A Day in the Life of a Crayola Wingman

There is no better gig I have ever had than Pop Pop.  At the risk of alienating the affections of my soon-to-be employer shall I spend every day of the rest of my legal career racing to get to the office because I enjoy what I do that much, it shall never be as good a gig as being Pop Pop.  

Suzanne, Ryan, and their 3/5 of my Fab Five usually join Joe, Margaret, and me for dinner on Sundays. This past Sunday, Margaret and I decided that we would celebrate Suzanne's birthday, which is actually at the end of this week. Our thought was better to be six days early with the celebration than a day late.

Maggie, the 3 1/2-year-old tip of the spear of our quintet of grandchildren, was read into our plan by Nana upon her arrival. Several minutes later, she disappeared into the playroom to begin making birthday cards (plural) for her mommy.  Pop Pop's abject absence of artistic ability notwithstanding, I was thrilled when a minute or two after she started, she came back into the living room and recruited me to her team. 

For about fifteen or twenty minutes, I worked with - and more often than not - under the direction of my oldest granddaughter as we colored one of Suzanne's birthday cards (the other card's decorative touches were limited exclusively to stickers). I was pleased that my new boss graded my job performance as generously as she did for I am as dreadful now coloring as I was when I was her age.  I think I spent as much time watching her color, crayon firmly grasped in her left hand, eyes focused on the page, and tongue sticking every so slightly out of her mouth, as I did coloring myself.  She oversaw every change of crayon, dictating when we each switched what color crayon each of us used and where on the page our coloring was focused.  Finally, with the look of one whose self-satisfaction is well-earned, she put her crayon down, held up the completed card for inspection, pronounced it "Beautiful", and declared our work over.  

After she sprinted out of the playroom to entrust the cards to Nana's possession (so they could be positioned properly in the overall presentation, which we made after dinner), I sat on the floor of the playroom staring at the now-vacated space Maggie had occupied, and smiling.  I had just spent as joy-filled a fifteen-to-twenty minutes as I have spent in I know not how long. 

I basked in the afterglow of its warmth for another minute or three, until she and Cal came back into the playroom to tell me it was time for dinner. I picked my old bones up off the floor and joined them in the kitchen.

Best job ever...  

...and it gets better every day. 

-AK