Books and Feet

One of the most pleasant ways to spend a lazy hour or two is on the couch reading books with eight year old girls. Lillian is immersed in the convoluted dragon world of Wings of Fire, in which dragons wreak havoc on one another for mysterious reasons. In the book I am reading, humans are the villains (they are nastier than dragons).

We are both thoroughly modern readers: we switch comfortably from print to digital — and back. She has her own Kindle, and, as in the picture above, is happy to borrow her Yia Yia’s iPad if her Kindle or current book are not with her.

When we sit on the couch, she will often use my knee as a footstool. Sometimes she looks up and sees me looking at her foot and smiling.

“What’s funny?” she’ll say.

“Nothing, really. I just like looking at your foot.”

At that, she’ll roll her eyes (she is a very skilled eye-roller) and return to her book.

That foot — her left one — is a wonder to me. When I first saw it, it was about half the size of my thumb; now it’s longer than my hand. But the real wonder is that that foot was, for the first few months of her life, the conduit for all of the blood and water and medicines that helped her live and grow and thrive. Her foot was the only place the nurses could reliably put IVs in her tiny body. You can still see some of the scars from all of those needles.

So when I sit with this kind and smart and sometimes funny and sometimes serious girl, I look at the foot she casually rests on my knee and smile.

She thinks her grandfather is just a little weird.

Cousins and the Chain of Family

Cousins: Julian and Lillian

I haven’t written for Lillian’s blog in some time: she’s growing up and more and more of her story is hers to tell and not mine; I see her with the eyes of a doting grandfather, and see loveliness and kindness and something close to perfection. That’s a heavy burden to put on anyone, so perhaps best not to write about it everyday!

Yesterday at my brother’s house, we got together with Deborah, one of my two first cousins, the daughter of my dad’s sister, and her family. We had a good representation of cousins — though we missed those who weren’t there.

Deborah, John, David

These days, the cousins of my generation are the eldest of our family. Our parents are all gone. I remembered their voices, and the voices of the old people of my youth, as I watched Julian, Deborah’s grandson, and Lillian, my granddaughter, laugh and play. I wondered if, in fifty or sixty years, they might sit in some living room watching their grandchildren play, and think back to this day, and remember some of the voices in that long chain of people from whom they come.

John, Deborah, Hardin, David

In January of 1954, sixty-five years ago, Deborah and David, my brother, and I, played in my grandparents’ house out in the country in far western Kentucky. There’s a snapshot of us, and in the background is our great-grandfather, Hardin Graves. He was born in 1876; as he sat there watching us, did he think back to his own childhood and remember the old ones of his youth? Was his childhood as vivid and present in his memory then as mine is in mine today?

I don’t know. But I love to see my children, and my grandchild, and my nieces and my nephews, and my cousins, and to hear their voices, and to hope that the chain of family they represent will continue unbroken into the future.

More Cousins: Justin, Emma, Miranda, Nathan, Julian, Lillian

Nerding Out…

Lillian would spend all day on the iPad, iPhone or computer playing games or watching weird YouTube videos — if parents and grandparents would allow her to. But they are kind of spoil sports, and don’t.

Yesterday, she got a Raspberry Pi computer kit, and put it together last night, using an old monitor of her grandfather’s.  She loaded the Raspbian operating system herself. Today, we started learning the Scratch programming language and she animated a cat and a unicorn.

Don’t know if we are encouraging or discouraging computer addiction, but we are having nerdy fun!

Foxes and Invisible Diamonds

It’s summer, and I get to spend time with my favorite companion, who moves on to the second grade this fall.

Somehow or another, she has turned into a reader. She likes books about dragons and wolves and unicorns and animals and science.

Holding her hand about 4 feet off the ground, she asked me if I knew what kind of animal was that tall.

“No,” I said.

“A fox. A very, very, very, very, very unusual Fox.”

“Oh,” I said, “what makes her so unusual?”

“She wears a jewel at her throat. An invisible diamond.”

Lillian looked at me for a long time, then said, “Only girls who believe in dragons and chocolate and unicorns can see the invisible diamond.”

“Do we know any girls like that?” I asked.

“Yes, we do. Me,” she said.

Anatomy of a Perfect Afternoon

First blog post in a while — when your granddaughter gets to be seven, you have to start being careful about what you post so as not to embarrass her too much.

We had the Lilz today, as it was MLK day. So we sort of dawdled our way out of our beds this morning. We met Yia-Yia for lunch — goofy expressions and all — then Lilz and I went to one of those paint-your-own-pottery places and spent a happy few hours creating a couple of masterpieces and engaging in collaborative artistic dialogue.

And then we spent a couple of more hours in a neighborhood park, where we’ve gone regularly since Lilz was able to get out and go to parks. She can swing on her own, now, though she still appreciates the occasional push (“Higher! Faster!”). And the concrete whale is a great spot for a dramatic pose and a quick story about danger and derring-do.

There’s no better way to spend a winter’s day.

Sleeping Lilz

One of the joys of hanging out with 7-year old granddaughters is to sit and chat and read and tell stories as they drift off to sleep — though Lillian isn’t actually much of a drifter. She talks, sings, bounces, kicks, squirms, rolls and flops herself to sleep. Here she is as she was just after sleep conquered her last night.

She said, “You know, what, ePa?” Between that and my answer (“No. What?”), she fell asleep, head hanging off the mattress, stuffed dragon in her hand, stuffed purple spider by her side, legs wrapped around her pillow.

She is a joy.

Out for a Walk

Lillian, in her Bulbasaur guise, is visiting today with her grandparents. She and Yia-Yia spent time at Yia-Yia’s school’s Fall Fair, where Lillian did the hamster ball races and scored a big bag of candy. 

Then Lillian and ePa went for a long, leisurely walk on this rare gorgeous Houston afternoon (we think it’s cool; my brother Paul and his wife Nina, here from Finland, think it’s a glorious summer day).

Lillian is a wonderful walking companion: she carries the conversation (when she is not off running ahead to check out Halloween spiders and skeletons) and all one need do is throw in the odd “mmm hmmm” or nod of the head. 

A Sunday in October

Lillian’s hanging out with her grandparents, and her aunt Holly was in from Los Angeles, and catching a flight back this morning: but first she made a massive breakfast of eggs and bacon and sausage and lox and bagels and bruschetta and so forth. Then we piled in the car and ran her to the airport.

When we got back, Yia-Yia and Lillian engaged in a cutthroat game of Go Fish, and Lillian told us tales of her school and demonstrated some of the exercises she’s learned in P.E.: she’s got jumping jacks down cold, while her push ups might best be described as “impressionistic”.

It’s been a pretty good Sunday so far!

After Three Hard Weeks…

…we had dinner with Lillian and her mom and dad tonight. We saw her sweet, smiling face and got a hug (or two). In the midst of great sadness there can also be great joy. Thanks Josh and Amy and Lillian.

Seven Years of Lillian

Today Lillian Grace Denby turned seven. She is a delight–generous and kind, resilient and determined–with enough stubbornness and mischief to demonstrate conclusively that she is human.

She’s in a camp at NASA this week, but we got to talk on FaceTime and wish her happy birthday. She had eaten macaroni and cheese and chicken, and was about to start on ice cream and birthday cake.

She’ll get some more this weekend from us…