[Wednesday’s run: 3.2 miles; Friday’s run: 3.4 miles around Equalizer Lake]
People are complicated. I don’t consider myself a “people person” as such. It doesn’t bother me to be alone. On the other hand, I have connections with family and friends that I really enjoy and maybe being alone is not a burden because I know those connections are always at the ready.
We are back out in Colorado for a few days. We arrived on Wednesday and we return on Monday. This time the formal reason is grandson’s birthday. We attended his birthday party last night and it was a blast.
My wife and daughter decorated the house. There were presents. We had his favorite meal. There was a cake. His grandparents were all in attendance and his local uncles were both there. Today we are going to the Denver Zoo as a gang.
I’ve been spending a lot of time with grandson and with holding baby granddaughter. Grandson is now three years old. He’s in a communicating phase, always talking, expressing what he wants and doesn’t want. He is particularly good at the doesn’t want part. He can say, “No” with a thousand kinds of inflection and levels of sincerity. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t and in the end he actually seems to be OK with that. Which is good since life is generally like that. I think he handled being the center of attention at the party pretty well. But I’m biased of course!
Baby granddaughter is holding her head up like a champ. She likes to be held upright, looking over the shoulder of whoever is holding her.
My son-in-law seems to be enjoying the whole thing. He comes home from work and holds the baby and plays with the grandson and seems to usually have a big smile on his face like that is the best thing that happened to him all day. Daughter juggles the baby and the toddler and cooks delicious food and runs the house like the captain of a ship or the manager of a 5 star restaurant.
My wife, bless her heart, told me yesterday that she signed up for a marathon in Hawaii. She said it is time we take another trip like we did most recently for the New York City Marathon. That has been a few years ago. And Hawaii has a marathon with unlimited cutoff time. That’s important because she has been battling some health issues for the last year (or more) which mean she can’t reliably finish that distance in the usual 6 hour allotment.
My first reaction to that announcement (my last three paragraphs start with My, which is not very good writing…) My first reaction was reluctance, not that she wants to run in Hawaii but that she wants me to drop whatever I was going to do and instead haul myself to Hawaii. We live where she wants to live and we have a dog because she wants a dog and sometimes the scale seems to tilt a bit more toward what she wants over what I want. I didn’t actually stomp my foot and make one of those glorious indignant NO!s that the grandson is crafting so magnificently these days. But it would be fitting had I done so because most of his NO!s are equally misguided and futile… particularly while staring at his birthday cake surrounded by a pile of presents and a good number of adults who would jump in front of a train to make his life better.
So I’ll be going to Hawaii early in December if my wife is up to running a marathon when the time comes. I’ll miss the early December rains in Mississippi and have to sleep in a hotel without a dog. Life is hard.
The other thing I have to say is that grandchildren are great.
A person appears in this world and they have to figure out what to do with each day. And maybe children enter the picture one way or another and a person then is part of the Perpetuation of Humanity in both a practical and a cosmic sense. And there is always the thought that maybe this is a project that takes a lot of effort but the result is uncertain. Political activists these days tell us that all of these apocalyptic bad things are just around the corner and maybe Perpetuation of Humanity isn’t the best project. But you’ve started it (kind of like getting a puppy) and now you’re committed so you feed them and do your best to see that they are equipped to go forth, maybe to be the last round before closing time.
But then they also decide to embark on the Perpetuation of Humanity, as if growing up wasn’t so bad and the world has a bit of hope in it left and maybe we can go for another. As a grand parent it’s like a validation of sorts. Life was good, to the point that the kids are willing to invest in the future.
Kind of like that trip to Hawaii, the first reaction might be pout and head shake. But really what better thing did you have in mind?