Paul and Lexi’s suitcase is packed and zipped, the outfits I’d chosen for them laid out on their beds. My son, Tucker, and his wife, Lisa, are home in Massachusetts, scurrying to empty the last cans and jars from their cupboards and ferrying final loads to the dump and Goodwill. After months of planning, acquiring Visas, squaring things up at work, and seeking renters, they are moving to Switzerland in two days. While I have dreaded this final step, delivering the kids to the airport, I am in departure mode, geared for the drive to Boston.
“I don’t want to wear that!” Lexi whines.
“Everything else is packed, Sweetie.”
“But I don’t want that shirt!” she says as she flops on the bed, her face set.
Honestly! I am not interested in a stupid squabble over clothes, and my impatience shows.
“You like this shirt, Lexi. Just put it on.”
“No!”
I glower at her and prepare another stern salvo, when… wait. Stop. Some inner angel has the good sense to snag my attention. Am I really going to bicker over clothes with this precious four-year-old who is about to move far away from me?
No. Not for a second more.
I unzip the suitcase and pull her close. “Okay, Sweetie. Show me what you want to wear.”
She shuffles through her clothes, rejecting a pink tee-shirt with a sequined heart, the rainbow leggings, and an orange “Bingo” jersey. “This,” she says, pulling out a dress she’s worn twice in the past week. Fine. She tugs it over her head and looks adorable.
Paul and Lexi have been with us for a week, and it’s been a whirl of playgrounds, Hide N’ Go Seek, crafts, and Candyland. Swimming, tea parties, “helicopter rides” and Red light/Green Light marathons with our daughter, Casey, and four-year-old Eleanor. Mornings with the kids in soft PJ’s, watching “Bluey” on T.V. over a breakfast of frozen waffles, fruit, and “LeaLea’s special yogurt.”
At ages seven and four, Paul and Lexi are up for anything: filling the bird feeders, vacuuming, husking corn, and baking. They want to be with us, no matter how mundane the errand. “I’m just going to put the clothes in the drier…”
“I’ll come with you!”
“I’m just going to empty the compost out back…”
“I’ll come with you!”
“I’m just going to get my sunglasses out of the car…”
“I’ll come with you!” And a little hand slips into mine for every jaunt or task.
While Paul or Lexi happily folds warm tee shirts stamped with unicorns and dinosaurs, my nose prickles, tears barely in check. While dumping the compost, I brush my eyes dry with the back of my hand. Behind my retrieved sunglasses, my eyes are damp. The little kid years are short, so very precious, so blessed with humor and snuggles, and Dave and I have basked in that light. We are keenly aware that it will be a while before the next visit.
Usually, Paul procrastinates and fidgets while getting dressed, but not today. He is quiet as he puts on the shorts and tee shirt I’ve selected, perhaps more conscious than his little sister of the momentous change ahead.
His fingernails need a trim, so we go to the bathroom and fetch clippers and scissors. Paul sits on a wooden stool Casey made in middle school, and I sit on the floor. “I can do my left hand, but will you do the right?”
“Of course!”
He is methodical and takes his time. Each nail requires several clips as he angles the clippers this way and that. It is all I can do not to hurry him along, to suppress a breezy, “How ‘bout I take it from there?”
But again, thank heavens, I think, wait. Why rush this time together? It will be a while before the next visit.
When he’s ready, I take his right hand in mine and slowly snip while telling him how Byeo, my grandmother, did my nails. “She cut, filed, and buffed them to make them shiny. And then – this is interesting – she’d run a white pencil under the top of each nail.”
“Why?” asks Paul.
“I guess she thought it looked nice. Isn’t it funny that I still remember that? I wonder if you’ll remember this when you are 70?”
Paul doesn’t say anything, but he’s a thoughtful boy, and I can tell he’s thinking about it. And, again, my nose prickles…
It’s one of the many gifts of time with Paul, Lexi, and Eleanor that memories of my kids’ childhood, as well as my own, are revived. While making drip castles with sand, playing “Birdie Dear,” or trotting a child on my knees for “This is the Way the Farmer Boy Rides,” I hope Byeo is watching these reruns of her games. And I hope she beams as much as I do when Lexi asks indignantly, “Why can’t it be a Farmer Girl?”
All three kids like to paint, and a few days ago, I’d noticed one of Lexi’s pieces was particularly specific, hieroglyphic in appearance with squiggles and shapes paired with numbers. When I put her to bed that night, she pointed at one of the spindles on the headboard and said, “I tried to draw it, but it wasn’t very good.”
Startled, I looked around. “Was your drawing this afternoon about your bed?”
“Yes.” And I watched as she counted the carved arcs and spindles in the headboard, then pointed to one pillow, two sheets, and one blanket, all as drawn and numbered on her picture.
“Wow, Lexi. Actually, it wasn’t just good, it was amazing!” Dave and I have marveled at so many signs of how much, and how quickly, our little ones are thinking, learning, and growing.
It has been a throw-back week of making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and remembering to pack changes of clothing and snacks no matter how short the excursion; of snuggling up with cozy stories; and splashing in the pool with Casey, Eleanor, and PJ. What a respite from my usual newsfeed doom scroll. What a gift to be immersed in unicorns, rainbows, dancing, and giggles.
Dave has been gleeful in playing catch with his grandson, pulling up his former glory years as a pitcher in putting on Tucker’s old catcher’s mitt and a sports caster’s voice to call a play by play with Paul as the star. “And the crowd goes wild!” Dave would whoop when Paul delivered a solid pitch.
Every joyous moment is heightened, poignant, as we strive to freeze it. We know it will be a while until the next visit.
Before we head out, we give the kids our phones to dash around the house and take pictures. Paul decides to video, and his is a heady ride of blue-sneakered feet and floorboards as he runs through the rooms for quick pans interspersed with extreme close-ups: my mother’s porcelain milkmaid; an air vent he helped Dave fix; the dragon-headed fireplace tools; and the springy flag on the Fischer Price castle.
Lexi’s going for stills. Hers are carefully composed, mostly in focus, some, surprisingly artistic. She takes several pictures of the items on my bureau: a card she made for me, and photos of 6-year-old Lea with Byeo. She captures vignettes in the guest room, a glimpse down the stairs, a shot of the suitcases and backpacks waiting by the back door. We are touched by what they choose to capture and wonder how much they'll remember.
The ride to the airport hotel in Boston is uneventful, and when we arrive, Tucker and Lisa are waiting for us. Before they fly, we have one last day together to run races through the sky bridge, frolic in the hotel pool, play catch in our room, and Hide N’ Go Seek in the lobby. Their flight departs at 9:00 P.M. and the kids are remarkably cooperative given the late hour. They put on their pajamas in hopes they’ll sleep through the flight and slip on their backpacks. Then, our caravan of kids, carts, weary parents, and sorrowful grandparents sets off.
Tucker has scoped out the long and circuitous route to their gate from the hotel. He and Dave push carts loaded high with massive suitcases through corridors, across a parking lot, into an assortment of elevators, and down to the terminal while the kids scamper alongside. During his earlier reconnaissance, Tucker had met with the TAM Airways representative who would check them in, and she is an incredible help with the ungainly process of filling in forms and checking those bags.
Finally, it’s time to say good-bye.
We’re not allowed to accompany them to the gate, and the airport employee who turns us away is kind and apologetic as we all hug and cry and cry and hug. Oh, this is hard.
We know it will be a while before the next visit.
