Taking the journey with my great-grandson
I’ve been watching my first great-grandchild explore the world opening around him. He is at the beginning of his journey as I near the end of mine. I’ve been surprised to find that many of the challenges he faces on his path are also confronting me. Amari is eight months old and I’m a 94-year-old widower. I’ve lived nearly three times as many years as he’s lived weeks, but his struggle to pull himself erect in his crib looks very much like the way I get to my feet after kneeling on the floor.
The worlds Amari and I live in could not be more different, but both are trembling with change. Not long ago, his entire world was his mother, whose presence left little room for anything else. Now, his vision is expanding to reveal there are people and objects in what had been the blurry space behind her. His tranquil world is becoming bigger and more complicated. My world is also more complicated — not because it’s growing, but because it is shrinking. People who once filled my world have gone to assisted living or to darker places.
As friends have slipped away, I’m having difficulty communicating with acquaintances younger than I am who assume I’m familiar with people and events I’ve never heard of. My bewilderment when they ask if I ever experienced FOMO surprises them. “Everyone,” they assure me, “knows FOMO means ‘fear of missing out.’”
I didn’t know. Now I understand why Amari cries when his attempts to communicate are not understood. The two of us struggle to make our feelings known in a world changing rapidly around us.
In other ways, the experiences of my great-grandson and I are far different. He now realizes people and objects continue to exist even when he can’t see them. The lost toy that once existed only when he held it hasn’t vanished. He now understands it’s probably under his blanket or on the floor. Amari no longer cries the instant he’s aware his parents aren’t with him. It’s safe to assume they haven’t vanished and will soon be back.
But many people in my life have vanished, never to return. And yet, in some ways, this too is a similarity. Amari and I are both learning to trust that those we love will always be with us, though his in a physical sense, and mine to remain deep within my soul.
I’m amazed at the number of times Amari and I cross paths on our journeys. We are both struggling to retain our autonomy, our right to make our own decisions, to move freely. It will be years before Amari learns the meaning of the word “autonomy,” but he is impatiently seeking it now. He’s begun to resist being bound into his car seat. It’s a reminder he’s too young to move freely. I’m being reminded I might be too old to move freely.
People I barely know ask why I continue to live alone. “Shouldn’t you move to an independent-living community?” they ask. “Suppose you fall while in the shower — who will hear you?” I’m aware I might fall and that a supervised apartment might be my equivalent of Amari’s car seat. But like Amari and that car seat, I struggle against it. I would be exchanging autonomy for something that might keep me safe but would limit my freedom. Like my great-grandson, I cherish my autonomy and rebel against constraints.
That my great-grandson and I often meet on our journeys fills me with hope. Amari’s willingness to pull himself up knowing he hasn’t yet learned to lower himself takes courage. His courage has inspired me to take risks I had begun to avoid. Amari and his parents live in California, and I live in Florida. Flying has become more stressful for everyone, especially for someone my age, but once again, I’ll soon be flying across the country to be with them.
One of my daughters compared me to an oak tree that towered over the garden of our family home. Just before her wedding she said “Dad, all of us will marry and have families of our own, but you’ll always be our oak tree.”
I find myself thinking of Amari and me as trees. He’s a sapling, springing taller after the briefest passing shower. I’m more like that old oak tree whose annual growth is too slight to measure. But, just to remain standing reassures me I am deeply rooted and still growing. The very presence of my great-grandson nourishes those roots and the tree they hold fast. I find myself smiling as I imagine Amari calling out in a few years’ time, “Pop-Pop, hurry, we have places to go.”