These threads do not break
Last weekend, I was pushing our La Jolla grandkids on the swings when we noticed a spider and spiderweb a few feet above the top of the swingset.
The web was attached to the row of Podocarpus bushes closest to the swings on one side and then appeared suspended 10 feet above the ground in sort of a spider magic trick.
When the sun shifted, you could see a single thread attached to the web spanning 15 feet in the opposite direction, secured to the wroughtiron fence on the other side. The thread was slender but strong and who knows how long it had withstood sun, wind and weather.
It had been six months since we’d seen 3-yearold Lillian and Andrew, now 5, due to COVID and a set of careful parents.
We’d visited twice in the driveway in August, everybody wearing masks, but it’s not the same thing. Grandchildren are for holding, reading stories to, sitting next to at the dinner table toasting your champagne to their milk, wrestling, swimming and catching sand crabs at the beach.
Seeing them means seeing their faces and them seeing yours and anything short of that doesn’t quite measure.
In order to accomplish this visit, we took a rapid COVID test that Friday morning. Six hours later, already on the road and in our room at the Residence Inn in Carmel Valley, ARCpoint Labs emailed us the results that we had both tested negative. Negative is good. Negative was positive.
“Would you like to come over right now for some champagne,” Katie texted, after we relayed the results.
Yes. We can drive, fly with our newly sprouted wings or sprint along the freeway like greyhounds.
“We’ve told the kids,” she said. “They’re very excited.”
As with everything else these days, there was a video. Katie asked them who, if they could see anybody in the world, would they want to see right now.
“Papa,” Andrew said. I knew he meant Mimi, too, or I told her that to make her feel better. Then Katie said, “They’re going to come over now.”
We did. It was like returning from war. There weren’t many medals but there were a fair amount of scars and some COVID PTSD, which
dissolved in about the first five minutes of the excitement.
You don’t know, at least I didn’t. Would they remember where we left off, the games we played, the vocabulary grandparents develop with their grandchildren, the fun we’d had there and during their visits to Bakersfield?
Six months is a long time in the lives of a 5- and a 3-year-old and about 10 times as long for their grandparents.
They remembered. Somebody said a prayer at dinner that night. There was a lot to pray for and, given 2020, we could have prayed all night and not covered everything. There was much to be thankful for, too, starting with this dinner.
“Our father who art in heaven ...” I noticed a few things the next morning. Andrew wanted to sit on the baby swing, the red plastic one that he had outgrown but maybe he wanted to return to our visits six months ago, turn the clock back and start from where we had left off. He had company.
Lillian’s laughter seemed even purer and stronger than it had before and that was saying something.
We bought a heart-shaped hazelnut birthday cake from the French Gourmet. We’d missed some birthdays together, but even if we hadn’t, we were having a cake, blowing out candles, celebrating and making some wishes. Every day should be cake day.
That night, we cuddled in Andrew’s bed with him and Lillian. I told the scariest story I could think of, we sang “City of New Orleans” and we laughed.
“I don’t want you to go,” Andrew said. “It will be a long time before you come back.”
I didn’t think I had any more tears to shed but I was wrong. I had plenty and plenty more where they came from.
“We’ll be back soon,” Sue promised.
It was a good thing she said it because I was pretty much mute and certainly incapable of starting a sentence much less finishing it.
“It will be a long time,” he said again. “Please don’t go.”
How about we stay? For the next 20 years or when you’re safely off to college or considering starting your own family.
“I will think of you every day and pray for you every night,” Sue said.
When he was convinced we were telling him the truth and we wouldn’t break our promise, he let go of our hands, drifted to sleep and dreamed what little boys dream.
Superheroes, swings and a thread that will not break.