Berries and Dirt

This morning, after the usual online assault of bad news from everywhere, I finally crossed over into non-analytical, in-the-moment amazement and gratitude. We yearned for this for such a long time, and here we are, right now.

It’s been a long tedious trip to get here, but the miracle is that we can do it at all. We have proven ourselves to be compliant, diligent, and remarkably adept at filling out forms and following instructions, and folding our seventy-year-old bodies into uncomfortable positions for the duration of a transatlantic flight, and we arrived at Heathrow in the usual bleary-eyed, sleep-deprived, disoriented state. We have been declared Covid-free, we wear our masks, we keep our distance, and we walk with trepidation along the busy streets where everything seems vaguely familiar yet oddly dissonant.

My favorite walk, of course, is between the house where we are staying and the home of my daughter, son-in-law, and grandson Felix. It’s not much more than five minutes, a series of narrow sidewalks that render us neighbors. We, the faraway old people who live on the other side of a continent and an ocean, visible only via computer screen, are suddenly three-dimensional and a few blocks away, knocking on the door to be greeted by the funny little fellow that is Felix, having meals together, making plans.

But because I overthink things, and long-distance travel discombobulates me, I spent a couple of days snagged in a gap between what I might have fantasized and what has ensued, a gap in which I feel inadequate and vulnerable, a grandma in name only. It’s a gap in which geography becomes the most important factor, and it seems impossible to be a person of significance in our grandson’s life. And I know I’m the grown-up, but I also feel insecure around this fifteen-month-old baby. How do I relate to him? What if he doesn’t like me? On a purely physical level, how can I keep up with him? He’s fast, rushing headlong into danger, which suddenly seems everywhere, and he’s heavy, and willful. I’ve had a few deflating moments where he squirmed away from me. I feel like the old lady in the shadows, whispering hush. Monte does so much better.

And yet, and yet…little by little, as I caught up on sleep and returned to myself, I began to understand that Felix is showing me exactly how to be. Look at that airplane in the sky! Look at that stick on the ground! A big yellow truck! A massive tree! Pigs and peacocks! Apples to pick! Taste those berries, taste that dirt, taste that tiny spritz of rain! Felix is head-over-heels in love with the world. He doesn’t think anything is ordinary. And he’s right.

I have a pass to the Botanic Garden, one of my favorite places on earth, and the kids have made us wonderful dinners, and last night we sat together in a yellow kitchen after Felix had gone to bed, and I thought, “This is it!” We are here in Oxford with our people, and there’s a little boy upstairs, fast asleep, who will maybe get to know us someday, and hopefully love us, though possibly not, but we will love him, and we are a part of his story forever, and he is traveling beyond us into time, but he has already taught me something. Here we are, right now. And it’s amazing.