Playing With Little Girls

I love playing with little girls. There; I said it. I am putting it out there and proclaiming it to the world.
I particularly enjoy playing with two certain little girls. As I write this, the older of the two little girls is five years old and the younger one recently turned three. They are my granddaughters.

I first discovered the joy of playing with a little girl almost thirty years ago when I was a full-time stay-at-home mommy in charge of my one and only child; a girl. For almost five years my entire life was devoted to the care of and education of a little girl. It was, without question, the most incredible experience of my life. I was a mommy and being a mommy radically altered my life.

My little girl was my greatest teacher ever.

Now my little girl is a mommy herself and she has two little girls. My daughter remembers absolutely nothing of those glorious years when I was her male mommy but I remember every last detail. For almost five years I put aside every perception of who I was to become a faithful servant to a young female human being. It is something I think all male human beings should experience but sadly those males are not lining up for it. To them, that is a woman’s work.

I happen to be a book freak. It is like a disease. I am a novelist, author and publisher and for nine years I owned and operated a bookstore. I am a book addict and I am not afraid to admit it.

During those five years of being a male mommy I must have read a few thousand books to my little boss. I wanted to instill in her my disease of loving books. I wanted to pass it on.
It did not work.

Once my little angel entered the American educational system my days as a full-time stay-at-home mommy were over. So I opened up the aforementioned bookstore. For nine of my daughter’s eighteen years of growing up she lived with her family in an apartment located upstairs from a bookstore that her mommy/daddy owned and operated. You would think that she would have caught the book-loving disease but she did not.

If I had grown up in a similar situation I would have been like a kid growing up in a candy store. My book-loving disease began when I was a kid. The highlight of my weeks as a kid were when my dad drove us kids to the library. When I was a kid, before I ever read a book, I would first open it up and smell it. To me, the smell of a book was beyond intoxicating. It got me high.

But as hard as I tried I could not get my daughter hooked to the disease that ruled my life. I remember the day she graduated from high school. At the party afterward I asked her how she felt about it. She replied, “I’m elated. Now that I’m finished with high school I don’t ever, ever, ever have to read another book as long as I live.”

Her proclamation was like a dagger ripping into my heart. There is nothing she could have said that would have been more hurtful.

Of course, being a quasi-aware adult human I knew that every teenage daughter is biologically and psychologically driven to rebel in some way against their daddy. I do not understand it but it is a universal truth. Every girl must, at some point, declare her independence from her daddy. And this is how my daughter chose to do it. She knew it would have more impact than anything else she could possibly have said. I, of course, acted like it had no effect on me at all, even though I was bleeding from the heart.

Now, so many, many years later I have become the official ‘book grandpa.’ That is what my granddaughters call me. I visit my daughter’s home at least once a month and I never go there before first going to the local library and checking out a couple of children’s books.

And I simply must say that after spending an inordinate amount of time looking through children’s books at the local library I have come to the conclusion that ninety percent of children’s books suck! But that is fodder for another post…..

I eventually find a couple of children’s books that I like and which I think my granddaughters would like and I check them out and then proceed to my daughter’s home (approximately nine and a half blocks away).

Upon entering my daughter’s home my two granddaughters immediately jump up and down yelling, “Grandpa! Grandpa! Grandpa!”

I immediately start feeling very old.

My granddaughters know the protocol. When I come over the only thing they want to do is play with me. And I want to play with them.

But the protocol I have established is that before any playing commences we first read the two books I have checked out from the library. Surprisingly, they are okay with that.

So entering my daughter’s domain I take off my coat and hang it up and then take off my shoes. My daughter thinks she’s Japanese or something and insists that all visitors to her home take off their shoes at the door. I find this practice profoundly irritating and obnoxious but I follow her protocol because, after all, it is her house and her rules.

I then proceed to the couch where I sit down with the two books from the library. Instantly, a granddaughter is sitting to both sides of me. I proceed to read both books to my granddaughters. They are both utterly taken in by the stories and pictures in the books.

And then it is time to play.

That is when I am sucked down into the “play room.” It is a room in the basement that my daughter and her husband created to be a space for their two daughters to run completely amok in play. It resembles a room in a toy factory where a bomb has recently gone off.

I then spend two or three hours in this room playing with my granddaughters. With crayons, we color together. We have pretend tea parties. They get out their doctor bag and take my pretend blood pressure and put real bandages on my arms. They force me to play hide and seek even though there are only four places to hide in my daughter’s basement. They get out their Monster High dolls and force me to engage in weird Monster High soap operas. They get out their balls emblazoned with images from the movie, “Frozen” and we play catch. They show me their gymnastic moves and expect me to do likewise even though I am way the hell too old for that. They get out their pretend microphone and play American Idol. I play a judge who says they are the very best ever…..

And then there is that big green plastic basket. I bought it for my granddaughters a couple of Christmases ago. It is not something any normal person would buy for two little girls but when I saw it at Wal-Mart it somehow seemed perfect. It could be used as a laundry basket or just something to throw things into. My daughter was always complaining about how messy her daughters’ play room was and I thought the big plastic basket would be a great tool for them. When cleaning up their room they could just throw everything into the basket and then move it to the side of the room.

Of course, my granddaughters eventually discovered the true purpose of the big green basket. And they taught me what that was. One of the granddaughters would step into the basket and sit down in it and then I was supposed to pull the basket across the floor around and around and around the play room while the granddaughter inside would scream with glee and then the other granddaughter would get inside the basket while I pulled it around and around and around the room until I was utterly exhausted. That big green plastic basket was an amusement park ride and I was the donkey pulling it. When I first bought it I had no idea how perfect that gift was.

We play and play and play until I am practically screaming from exhaustion. I finally have to tell them that it is time for me to go home and every time they vehemently protest. Can’t I stay a little longer?

A couple of months ago when I had reached this state of exhaustion when it was time to go home my eldest granddaughter said, “But Grandpa! Please don’t go yet! You’re the only adult who ever plays with us.”

I was taken aback. “Surely your parents and other friends play with you.”

“Yeah, but they just act like they’re playing with us. You actually play with us.”

I was speechless. That little five-year-old is one smart cookie. Yes, when I play with them I am not an adult. I become a child. I play with them on their level. It is something I learned and did way back when I was a mommy. One cannot truly play with a child as an adult. One must become a child.

And that is when my daughter came to my rescue. She yelled down into the basement, “Dinner!”

The granddaughters screamed and proceeded up the stairs. I slowly and sorely followed. Who needs a membership to a gym when you’ve got granddaughters?

Upstairs, I managed to get some alone time with my daughter in the kitchen. I hardly ever get to talk to my own daughter because when I am there her daughters own me. They think I am only there to see them and play with them. They are mostly right, of course, but still I like to get a few words in with my own daughter.

Stirring a big pot of Hamburger Helper, by daughter inquired, “You want to stay for dinner?”

Looking at the goop inside the pot, I swallowed and replied, “Uh, no thank you. I’ve really got to get going.” (When my daughter was small I tried to instill in her a sense of healthy cooking and eating but, sadly, I was a failure at this, too.)

I proceeded to walk out of the kitchen…..

“Dad.”

I stopped. “Yeah?”

She put the wooden spoon down into the pot of Hamburger Helper and turned around to face me, “Mom probably already told you but I’ve started reading books.”

My jaw dropped. Yes, in a phone conversation her mother had let it slip that our daughter had recently read all the Harry Potter books. I did not fully believe it. I wanted to hear it from the horse’s mouth. And now she was telling me…..

“I read all the Harry Potter books and then all the Twilight books and now I’m reading all the Hunger Games books.”

I swallowed hard much as I had when looking at her Hamburger Helper and then I was suddenly filled with an intense joy. My daughter was reading! Everything in the universe had suddenly changed! It did not matter what she was reading. She was reading! Hell had, at long last, frozen over. I fully expected to see pigs flying through the sky on my walk home. I was beside myself.

Of course, I didn’t want to make too big a deal out of it. I knew how difficult it was for her to admit this to me. I said nothing and just went up to her and gave her a big fat hug. I kissed her on the cheek and then turned and left the kitchen without a word.

In the living room I laboriously put my tennis shoes back on and my jacket while my two delightful granddaughters screamed, “Bye Grandpa!”

They got up from their dinner to run up to me and hug me. My eldest granddaughter said, “I can’t wait to see what library book you bring next time.”

I damn near cried. But I held it together until I was out on the street walking back home to my apartment. Walking home, I looked up at the big sky of the Great Plains and looked around at the suburban neighborhood where my daughter lived and I felt a sublime sense of peace and fulfillment.

Maybe, just maybe, I am making an impact, no matter how small, on the world. And, as a tear rolled down my cheek, I felt the impact the world was having on me.

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