It’s been 43 hours since I was called “Papi” for the first time that it counted. I confess it felt good and sounded great. But I don’t think that it had the impact that it will have when it someday comes from a little girl who already must me wondering about this guy wrapped around her little finger.
I haven’t always learned things as quickly as I learned grand-parenting, but I got this thing figured out. It all crystallized in my thinking yesterday during a visit to Amber’s hospital room.
A nurse came into the room on official business. She had a stack of papers that needed signed and as she started going over them I found myself feeling through my pocket looking for my ink pen. I have been signing stuff for years so I wasn’t rattled at all with the project she presented.
I have signed field trip permission slips and signed permission for a fella’ to put wires on crooked teeth. I have signed the back of grade cards that proved it really did make it to Dad. I have signed ’em up for Little League and for piano lessons. One time I even signed an agreement with Sam Ash to rent a violin from him.
But as I clicked my pen and reached for the forms I realized the nurse wasn’t talking to me. Fact is….she was talking to Joel and even though I was standing beside him she never looked my way.
As she instructed and he listened I heard her say something about one of the forms he needed to sign was the one that would obtain Hannah’s birth certificate. I don’t think anybody noticed, but as I stood there I misted up a bit because it just seems like 43 hours ago I was hearing the same instructions from a Kansas nurse about how to obtain a birth certificate with his name on it.
As I stood there I realized that I wanted to sign something…..anything. I almost started writing on the wall. Does the ink pen really pass that quickly? Didn’t the nurse know that signing stuff was still my job and that there is still plenty of ink left in my pen?
You know what I realized yesterday? I realized that grand-parenting is really parenting all over again…except it isn’t your pen that does the signing.
Oh for sure we will do some parenting in this deal. We are called “grand-parents” for a reason you know. But we will be very sensitive and selective in the parenting we will do. We won’t do any of the “you can’t go to the football game Friday night” parenting. Most of our parenting will be the “Sure Honey” kinda’ stuff.
Without doubt we will be at that bus stop some August morning when a well prepared little girl climbs on a school bus bound for Kindergarten. And we will carry our seat cushions to some volleyball matches and drive my Caprice or Mrs. Brown’s Buick to a soccer field or two. Bettcha’ a buck that this Papi will be part of the posse’ that goes looking for the first little fella’ that would ever dare hurt her heart.
But the fact is….my signature isn’t needed anymore. And that’s OK because the man that is doing the signing now and all the signing in the future is more than capable of backing up what he signed for.
Hannah is a blessed little girl.
