From the Mouths of Babes

You have to know Grey's granddad to understand this story, so here goes:

He is a man that would lose his keys every single day of his life if he didn't put them in the same place every time he took them out of his pocket.  So, he puts them in the same place every single day and has never once lost them.  He is the kind of person who you are not allowed to speak to until 20-30 minutes after he has come home because he rushes immediately to his office to jot down a reminder on a legal pad or make a note of something he has heard on the radio or read in the paper that he doesn't want to forget.  He then proceeds to write thank you notes or letters of encouragement to friends and return every single phone call that he has said he would return.  Then, and only then, will he exit his office and proceed with your typical welcome home type stuff.

At this point you have less than five minutes to hold his attention on any pressing matter as all he can think about is briskly walking through the kitchen, sliding past the living room, and into his bedroom to change into his running gear.  If anyone is standing adjacent to his path, he will ask them how their day went, or maybe how their job was going, or he may even ask them for their opinion on some new restaurant downtown.  If you use more than three words in your description you are wasting your breath.  He is already gone - if not physically, certainly mentally.  If you say anything negative, you have lost him - this is a man who claims that he has never been ill, nor has he ever had a bad day at work, and he has zero interest in hearing about yours.  He didn't really want to talk to you at all, but he considers himself too much of a gentleman to walk through a room and not acknowledge your very existence.

Next, he is going running.  It does not matter what the weather, it does not matter what plans you have, or that you might need five seconds of his time (my mother has literally unloaded furniture by herself as he ran by saying, "That's a nice looking wingback chair."), you are not getting it.  The trail is.  He has run almost every single day of his life for the last 30 years and you are not important enough to keep that from happening on this or any other day.  If you think that you are, or you think that today is special, you are about to get your feelings hurt because it is not happening.

When he gets back from his love affair with the River Parks and his beloved trail, he is going to take a shower without waiting for one second to do it.  There will be no replacement of burnt out light bulbs, there will be no hanging of my mother's many holiday flags, there will be no prolonged chit-chatting with the neighbors on the front lawn or otherwise.  There will be a shower and it will be now.

After the shower there are a few minutes in which he may engage with you while he eats, most often while standing, in the kitchen.  At this point you may feel like you can really have a conversation with him and sometimes you are right.  Other times you will find yourself answering a question to the refrigerator because he has exited without whatever information you were asked to convey to him.  My mother starts to answer a question and then proceeds to sprint down the hall toward his office, her volume increasing as if she is having a conversation with someone that is standing on an elevator whose doors are closing. Either that or she prattles on and on about something and just as she starts to enjoy the sound of her own voice, she hears his office door shut and realizes she has been holding an audience with thin air for minutes.

Throughout the rest of the evening, my son's granddad will exit his office intermittently for food, something to drink, or perhaps to let you know that there is something more interesting on television than what you have chosen to watch.  The way he lets you know this is by entering the room and changing the channel on the television that you are watching.  And rest assured, if there is an HD version of the channel he wishes for you to enjoy, the television will not be on it.  He claims to not see any difference, so he hasn't bothered to memorize the channel numbers.

But despite all of this, there are the sweet things, too.  He loves my wife and is proud to share an inside joke with her about their common astrological sign, Scorpio, and how that totally lets him off the hook for being a recluse.  He thinks that my mother is the most beautiful woman in the world and never fails to mention it.  He is the most protective and proud of my little brother, and in ancient times he would have been designated the Patron Saint of House Cats for the love, care, and rescue of some of God's most wonderful creatures.  He cares deeply about the treatment of minorities and the disenfranchised and starts guerrilla campaigns with the followers of his radio program to strip the city of misplaced election signs during voting season.  Memorial Day will find him in a graveyard placing small flags next to the plaques of the men and women who have died for their country and our freedom.  And about the only thing that is allowed to get in the way of his daily run is an opportunity to stop, pet, and ask the name of a dog that he meets along the path.

And then there is Grey, his grandson. He is absolutely over the moon about his grandson.  At ten months old, my son is the proud owner of batting gloves, a radio flyer wagon, just about every children's book that can be purchased, a trailer that can be pulled by my bicycle, and slightly more of his granddad's attention than any of the rest of us have been able to hold.  Having never had any siblings or children of his own, I would say that granddad has done very well with Grey.  He is a natural at holding and playing, if not the best at consoling.  He is constantly amazed with Grey's development and is thinking of him on an hourly basis.  He even mentioned him on his radio program the other day, which is more than I can say for the rest of us.

A few days ago my son strung together his first multi-syllabic word.  To non-parents this will mean very little, but to anyone who has raised a child from infancy, it is understood that this is a milestone.  One that denotes complex speaking patterns and advancing brain development.  And when you have a child, you get very excited when these words come out of their mouth as they tend to become some sort of bizarre affirmation that you have not yet screwed him or her up completely.  Are you ready for the word?  The one whose utterance simultaneously fills me with pride and laughter?  Here it is:  "bubo."  (pronunciation: buh-bo)

Okay, so technically it is not a word, but it is two syllables strung together.  And not accidentally, either. He says it all the time.  What he means by it we have no fucking idea, but that's not the point really.  It is the first word he says in the morning and the last one he says at night.  A few evenings ago, he was totally asleep and then he pulled away from my wife's breast, opened his eyes, and said, "bubo," in a raspy voice and then proceeded to go back to sleep.

Cari and I talked about what we thought Grey might mean by the word "bubo" for awhile and then we joked about how granddad constantly repeated the word back to him in what we had determined was either an effort to communicate, or what was more than likely a desperate attempt to say something relevant to a ten month-old boy.  Often, when we go over to his house, granddad will have forgotten the most recent thing that we have been saying that makes Grey laugh, or he incorrectly mimics Grey's speech and I will admit, there have been times when I have thought less of him for not being more involved and staying engaged.  Is it too much to ask for a person to just stay in a room and pay attention to his grandson and possibly even his children or maybe his wife?

Later that evening I got a text from my mother that read:  "I just went in granddad's office to feed the cats and I looked at the legal pad on his desk.  Look at the entry at the bottom of the page."

You're off the hook, Granddad...