My Perfect Day

Perhaps if I write words on paper, the perfect visual images in my brain will disappear, and that would be a great loss.  But if I use another of my six or seven senses (paper-speech) I think the day beyond description will live better in my heart.  Words are so inadequate; they are like the canned whipped cream that wafts away before your very eyes before you can enjoy even half of it.  But some words are better than no words.  The poor monkeys, who only differ from us by a chromosome, have no words.  Children don’t remember before they have a good collection of words.  Monkeys are truly to be pitied.

You now see that I am skirting around my perfect day. Ryan announced he and son Ben would come on Saturday to install a better handlebar on Richard’s new bike,  already given to him by our three boys (boys, though the oldest is in his mid-forties).  It was a retirement present; a hint, a kind suggestion.  Let us watch to see if that ”r” word gets implemented.  On Saturdays it does.  “I will work no more on Saturdays,” is Richard’s working statement.

Ryan also said, “We’ll help you with some projects.”

I thought they'd be here mid-morning.  Not so; that's when the phone call first came.

“We’re leaving here in a few minutes.  Oh, we have a stop to make in south Denver.”

That means they won't get here until after lunchtime.  Oh well.  I had better enjoy even a few hours.  Ryan also said they’d be going to the airport to pick up a friend’s daughter late.  Late to me means 7 PM. 

We eat sandwiches and chips and cherries and brownies and talk up a storm.  Ben is 14,  5’10” at this moment.  Look at him tomorrow and he’ll have added an inch or so.  Ben also has a low-low bass voice, pretty common for new thick vocal cords.  Will it be a singing voice?  We all hope so, but there’s no evidence now.  He does play a good Bach piano prelude and is rather a good violin player.  We shouldn’t lose heart:  Ryan didn’t explore his voice until college days.  Now he sings in a semi-professional classical choir.  I’ll keep hoping.

“Oh, we don’t pick Morgan up until 11 PM, so we’ll be here for dinner and awhile afterwards.”

Oh Joy.  O Celebration.

Richard says, “Oh, I’ll get my long job list out.”

Much laughter, and let the jobs begin.  Rug shampooing the whole downstairs, mowing and weed-whacking the lawn, installation and experimenting with the new bike handlebars.  I decide to enlist Ben in chopping off encroaching branches on the blue spruces.  They hang over the driveway, keeping the sun from melting off the ice in the winter.  I hold the ladder, Ben chops.  Soon there is overseeing by Ryan and Richard, and the result is perfect, the squirrels’ and sparrows’ nests intact, though threatened.

Everybody is having a good time, at a fast pace.  I don’t know what Richard does, but he is nearly always visible.  I am machine quilting and watching Jane Eyre on Netflix streaming, but that is a token industry.  I’m soaking in my son’s presence, my grandson’s burgeoning personality, and over all God’s magnificent umbrella of love and beauty and joy. 

We fix dinner:  corn on the cob and burritos (is it just chance that I have a huge supply of burrito mix already cooked and waiting) and mangoes and for dessert, that frothy-sweet gem, a root beer float. 

Rarely do we have time for a game.  Richard and I used to play Eurorail with diligence and vengeance but his Macbook and my iPad have taken precedence.  We are fairly halfway down the slippery slope, it seems.  But not tonight.  We unearth Phase 10, a contract rummy look-alike, and laugh our way through eight out of ten rounds, groaning when we are skipped, celebrating when we win a round.

We are talking about Ben’s AP classes, honors classes.  Lang Arts, Lit, Chemistry, Pre-Calc.

“Me and my friend are going to get together tomorrow.” 

I raise my eyebrows, and blurt out, “My friend and I.  If you’re in AP English, you’ll have to work on that, don’t ya think?”

“Don’t YOU think, Grandma?”

Oh how we laugh. 

Now it is 10 PM, Richard and I are yawning.  We want this to go on forever, but it’s a good thing they are leaving soon. 

I think that last statement a telling one.  An oxymoron allowed grandparents.

Have I destroyed the charm, the joy of the day?  Partly perhaps because it is impossible for me to write as I want since I am limited by my word bank and my perceptions.  None of us have the whole picture.  That should not stop me from taking a partial one.