Marcus has decided that his Grandma Thomas and I are old, and any time he can remind us of the fact, he does. Unfortunately he lacks a tremendous amount of tact when expressing his wide-eyed amazement of our ages.
One day when we were loading up the car to head out, Marcus noticed the new bumper sticker on my car. It reads “HOFFMAN – Queen Anne’s County Commissioner.” Without a hiccup, he sighed a breath of relief and said, “Look Ma! Dad put our name on the car so you won’t lose it when we go shopping. That’s to help you when you get old.” As if I’ve ever lost our car! Okay, I have misplaced it once or twice, but never lost it. As for losing my keys those two (or three, or four) times while at K-Mart, well we did eventually find them (days later). And never again did I lose my keys only to discover I was sitting on them. To me, lost means “gone forever.” I’ve yet to lose either my car or my keys.
One morning when the boys and I were watching television a bird flew into our front window. Marcus was amazed and wanted to know why that happened. I Said, “Just a freak accident.” [Heaven knows it wasn’t because our windows were clean.] A few minutes later another bird flew into the same window. “Wow Mom! That bird did it again. He must be blind like you.”
Now I think I’ll take the spotlight off my aging self and turn it to Grandma Thomas.
As we were getting ready to go to the nursing home for the first time to visit the boys’ great grandmother, I was confronted with having to explain what a nursing home was to three little ones. “Well fellows, when some people get old and need help taking care of themselves, they go to live in nursing homes.” Marcus immediately wanted to know how old Great Grandma Jenny was. “Eighty-four,” I said.” He thought for a moment and then asked, “Why doesn’t Grandma Thomas live in a nursing home? She’s old.” I chuckled, happily letting someone else be old for the moment, and told him that Grandma Thomas was not that old. “Well how old is regular old Grandma Thomas,” he inquired? “She’s 50 couple,” I informed him. He shook his head slowly and uttered, “Shuuuuu, that’s old!”
Until next time,
CMH