Small Mean Alot

by Adair Lara
July 24, 2009

Sometimes, it’s the quiet moments that make the best memories.
I enrolled my 6-year-old granddaughter, Ryan, in the Monday afternoon “Seahorses” swim class at the local Jewish Community Center. I even offered to take her to each class myself. I’d always been skeptical of the amount of time and effort it takes for city parents to shepherd one kid to one 30-minute lesson once a week. There’s the scheduling, the driving, and the debating over who picks up the kids when and where. And then when you see the actual class, where the kids all hang onto the edge of the pool kicking their feet, you think: All this, for that?

 

This was no different. Idiotically I had, on the day of Ryan’s first lesson, scheduled a new writing class at my home for Mondays at 6pm. So taking her to kick her feet for a while in the pool meant leaving my house at 3:30 to pick up Ryan and her sister, Maggie, 4, who would watch the swim class with me, at school; racing across San Francisco to get to the center on time; delivering Ryan to her class and, 40 minutes later, plucking her, dripping, from the pool; getting her dressed; flinging her and Maggie back into the car; dropping them at their mother’s house across town after insisting that she actually BE THERE; and, finally, racing home to open the door for my writing students.

It was only later that I noticed some other things about these swimming lessons: how much fun the girls and I had discussing my parking problems, learning to use the bathing-suit drying machine together, chasing each other through the palms in the lobby, and riding the elevator to gawk at the gymnastics lesson on the third floor.

I was reminded that when my own kids were teens and I took them skiing, it was never really about the skiing. It was about talking in the car as we sped across the state at dawn, ducking under apple orchards, and wearing our jammies to breakfast. It was about all of them bonding in mutual exasperation at my slow skiing as they stood together at the bottom of the hill with their snowboards, waiting.

I was reminded that life is never really about the great events, but the little ones on the edges, those in-between moments that go almost unnoticed at the time — the long drive, the cleanup after the party with the music still blasting, or the rare ten minutes of downtime spent contentedly potting plants together.

During one recent weekend, the girls, their father, Trevor, and I did nothing. No parties. No expeditions to the beach or the museum. We walked for coffee. I stopped at a garage sale, gave Ryan $3 and let her negotiate on her own how many stuffed animals it would buy, and bought Trevor a straw hat and fake cigar, which he wore and “puffed” all the way home. Ryan threw the rubber snake she got at the garage sale on me 15 times, and 15 times I shrieked and ran. At home, there was more time-wasting: My husband, Bill, cleaned the canary cage while the girls supervised. He and Ryan made a chain out of beads. Maggie played with the dog.

Yet as we went to bed that Sunday night, Bill and I said to each other, “That was a really nice weekend.”

Source: Grandparents

Editor’s Note: We would like to know what you think? dan@youngchronicle.com