What Grand-Pas Do
One of my grandpa jobs is to pick up the children at school. Emma and Eddie, middle schoolers, get out at 2:30 whereas Johnny, 4th grade, is a 3 PM release at the primary school.
Often I’m carting only 8th grader Emma. The other two, Eddie, 6th grade, usually walks home with various sidekicks, while Johnny, almost always succeeds in managing a play-date invitation from an accommodating mom.
Today I arrive at Emma’s Ridgedale Middle School a bit early as daughter Ashley has requested that I bring a check to the office as a deposit for the school’s Washington D. C. trip. I oblige, forking over, from my account, $169.62 without blinking. It’s part of the job description.
It’s 2 PM so I wait the 30 minutes. I enjoy this time.
Nothing to do but read or write my journal, scribbles on my laptop, or I talk
to the moms. Moms are all nice, i.e. they smile and speak sweetly to grandpa. To be
fair, the thirty, forty-something moms are much more interested in mom-to-mom
gossip than exchanging pleasantries with seventy-something characters like
yours truly. Unlike the experience as a parent with two daughters
some three decades prior, today, as grand-parent, I’m much less one of the crowd with this school-mom crew.
Finally, the children appear. On this day I'm surprised that five kids, all girls, pile in the car. These 8th graders fill a car. Each is a full grown, adult size person. With backpacks and all it's a tight squeeze. Emma asks if I mind driving everyone to Jungle Juice.
Of course not. I’m the personal assistant.
As we exit the school lot, they giggle about a classmate.
“Did you hear what Arron said?” This causes hysterics, albeit subdued, which I
ascribe to the presence of grandpa.
Someday, I think, they'll be less self-conscious, but then re-think – probably not.
We roll down a main thoroughfare, two plus miles, then into Madison. Here I dole out $10 to Emma, and drop them off a block away from the juice store. I could have gotten closer, but, honest, I like watching them walk up the sidewalk. They step out of the car then move along, more or less in a loose formation like graceful Canada Geese in flight, gesturing to each other, switching positions, turning heads, until finally they disappear into the juice store.
Ultimately, I move along also, thinking that I might head to the gym a block down the road. On my way I change my mind. I circle back, turning so as to pass jungle Juice, hoping to see them sipping juice at one of the sidewalk tables. They're not there yet.
Ok, I circle again.
It is a bright spring day and as I pass through the downtown, I notice the people, some shoppers, bunches of after-school kids, a few New York commuters, brief cases in hand, who got an early train home. Thoughts come to mind as I look for a familiar face. None, and I have lived in this town for thirty years. Not at all like my experience as a youth in Warwick, NY where if I was downtown and saw ten faces, I likely knew them all. For some reason, thoughts of my mortality drift into my mind, my brother John and my dearest college friends, Walley, Clarkie, Lark, and Zak, all my age, and all gone now.
My thoughts are interrupted as I see the girls on the sidewalk. I beep. Hands shoot up and I hear the giggles as my car rolls by.
Eddie calls, on my cell phone
He’s with a friend and wants to know if I'd give him money for sandwich at corner deli,
at the next town over. I Drive his way ad supply the $20. The days of a 20 cent hot dog vanished decades ago.
Finally now at Ashley’s house, I empty out the backpacks and let the dogs out. I watch them do their business, the shovel the business off the yard.
Emma calls. She's halfway home, walking with her friends. "Can you pick us up?" she says on the phone.
“Sorry I’m tied up here. I’m dropping clothes at the cleaners,” I say. It’s a lie. I do the girls a favor. I tell them to start walking. Why did I lie?
Because I love the thought of kids walking to and from school. And it’s a pleasure, fun, for them as well. No? I'm doing them a favor.
I re-route my self toward the cleaners on the other side of town - sans clothes to drop off - where I wait for a few minutes in the parking lot, to make me feel more comfortable about the fib.
Weird.
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