Camp Grandparents

Summer means different things to different people. For most teachers, it is a break from the previous nine or ten months of helping other people’s children learn. For most students, it is a break from the grind of schoolwork. For some parents, it is an opportunity to spend time with children. For some parents, work obligations mean other plans have to be made. We fall into this last list.

The last several years we have been fortunate enough to have Hannah participate in a summer-long camp during each weekday. This allows her to meet other children her age from other schools and backgrounds. The camp has theme days and events which are appealing to each age represented. They go on field trips a few times during the summer and swim at least once a week. Most every day, Hannah comes home tired from her day away.

In the middle of summer break though, the camp takes off one week. This means more plan-changing and rearranging on our part. This year we settled on something unique. We called it Camp Grandparents.

Hannah spent a couple of nights with Jennifer’s mom and dad. Then Hannah and I drove to my mom and dad’s to spend a couple of nights there. By the end of the week, time had flown by and Hannah returned home tired.

She could probably recite a list of things she did during Camp Grandparents week. She watched movies, she spent money at the Dollar Tree, ate ice cream, climbed rock walls and trees, rode a bike, peeked into a birdhouse to look at baby birds, played with cousins she sees a handful of times each year and much more. All in all, the week was a success. I knew this when at the end of Camp Grandparents, as we loaded the car to head home, she whimpered, “I don’t want to go.”

She won’t understand deeper until later but someday I hope she looks back at not just this particular week but at all the opportunities she had to spend time with the people she knows as her grandparents. When she does I pray she relishes those times. Yes, they spoil her. These grandparents tell us that is their responsibility. To me and her mom, these people are radically different in their views on nutrition, discipline and so much more for her when we compare those same views for us when, as their children, we lived under their roof. Even then, those things come nowhere matching the love they all four have for their granddaughter. You can see that love in their eyes when they see her or even talk about her. You know it when they do something for her they did not have to do.

Maybe Camp Grandparents will be open again next year. We will have to see about that as the year progresses. In a world that changes every day and seemingly wants to change the way lives have lived for centuries, I am thankful our daughter has grandparents who are steady, serious, caring, helpful yet mischievous and daring in ways that will make her relationship with them something she will cling to the rest of her life.

Sweet Summer Serenade

It had been a busy enough day. It was through though. We were home. Hannah asked me to stay outside with her after we piled out of the car. I really wanted to shed the clothes and shoes I wore to my 9-to-5 for something more comfortable. Still, her request was agreeable enough.

She went to her swing set. She rotated around the various swings and slide for the next few minutes. I sat down at the bottom of a set of steps that lead to a back door to our house. Sad to say, I pulled out my phone.

I justified my actions by convincing myself I was due this since I hadn’t looked at my phone in over an hour. My last glance had been as I walked to my car as I left my job when I checked text messages, personal email and work email. In that hour, maybe some message had come through that just would not wait.

Of course, there was nothing dramatically life-altering on that rectangular screen I held in my hand. Now and then, I would glance in Hannah’s direction watching her, carefree and happy. I turned back to my phone, locating a mindless game so I could while away the next few minutes.

For some reason, it was something I heard that cleared me from the fog that seemed to have swallowed me. I put down my phone straining to hear more. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Hannah seated in a lawn chair near her swing set. What I could hear was coming from her. She softly sang a song. I struggled to hear it more clearly. No matter how hard I tried, I could not make out the words she was singing. Still, it sounded wonderful, precious, innocent, timeless.

I told myself to drink in the moment. I looked around. It had rained earlier in the day. Now though the sun had soaked up the wetness. Beams of light streamed through the trees. Blue skies stretched endlessly upward with only a couple of white puffy clouds passing by here and there. Even the yard, freshly mown a few days earlier, seemed just the right height and color of green. And, the background music was Hannah singing a song. This is the life.

I could have used my phone to record the moment. I didn’t though. Even though technology is amazing, and available at our every turn, I knew I could not do justice to what I was experiencing.

Soon enough it was over. Hannah’s neighborhood friend came barreling down our driveway. Darker clouds rolled in from the west bringing rain for a time. Because of the rain, Jennifer had to make alternate plans since grilling supper had been her first option. We then noticed how some of the raindrops found their way into some mysterious hidden groove that causes a leak into our dining room. I avoided those drops as I sat down to pay bills. Then, before long in another part of the house, I was working to unclog a stopped-up toilet.

Life had gone from a quiet song floating through the air into my head to a potential household disaster, or two, in a matter of minutes. As I stood there, plunger in hand, plotting my next move, I could not help but wonder why things change as quickly as they do sometimes.

I am not the most smart man in the world. Some days though the things I observe cling to me. Such things have stuck enough times for me to realize what happened on this summer afternoon is a pattern of life, a larger picture of the way things unfold before us. Some days, you stand on the mountain, victorious, confident, bold. Then as quick as a realization, you are in a valley wondering when and where it all went downhill. Yes, clichéd, but clichés became clichés because they rang true more often than not.

Now, as I hammer out words onto a screen, hoping in some way to bottle a moment in time, I hear a faint tune playing over and over in my head. It is the voice of a little girl singing softly in the wind. It is a sweet summer serenade. It is a song for the life we live and for the life I love.