Changes

When you reach a certain age, your kids start reproducing. It happens. Ready or not, your kids start having kids. It’s a fact. It happens. It’s supposed to happen.

Traditionally, the announcement the impending arrival of a new little one, generates a lot of jumping up and down, and it’s not unheard of for larger numbers of new adult beverages to begin showing up in your refrigerator.

There is usually a lot of noise associated with these new arrivals, but, if you listen really closely, you can hear the faint sounds of tables, as well as pages, being turned.

My grandparents, save one, were largely unknown to me. They lived across the country from us, and we just weren’t the type of family that hops in the old Packard and drives over the river and thru the woods. No, our brand of poverty wasn’t all that flexible, so we sorta hung close to the house.

I met my Dad’s father once, and managed to see his mom twice. She was very short, very sweet and could launch a lip full of tobacco across the front room, directly into the fireplace. Heady stuff for a young lad.

I have the vaguest memory of my Mom’s father. I still try to remember him, because he seemed like a really cool guy. I’m still trying to forget my Mom’s mother. Cranky. I’ll say it again—cranky. She lived with us for awhile, and ours was a relationship of mutual loathing. She was confined to a wheelchair, and would try to ram me with it.

Did I mention that she was…well—cranky?

All in all, I never stored up many of those warm and cuddly grandparent-related memories. No cookies, cocoa, sleep-overs, popcorn and scratchy scarves for Christmas.

When my kids started spewing out their own little herds, I realized that I needed to start acting like a grandfather. It wasn’t to be. From the beginning, I was proclaimed “Boppa.” That’s more new territory for me, but, from the beginning, it seemed a comfortable fit.

I’m thinking a grandfather sounds like a guy who might wear a vest and go to the office. A Boppa, on the other hand, turns out to be a guy who wears boots, drools a little, and teaches the little toads how to feed baby pigs, drive tractors and study the shapes of clouds.

I let these little guys know, immediately after they showed up, that I have no clue how be a Boppa, and enlisted their help in defining the job. Since they’re lacking much experience at being grand-kids, we’ve sorta hacked our own trail, and had some fun along the way.

It turns out they taught me the excitement secretly hidden in an empty moving box, and what it sounds like when you learn the dinner menu consists solely of ice cream. I’ve learned that the arrival of the weekly trash truck can stop the world, and is best witnessed in total silence and rapt wonder. I’ve come to understand that wandering around a dollar store in search of the good stuff, is time well spent, and that the ongoing quest for the perfect cheeseburger outweighs almost everything else.

A stripped down riding lawnmower (minus the mower deck) became one of the more impressive pieces of equipment on the farm. It cruised many an hour, doing important work on the farm. Flashing emergency lights, whip antennae, and a frog for a hood ornament raised the ante of cool on our gravel road.

Camp-outs down by the Raccoon tree, looking for tree frogs and gathering firewood were commonplace events. The tradition of pancakes for breakfast and studying bees were born during this era.

Eventually, they’ll grow, and the world will occupy their life. That’s normal, too.

They may well forget the pigs, the tractors, the pancakes and the ice cream. That memory of the search for the perfect cheeseburger will undoubtedly dim, as may the recollection of the cloud that looked like a seahorse.

They might forget, but I won’t.

And that makes being a Boppa more than worthwhile; it makes one of the greatest of all the truly great adventures.