with and a testament to Chris and Christine's dedicated parenthood, we were both exhausted and more than a little happy to get out of there and come back to our little childless home when we were relieved of our duty last night.

It is the "instant priorities" of children that make parenting both awful and wonderful. When we were in their beautiful home taking care of those kids, we were living totally in the present. We had to be too vigilant to look forward to anything. There were no thoughts about going back to the Tetons in a couple of months or about meeting Franny and Ken in Kauai in August. We put our dreams of buying a new car on hold. I was too wrapped up in trying to get Brooklyn to eat something other than cheese pizza to get furious about the latest political development. My life didn't really count for those few days. It was all about Zach, Sammi, and Brooklyn.

I am not looking for a pat on the back for being such a terrific grandparent here. The first time Kathie and I took care of the kids under similar circumstances, Chris told me how happy he was that we were investing in the children. God, I hate that kind of psychobabble. Kathie and I took care of the kids because if we didn't Chris and Christine wouldn't have been able to get away and we love them too much to allow that to happen; however, if someone else had volunteered we would have happily stayed home. Investment had and has nothing to do with it.

I love the idea in Brave New World that the concept of Time came about as a way to express the discrepancy between a desire and the fulfillment of that desire. If we always got what we want when we want it, expressions like "we are running out of Time", or worse yet, "Time is money" would never have entered our lexicon. My experience tells me that as you get older Time is not as big an issue. I'm not in as big a rush as I used to be. I don't have to get sixty papers graded in Time to fill out report cards. If I don't plant the garden today BECAUSE IT IS TOO DAMN COLD, I can always do it tomorrow. I've got plenty of Time. But for Zach, Sammi, and Brooklyn Time is definitely of the essence.

I think I'll go upstairs and hang out.