[lit-ideas] Re: 4 Grandkids
- From: "Veronica Caley" <molleo1@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sat, 24 Apr 2010 16:52:36 -0400
What this all shows is that the kids don't just think you are grand, they know
it.
Veronica
----- Original Message -----
From: Mike Geary
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Saturday, April 24, 2010 3:43 AM
Subject: [lit-ideas] 4 Grandkids
KIEREN
Amazing how such a simple thing
as a small child's smile,
unexpected --
a response to a jest by you,
can trumpet love for all humanity --
this sudden connection,
this recognition by another
that you're jesting --
and yet he so young,
yes,
already this grandkid
has found you out
and thinks you're grand.
NIAMH
During the day,
when we play,
Niamh,
grandchild three
asks me, please, not to sing.
Apparently
she has an ear for music.
But at night, putting her to sleep
rubbing her back,
she wants to hear "Far Away Places"
and "My Father Always Promised Us."
even if I don't sound quite like
John Gary or Judy Collins --
she's such a Romantic,
she can fill in the voids.
PAXTON
The eldest, now is 6.
Reticent from the very start,
ever observant, almost clinical,
as though she were taking notes.
I would push her in the stroller
to the nearby park and talk her ear off
just to fill the verbal gap,
I'd whistle bird calls, sing made up songs,
anything to try to engage her,
but always I was met with silence.
I thought she must be a very complacent child
or else just kindly putting up with me.
Then my day of silence came,
bothered by my own life and thinking as we strolled
how I might turn it all around,
she turned around and said:
"Tell me again about when Mama was a little girl."
HOLDEN
For two years he clung to his mother,
clutched his blanket, sucked his passie,
and then almost, over night he turned into a man.
"If it moves," his mother always said, "a man will watch it."
That was Holden.
If not a man at three, he was on the right track.
I was startled at how young boys begin turning into guys.
Where is all this testosterone coming from?
Surely not those little things.
But there it is, the sheer joy of body in motion,
of the mastery of motion --
and alas, of the near ignorance of emotion.
Guys, guys, guys -- what of guys?
God's machines.
Mike Geary
Memphis
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