God has said yes to Benjamin’s prayers. After four younger sisters, he has a brother at last. Our teeniest grandbean arrived after only thirty minutes of labour just two days before I began this column. He squeaks fluent newborn and has a halo of white-blonde hair.
Ezra’s arrival makes Lois, by twenty months the next up the ladder, officially a kid. At least, according to their four-year old sister.
“How many kids live at your house, now, Sherah?” I asked, before Ezra’s birth.
She touched her fingers. “One, two, free, four. FOUR!”
“Are you sure?” I named her siblings, ending with Lois.
“Lois ISN’T a kid, Nana!”
“She isn’t?”
“NO! She’s a toddler. She won’t be a kid till Mama’s baby comes out.”
When we all met Ezra, Sherah watched Lois’s little fingers knead his soft cheek. “See Nana!” she told me. “Now Lois is a KID!” That makes six grandbeans for the Preacher and me, for those who keep track, and they live only a few hundred steps from us.
We’ve noticed something throughout these busy grandparenting years. We’ve developed an energy crisis. We run out of batteries a tad sooner (a big tad sooner) than the children and need to recharge more often, especially after recess lets out at our house. Some days it takes three days to recharge, in fact. But having a large and loving family of active human be’ins has incalculable rewards. Great conversations, for one.
“Nana, when I get bigger, I’m going to live with YOU,” said that same four-year-old sprite as she and Lois picked raspberries alongside me just a few days ago. “And we’ll have KIDS! I’ll be the mom and you can be their aunty.”
“Oh, that would be such fun!” I plopped a few raspberries into Sherah’s bucket, noticing that Lois’s two fists, streaming raspberry juice were making regular trips into her equally stained mouth. “But perhaps I could be the great grandma instead of aunty?”
She thought about that. “But who’s Gampa going to be then?”
“Um, how ‘bout Great Gampa?”
Her small face screwed into a squinty frown. “Well then,” she asked, “Who will be the dad? “
That will sort itself out eventually. Benjamin at that age wanted nothing more than to marry his younger sister. They even roped me into performing the wedding after church let out, at the front of the sanctuary. Another sister served as a toddling bridesmaid. Time and maturity has annulled that union.
Little Ezra, welcome to your big, sometimes crazy family. We love you. Jesus loves you. In a world of bad news, you provide eight pounds of the opposite. You make Nana and Gampa’s hearts sing, even when we’re too tired to show it. Our prayers helped your beautiful mom usher you into this world, and they’ll follow you as long as we can string the words together. And when our batteries won’t recharge on earth, ever again, they’ll live on in God’s ears.
