Bonding With My Granddaughter

        My wife and I are back from a visit with our four St Louis grandchildren, one of the highlights of which was attending 'grandparents day' at the school where my five-year-old granddaughter Gwen (pictured below) and three-year-old grandson Davis go to junior kindergarten and pre-kindergarten.

    I teased Gwen that I was going to raise my hand and ask the teacher if it was okay for my granddaughter to hug all the boys in class. “Noooooooo,” she exclaimed disapprovingly, though with a bit of a smirk as well.

    After coming into town, I thought we should get some groceries. Gwen wanted to come with me, even composing a shopping list after I helped with the spelling. I remember peas and bread being on the list but of course toys and books as well.

    As soon as we hit the grocery store, the list was forgotten, except for the toys and books. She grabbed a huge bunch of bananas which I felt obligated to throw into the cart since the hand of bananas was coming apart. As I did so, she picked up a watermelon. I rushed over as I could see she had difficulty holding it and I didn't need any announcement of a clean-up on aisle 5 embarrassing us.

    “Oh, this is too big. You can't even lift it,” I said. As I was putting it back, she picked up another only slightly smaller watermelon. “I can lift this one,” she said. I finally convinced her that watermelon wasn't even on our list. We put that one back as well.

    It was a stressful shopping trip. While I was scanning our groceries at a self-serve check-out station, she had wandered to another vacant self-serve checkout. I'm not sure what she did there but it did require a store attendant to come fix it.

    On a separate shopping trip with Gwen I had just entered a convenience store looking for sodas for my wife and myself when my granddaughter quickly opened a cooler with mini-bottles of flavored water. She took out three, one for herself and two “for the boys” as she called her younger brothers.

    “Does your dad let you do this?” I asked.

    “All the time,” she replied. Later her dad said it was more like twice, maybe three times at the most.

    I play lots of make-believe with my grandkids. Since they're especially fond of adventure and Marvel superheroes, one adventure involved treasure-hunting in the condo complex where they live, keeping an eye open for supervillains like Thanos and Venom. But I soon became worried that our adventure was getting a little too rambunctious; I wanted to retreat back to their own condo unit.

    I told Gwen that I heard noises of someone approaching, which I did. I said we better make it to the safety of home. “Stay back. I will protect you,” she said as she faced an elevator door.

    But I managed to instill enough fear of approaching supervillains that they began retreating with me up the stairs, towards the safety of home. Our pace quickened as we heard the main entry door open. But then Davis peeked and reported, “It's just a plain woman.”

    Being the resourceful grandpa, I convinced him it could be a supervillain in disguise. So we all hustled back to the safety of our own condo. Later I hoped that my make-believe adventure didn't instigate any bad dreams, supervillains masquerading as neighbors and all. In the middle of the night their younger brother Charlie woke up crying, possibly from bad dreams. But he didn't accompany us on our expedition. And I didn't hear Davis explain to him what transpired during our treasure hunt. I think I'm good.

    After we attended the grandparents day function at school, Gwen said, “You didn't tell the teacher I wanted to hug the boys. That was on my brain.”

    So grandpa stressed her out a little. Now, Gwen, you know how grandpa feels sometimes.