The evening of the first day of spring of this year, as the flower garden announced that soon it would be resplendent with the brilliant color of blossoms in abundance as indicated by the proliferation of green sprouts everywhere, my dearest treasure on all this earth, fifty years my traveling companion, ended her battle with cancer.
“I feel so lost,” I said to our children gathered round.
“Dad, the grandkids still need you.”
I had heard something similar years earlier from a total stranger as I carried our granddaughter through the aisles, shopping with my wife for this or that.
“Why do grandpas love their granddaughters so much?” he had asked rhetorically, peering over the top of his spectacles.
I smiled at the remark as my cheek nuzzled against my granddaughter’s fuzzy bit of hair, her very dark eyes looking out over the top of my shoulder as we wandered about.
Store clerks offered to hold her while we browsed.
“That cute little baby’s back!” one will announce to another at one of our more frequent haunts.
When she was very small, our family would play a little game that when she was being held and she made the slightest peep, you had to give her up as it was the signal that it was another family member’s turn to hold her.
And if it was my turn, and I was always hoping that it was my turn – that I hear that little peep first – something very special would happen.
The same thing would happen when, on the rare occasion, she cried. I would swoop her up from her swinging cradle, hold her close and say, “It’s okay; it’s grandpa.”
She instantly became contently quiet because Grandpa has her.
It is a magical and very, very special moment.
Nestling into my arms, she first smiles and stretches her entire length – as if by doing so she’ll make herself taller – before laying her chubby little arms out and up on my chest as she tucks her head under my chin.
Standing there in the plumbing section of a local hardware store and just about to answer the man’s question, another couple passing by answered:
“Because that’s what grandpas do.”
We’re needed.
Especially now.
