Facing My Grandchildren's' Fears

     Yeah, I know.   I’m writing another “let me tell you about my grandchildren” blog.  I apologize.  But honestly, I’ve spent a lot of time with my grandchildren this past month and it’s the best I’ve got.

      It is so fascinating too that they have such remarkably diverse personalities.  Shouldn’t genetics make them more like eachother?  Why is the opposite true?  Cases in point . . . 

       My oldest grandson Grant is eight-years-old and expresses great concern over pretty much everything from angry mobs to bears.  Never mind he’s not very likely to encounter either at his young age.

      Recently my wife and I took three grandsons to nature’s woods and waters up north here in Michigan.  Driving down a dirt road surrounded by thick groves of trees that sometimes blocked the sun, I told the kids to watch for bears, although I had never seen a bear in these woods in the 50 odd years I’d been coming north.  But other people claimed they had.

      That did not set well with Grant.  “What if they try to kill us?” he asked.  I responded not to worry, that we were safely inside our mini-van.  “Bears are very powerful,” he replied.  Maybe he had visions of a bear tearing apart our Dodge Caravan with its bear claws.  Or is it bare claws?  Looks like it works both ways.   No matter since we didn’t see any bears this trip either.

       Later, Grant, his six-year-old brother Luke, their two-year-old brother Owen and I walked on a shoreline road by a lake, passing more woods.  Now Grant seemed more concerned since we didn’t even have the protection of a car.  “What if a bear attacks us?” he asked.

       Frustrated, I volunteered a solution.  “I’ll fight off the bear so you three can get away to safety,” I told him.

       “Oh, okay,” he said.  He was satisfied now.

       But I wasn’t sure how to take that.  Did he really think his grandpa was so strong that he could engage in hand-to-hand combat with a large bear, the type that could so easily shred the chassis of our mini-van made of steel?   Or was he thinking grandpas are expendable commodities so long as he and his brothers get out alive?

       Luke wasn’t as worried about bears as he was about big bugs.  When a dragonfly buzzed by too close to him, he began to panic.  “Let’s make a run for it,” he said seriously.  But we were on a gravely road with big trucks occasionally rumbling past and I was pushing a stroller too.  Grandpa’s more worried about a six-year-old fleeing into the path of an oncoming pick-up truck than the same six-year-old being carried off by a monstrous dragonfly.

      That leaves Owen.  At two years old he probably doesn’t have any concept of bears and dragonflies other than what he sees in children’s stories.  In otherwords, nothing too threatening.

      But what unsettles him is the dark, particularly being in a darkened bedroom at night with his grandparents sleeping in another room.   So he gives us a shout-out occasionally just to make sure we’re there.

       “I love you grandma,” we hear a voice call from his bedroom just as we’re drifting off to sleep.

      Yes, Owen.  We love you too.  Maybe even a trifle more if we get to sleep where we’ll probably join Grant and Luke dreaming about powerful killer bears and carnivorous dragonflies.