Buddha in a Car Seat
A Walk through the Leaves. The Seasons of my Granddaughter
“This one’s pink! Put this one in your pocket, I’m gonna’ go get some more. Wait here’s another one, hold this. Don’t lose it. Put this in your pocket too! ”
My Granddaughter turned 5 in June and she is excited about everything. I know this because she tells me she is excited about everything. I want to wrap up this time in her life and keep it with me forever like a touchstone I can pull out anytime I need to remember how lucky I am.
We went on a trip, multiple hours in a car with very few stops. The entire trip she sat in the back looking out the window saying
“Nanny, you know what?”
“No, what?”
“I’m SO excited!”
We returned from the trip, tired out from days of sun and sand and constant activity. More hours in the car but not heading towards something new and unfamiliar. Just going home and back to reality. She said
“Nanny, you know what”
“No, what Maddie?”
“I’m SO excited to go home and hug Mommy and play in my room with my toys.”
Never complained. Never bored. The view outside the window was one she had already seen. Many kids would’ve been bored or experiencing that day after Christmas let-down.
Not Maddie. One adventure was over, and another one begins.
I love the way she sees life. I know she will change because 5 is magic. I tend to hold onto to things too tightly, not noticing that what I think was a month has turned into a year. My concept of time has always been a bit of a struggle.
Today she is heavy into admiring fall foliage, wanting to capture a leaf of every different color to remember how beautiful it is. She thinks my pocket is a good place for this. I think when I go home I’ll Google how to preserve leaves. I’m not as convinced as she is that my pocket is the answer.
“Do you know why the leaves change color?
“No, why do they change color?” She said she was learning about trees in Kindergarten this week and was SO excited.
“Because to keep leaves alive they need chlorophyll, that’s what keeps them green. When the Fall comes and it gets colder and the sun isn’t out as much the chlorophyll goes away and the leaves turn colors.”
I was impressed by this answer.
“And when there’s no more chlorophyll left they die.”
I was no longer that excited about the direction of this conversation. I wanted to rush in with an explanation of how the trees come alive again in the Spring and then go get her chicken nuggets. But this wasn’t my conversation; this was hers.
We walked in silence holding hands, dying leaves crunching under our feet.
“Phoebe died.”
She remembers my pug Phoebe who loved Maddie from the moment she was born until she was almost 2. Phoebe would guard Maddie from all of us, cuddled next to her on her blanket, somehow vaulted herself onto a dresser to get into the crib, then herded her like a sheep dog when she started being mobile. I’d never thought Pugs were herding dogs, but Phoebe at 12 years old took to it like a Border Collie, although you couldn’t touch Maddie because she’d attack you with an impressive display of bluster and sometimes even the baring of her remaining tooth. She went downhill so quickly that last summer.
“Yes she did.” I say.
“I loved Phoebe” Maddie says.
“I know you did Maddie, and she loved you very much.”
This is exactly where I don’t want this beautiful Fall afternoon to go, but rather than explain away all negative things with a sunny optimistic bent meant to protect her from any and all sadness until she was a bit older, like maybe 22, I don’t.
I did that to her father and his sister. I know that my son is raising his daughter with more realism than how he was raised. It is better to get one message rather than conflicting messages from Nanny’s fairytales where every story has a happy ending.
I give her short sentences and try not to fill in the long pauses. It’s sort of killing me. I’m a pause filler — and I fill them up packed tight, overflowing with rainbows and daisies and magic that fixes everything. But I sometimes question if the fanciful sunny explanations of everything that I gave my own children just put off sadness to an age where they felt it more intensely.
“The leaves come back you know.” she says. “When Spring comes again the leaves will be green because they’ll have chlorophyll.”
This was safer ground. What a relief.
“I miss Phoebe.” she says.
Not safer ground. Soon we’d be at the car and I could distract her in her carseat with books and apple juice and play her favorite music on the radio. I want to tell her that Phoebe still loves her and that she’s waiting for her someday with all the animals that are on the other side of rainbow bridge but instead I think What would my son say? and I say;
“I do too.”
We get in the car and I’m bent over her, struggling with the car seat buckles which I’ve struggled with for over 5 years now. She takes the last buckle left and clicks it into the slot. She smiles and says “You’re still not good at this.”
I lean over and kiss her on her forehead and say “No. I am definitely still not good at this, thanks for noticing.” and she laughs. Suddenly she looks serious. “Nanny do you still have the leaves in your pocket?”
I pull some out and show her. Magenta. Gold. Quite glorious.
“You know these leaves won’t come back alive in the Spring. New ones do.”
I say “Yes Maddie, I know. But we have these to help us remember how beautiful they were.”
She nods her head with enthusiasm; like Nanny finally got it. We made it. Through this 5 minute-yet-year-long walk to the car. Now I could bring her into my controlled world of the park and ice cream and singing in the car while we drive there.
“You know you don’t have to miss Phoebe Nanny, you know why?”
Her head cocked sideways looking at me in the rear-view mirror, her huge pink bow askew - I recall how much intense love can feel like pain.
“Because she’s always with us.” she says with absolute confidence.
I smile at this mini Buddha in a car seat. I wonder if this is her Mother or her Gigi’s influence and I wish I could send them each a quick blast of gratitude. But then I wonder that perhaps this could be a bit of her Dad. Phoebe was his puppy as a boy. He loved her beyond measure. Maybe he was more open to things that defy explanation in some situations. I wouldn’t be surprised; after-all I knew the woman who had raised him. She may not have done everything right, but she always had the best intentions.
“I know Maddie.” I say. “She’s always with us.”
