Raising kids at my age? That was the last thing that could cross my mind, but somehow, it just happened. One day, I’m looking at retirement, and the next one, my grandson is two years old and the world around him is falling apart. My son had been gone in spirit long before he was physically away from his son’s life. And the boy’s mother? She was never really there… I guess. When she left, she didn’t even say goodbye, just disappeared.
And now, out of the blue, I have this tiny human in the middle of my living room, holding a stuffed rabbit, and looking at me as though I have any answers. I didn’t, yet, I started moving around, since one doesn’t have much time to contemplate life when a two-year-old says he’s starving.
And just like that,I got used to a completely new routine, and learned that pancakes need to be square, not round, and I also learned when the cry says “I’m bored and I want something,” and “I’m scared.”
My grandson and I became “us” and I witnessed that small boy grow up. I still keep wondering how fast the time has passed. He was just a thumb-sucking little kid, and now all of a sudden, he’s 12. Looking at him, I truly believed that the two us made it.
Well, it turned out I was wrong.
Ten years after vanishing from his life, his mother suddenly reappeared. She didn’t resemble the woman I remembered. She was elegant, polished, expensive, and cold. Like someone who’d rebuilt their life and made sure everyone knew they’d gotten the receipts. She didn’t even say “hi” or called the boy by his name, she just grabbed him and said, “I guess I should say thank you for your service, but I’ll take it from here.”
She made it sound like I was a hired baby-sitter and those ten years of looking after my grandson were just a long shift.
I remember I had a hard time processing her words. Then the man next to her, wearing a fancy suit and a briefcase, started speaking. It turned out he was her lawyer who started showing me some papers and spoke of custody and legal rights. All those words he said had no connection whatsoever to life as I knew it inside my home. All I heard were: She can have him.
Once I was able to collect my self from the shocked, I started arguing. I was the one who raised that boy, and my house was the place he knew as his home. I wanted him to at least have a choice. But no. No one seemed to care about the years I spent reading bedtime stories,promising everything would be just fine. All they cared for was biology and signatures. At the end of the day, that woman was his mother.
I will never forget the day my grandson was told he needed to leave my house. The poor boy had no idea what was happening. I remember him looking straight at me, expecting me to stop whatever was going on from happening.
I couldn’t, and that’s what hurt me the most.
They took him to the car, and he was crying so hard that he didn’t even sound like himself anymore. He pressed his face against the window of the car, his hand flat against the glass as they drove away. I stood on the porch, watching until the car was out of sight. And then I stood there some longer. Just stood there. Not sure of anything else to do.
After that, nothing. No calls, no cards, no pictures, no updates. It felt like my grandson and all those years with him never existed.
