1, 2, 3, 4 ... when you're dead, infinity - March 2010

1, 2, 3, 4 ... when you're dead, infinity - March 2010

 

With the grandchildren, as with my own children, I often feel overwhelmed with a feeling of love for them. I try to contain the feeling at times - don’t know exactly why - but more often let it go and say "I love you" whenever the mood strikes.

So invariably a few times per day I can be heard asking Johnny, “John – how much does papa love you?”

John varies his response. He either gives back a number or recites the learned answer, “Too much.”

Today it’s the numbers.

“Ten,” he says.

“More than that,” I say.

“A hundred.”

“More than that.”

“A billion.”

“Nope more.”

“A thousand hundred.”

“Still more,” I say.

“When you’re dead?” he says.

John is four. In recent months he has asked when I would be dead. Mostly this was after we rode past the cemetery on Ridgedale Avenue. I think I responded with something like “A long time.” So I’m guessing that he figured that the answer to ‘when I’d be dead’ was something bigger than 70, which he knows is my age now. Then he put two and two together and calculated that “when I’d  be dead” was indeed a very big number, and therefore a good answer to “How much does papa love you?” Smart huh?

To John, the “when you’re dead” number is, obviously, a real number, nothing imaginary like the square root of a negative two. I don’t know where it fits exactly in his counting sequence but just last week Johnny and I were in the grocery store and he pointed to some cookies that he wanted.

 

“Too much money,” I said.

 

“How much are they?” he said.

 

“Lots.”
 

"How much," he pleaded.
 

"Lots," I repeated. 

 

So he guessed, “When you’re dead?”

 

There was a mother in the aisle with us and she let out a gasp, then laughter. “Did she get it?” I wondered. 

I’m not sure that, without our experience together, I would have connected the dots relative to John’s words, but it seemed that the young mother did. Or perhaps she was only responding to the sound of the phrase itself. Four-year-old in the grocery store talking to old grandpa – and he shouts, “When you’re dead.” Sort of funny, no?

Or, my take: adorable.