Transition

Last week, as I was struggling to get through it, felt like endlessly repeated frames of a low-resolution snapshot of hell.

The house was, charitably put, a wreck with my twin sisters and their two boys scheduled for a one-day stop here on their trip from the west coast. It was also the week when my grandson would have his last full day of kindergarten, followed by two half days and then the new routine that would prevail for the rest of the summer.

For whatever reason, things had not been going well between the little boy and me and the thought of extending this new-found misery into a full day seemed too awful to contemplate. Every waking minute, it seemed, was a power struggle, a contest, and as determined as I was to prevail, for his well-being and my sanity, he was equally determined to resist.

"C'mon, it's time to get up."

"No it's not."

"What do you want for breakfast?"

"I'm not hungry"

"Well, you've gotta eat something."

"No I don't."

"Jason, you have to get dressed."

"I don't wanna wear pants, I wanna wear shorts."

"It's too cold for shorts this morning."

"No it's not." 
 
Occasionally, these confrontations would end with the classic,

"Stop arguing with me."

"I'm not arguing with you, you're arguing with me."

Except that now I wasn't laughing, didn't feel even a brief flicker of the smile that had once lit up inside me at the sheer absurdity of such exchanges.

It was like our respective biological clocks had been reset for an intensive recap of the "terrible twos." His and mine both because, as unreasonable as his behavior was, mine was immeasurably worse considering that I'm supposed to be the adult.

If the absence of that sweet, mostly compliant little boy I'd known was a rude awakening to some new and hellish reality, the loss of my hard-won grandparenting prowess in the face of it was almost unbearably disappointing. Not to mention the loss of that wonderfully congenial relationship we'd had since he first came into our lives.

Now, with some of the pressure off, and with a moment or two for quiet contemplation, I'm wondering if this behavior has been his way of responding to yet another of those jarring cycles of disruption, displacement, dissolution that his life has been subjected to from almost the day he arrived here as an infant.

About three weeks ago, his dad broke up with the girl who had taken the little boy's place in the room he was supposed to share with his dad. That very night, the little boy happily moved back in to fill what I'm sure he thought was the void left in the room and in his dad's heart. But little more than a week later, the girl was back and he was out. How could I have not understood the impact of that and responded to it sooner and more positively?

I call this entry "Transition" after a piece written in a journal that I've found myself reading, lately, with considerable awe. The last entry in it was about the impending loss of a beloved grandfather whose legacy would, I'm sure, be the envy of most. (Thanks, catelin .) 

Let it be my reminder that there is much left to do, in this life that's mine, before I've finally become what my own precious grandchild needs me to be...