Grandma's Babysitting

When I got the email from a friend that her daughter in law needed a babysitter, thinking I'd spread the news in hopes of a teenager or young adult who happens to be home when most needed, would ask for the job.  I did forward it, but then answered the request myself. For me it was like an answer to something missing in my life... Babies.  All my grandchildren then were school age, with the youngest in kindergarten.

I wasn't asked often, as the only time I'd be needed was when the baby's own grandmother was busy.  My first time, when I arrived and introduced myself, little Harper was in her mother's arms, and the nine month old shyly smiled at me, and I smiled back while I was chatting with her mother.  Then she reached out with both arms as her way of saying "I want you to carry me."  I was so pleased that tears practically came to my eyes.

Harper took a liking to me from the start.  When her mom left, I simply melted down to her size the best I could.  I wasn't really babysitting, I was merely a playmate.  I wished I'd had an opportunity to do so with my own grandchildren.  I think when I was first made a grandmother I was actually afraid of very little children.  It wasn't like my own offspring, and if left alone with my first grandchildren, I felt almost an overwhelming sense of responsibility.  Something changed throughout the years, so later, when helping one of my daughter in laws with her new twins, I began to relax a little.  By the time the last grandchild was born, I was able to cuddle the infant on my shoulder and rock her to sleep with such a feeling of contentment and completeness that I felt magical... like some grand-mummy in a fairy-tale.  I was finally realizing how wonderful the tiny babies were... and once they became school age, I missed the baby thing.

Now I had a chance to visit that area of my psyche that could just become part of an infant's life.  Harper would squirm along the floor, and beginning to learn the rhythm of crawling.  She had already advanced to pulling herself up at the heavy wooden coffee table.  I lay right on the floor with her and her toys and we played while I watched and felt as if I could see the world through her eyes.  What a wonder.  All the new things they are learning practically every waking minute.  She'd pull herself up and bang her little palm on the smooth varnished top of the table, listening the the sound, and feeling the shiny surface.  (What was going on inside her head?)  They don't yet have words that go with all they see and feel.  "The table is hard," isn't something they'd think in words, but realize by feeling.  "It's smooth and shiny.")  She takes a block and bangs the table... "It sounds different..." she tastes the block... "...tastes the same ...that wooden grainy taste of the block with the red letter and yellow number"... not yet having names for either--or anything but Mom, Dad, and simple words that have taken on meaning--unable to pronounce yet.  What a wonder.  More wonderful than watching a time lapse video of an opening bud.... we watch the opening of the mind.

She was nine months old then, and the last time I babysat, was just before her 2nd birthday.  Her mother had some bookwork to do in the house, and it was a warm summer's day, and we walked around outside for the whole two hours.  We picked wildflowers; watched butterflies; and picked raspberries and ate them.  It brought me back a thousand years to when I was a toddler and following my brother-one year older-as we explored the outdoors with wide eyed wonder, yet we took the wondering for granted.  At that age, everything was a wonder.  We lived the fairy-tale.  We saw walking sticks.  One has to be in no hurry, and just wide open to everything in the grass and bush to see these things.  I don't even know when I saw a walking stick last.

That wonder-full day with Harper, was as magical as the memories of my toddler past with discoveries becoming refreshed in my head.  We saw the tiniest of hop toads in the grass.  At first I thought they were small grasshoppers, but found they were toads that could sit on even this two year old's fingertip.
We sat in the shade on the edge of the back porch and watched butterflies dip into the flower heads of the hostas, and I realized the butterfly couldn't see us while sucking out the nectar, and we could reach out and gently touch their beautiful wings folded tightly together when they entered the flower.  If we were careful, they didn't know the difference, but if the flower was moved by other than a gentle breeze, they were off and elusive.  I'd bought Harper some bubble stuff to make bubbles and we did, watching them glitter in the sunshine, turning rainbow colors... and then burst into nothing.  What does a two year old think about that?  Probably not as much as the philosopher with a PhD, but still, the child would think they are more wonderful, because they can still just wonder and not try to figure everything out scientifically nor philosophically.  Just wonder...  And enjoy every new experience of life with the freshness of our own Eden at dawn.