This past Saturday morning dawned calm and clear and borderline cold. As is the usual routine I woke up before my bride and our oldest daughter who was here visiting and my oldest granddaughter. The coffee had percolated just right and I was scrunched up on the back porch rummaging around in Matthew in response to some new thoughts I had been having. My 10-year-old ACU sweatshirt and long flannel sleep pants were just able to keep the cold at bay. The morning disciplines were hitting just the right level of thought, questions, and a few insights that kept slipping in and out of my conscious, linear mind, refusing to be articulated. At this precise moment my 8-year-old granddaughter having beaten both her mother and her Nena out of bed came outside and promptly crawled up in my lap. No invitation, no question, no hesitancy. This left me scrambling to move my coffee out of the spill zone, power down my Kindle and make room for this new moment.
We spent the next 20 minutes or so looking at and identifying the various birds strafing our bird feeder, finding the helicopter that made its presence known with the familiar thup-thup-thup before we could see it, and talking about all things of concern for an 8-year-old. With the usual forethought she had only her sleep pants and sleeveless sleep shirt on, so she was relying on me and my old sweatshirt to keep her warm.
What was so compelling to me was the reminder of how it had been when she was little. Now her legs hang off one side and her head and arms stay close only because I wrangle them in from the other side of the chair. But she cozied up, squeezing her head onto my shoulder and neck and there we sat and visited.
You have to understand how special this was. This girl is not a shy, quiet, hesitant little thing. No, this girl is all drama. Singing and dancing and playing and all done with the volume turned all the way up. When she is happy, she is borderline hysterical. When this girl is sad, she is weepy. She has all the range of a teenager, she might be an emotional prodigy. They were in town to see "Newsies" which I am told is a musical. Since it was not a requirement that I go, it was up to her and her mother and her Nena to fill me in later. But she walks in from the musical with a newsies cap on, a t-shirt, and the CD playing in the car stereo with the volume just this side of a landing jet. Every portion of this girl's life is full volume and full speed ahead.
So when this cyclone known as my eldest granddaughter wanted to snuggle for a moment, I set aside my study, my thoughts, my disciplines for this one moment. I am at the stage in life where I don't know when I will go from beloved granddaddy to an old fogey they don't particularly want to be around. These moments get soaked up and stored away in the memory savings account.
By the time we got cold enough to come in, the parent and the grandmother were both up and making plans for breakfast. I never got back to my study, or my coffee, or my thoughts. Except to realize that our creator must have been okay with this trade. I think sometimes he would prefer we snuggle instead of study. I know from some darker moments that He is a snuggler of hearts.
Godspeed to you all who get a "Phoebe" moment, a moment to sit and visit and snuggle while the morning warms up.
Don
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