Sister & Brother

My Original Babies

Watching my two children together this morning made me a bit pensive, melancholy only with a tinge of sadness that they are growing up, or actually have grown up. I mean they are well past the legal age that defines them as adults. They have children--so you know they had to do that "grown-up thing" to get those children, my beloved grandchildren. They have jobs. They go places that I don't know about and/or necessarily have the right to know about. They still depend on me, but it's fun to watch them depend on each other more and more. The shift from depending on me to depending on each other is even more skewered! It's almost unbelievable. Why? Because although I have sisters (same daddy, different mothers) that I didn't really discover until I was an adult, I didn't grow up with any siblings so therefore didn't know anything about sibling battles. I now know that sibling battles are very very very normal, at least to the point just before blood is drawn. There were the usual squabbles when they were little. As they grew older and learned new ways to verbally insult each other, at times things were said to each other that horrified me and made me think "Oh, oh, that's it for that brother-sister relationship." But I soon learned how wrong I was, especially before I learned to not try to intervene. In my feeble attempts to intervene, they often came together quicker and somehow turned on me!!!! I finally threw my hands up and learned to stay out of their "teen-to-adult" squabbles and let them work things out for themselves. Somehow, and I'm befuddled as hell, those squabbles made and continue to make them closer!!!! The squabbles are few and far in between now. Thank God. And of course, as with all sibling relationships, it's always the case of "I can beat my sibling up, but nobody else better ever touch my sister/brother or it's on!" Trust me, I shudder to think of what my son will do if he ever gets his hands on his sister's recent ex-boyfriend (sperm donor of her two babies). And I've heard some of her thoughts about a girlfriend or two of her brother's. Unless it's a day they are both working or have other commitments, there's not a day that doesn't go by that Wesley doesn't come scoop his sister Debra up (most times along with her children in tow) and walk with her, go to the store to buy chips or breakfast or just go hang out! Yes this is the same Wesley shown teaching Debra's oldest to ride his bike in my previous post. Often times I get so caught up in my thoughts of my beloved grandchildren that I bemoan the fact that it seems like time went by so fast that I didn't devote as much time to my own kids. But now I realize, being the special little folks that they were (my own kids), I did spend a lot of loving time with them when I slow down and look at the photos and think of the memories. For instance, I have photos of Wesley at the fire station that houses Engine #73 when he was about 6, the same age as Khalil (Debra's oldest boy) is now. Oh the smiles on Wesley's face are priceless sitting on that big red engine, with the huge fireman's hat on his little peanut head (I don't know why it didn't break his neck). Well I will take my grandson Khalil to the same fire station and recreate those same photos, what some 20 years later. I don't have a photo of this next memory and bit of foolishness, but I still laugh at (and Debra still reminds me of this) my telling her that if she put a little pebble she found outside in her dresser drawer, that she'd have boobs as big as mine the next morning--she was only about 5 or 6 or not much older. The first photo is of Debra and Wesley when they were roughly about the same age as her children Khalil (6) and his little brother Aiden (2). The second photo, obviously when they were early teens and he, now taller than big sister. Okay, I'm done with this melancholy moment.

Happy 6th Birthday Khalil

It Was Only Yesterday . . .

. . . that I watched you being born!!!!!! Where did 6 years go? How did they fly by so fast????? You talk to me now. Sometimes too much (laugh)!!! Like now, you're on the balcony with your Great Grandmother, but still talking to me. My bedroom is very near the front balcony and my window is opened. I just told you, "shush." You are loud. But, you have such a gifted vocabulary, using words, that we wondered where you learned them from, in their proper context. I told you recently that you could be the next Barak Obama. You said there already was one. I didn't try to explain what being the "next" was as opposed to actually being that person; that that's not possible. I told you that you and your family--wife, children--could live in the White House. You said you just wanted to be an Uncle. We have such interesting conversations. I had to chuckle to myself (and proud Grandma that I am, I didn't try to correct you either) when in the next room I overheard you tell your mother that she wasn't the boss of you, that I (Grandma) was!!!!! All your mother, my daughter, could say was that we were both the boss of you. Where the heck did you get that??? Was that in a Tom Cruise movie? I know that statement about somebody completing somebody else was. But you don't know Tom Cuise from vacation cruise. And you've never seen any of his movies. You love hanging out with your Granddad, Uncle, cousins, the various friends of mine, Granddad, etc. In your innocent little existence you often say you wish we could all live in the same house. I will cherish everything about you as you grow. But I will miss the innocence that all children lose as they grow to adulthood. I hope the next 6 years don't go by as fast.

Summer Days

Learning to Ride a Bike
It felt like a summer day. It's not summer yet, not officially. But it was too nice to be shut up in the house. Well maybe I didn't have a problem with being shut up in the house after getting off from work at 8 a.m. If I didn't dive under the covers immediately, a few hours of knitting would have been okay too! But, BUT, with an 5-year-old Grandson who thinks he's a Power Ranger--Spiderman--Ironman, well you get the idea, it would have been cruel to have kept him in the house even with his favorite PBS kid's shows on. Having just graduated kindergarten, school is out. So after running some errands first, I let him take his scooter out and we went for a nice walk stopping first at Grandpa's to see the bike that he had put together for Khalil. Men! Not to my surprise it wasn't the typical bike, in my mind, for an almost 6-year-old to learn on. The brake is on the handle bar. There was no training wheels. But Khalil loved it and Grandpa and Uncle Wesley both took turns running up and down the block with Khalil in his first attempts to ride it. I've since talked Grandpa into putting one training wheel on it, like we did for our son, Khalil's uncle Wesley when he was the same age and learning for the first time. With one wheel, once he got tired of leaning and being off balance, his body automatically started balancing. With Khalil having not to worry about balance, he can focus on steering the bike and learning to stop, using the hand brake.