Wednesdays with Bah-dee

Small Boy loves his grandmother, whom he has decided to call Bah-dee. I think he's saying Buddy, actually; R and I call Small Boy "buddy" sometimes and I think he knows it's meant as a term of endearment. Since the boy isn't talking much (more on that in some other post) I'm glad he has a name for her at all; he still doesn't have a name for his grandfather. His face lights up when he sees his Bah-dee; once she met us at Gymboree - I was expecting her, Small Boy wasn't - and he was so excited to see her that he literally ran around in circles saying "Oooooh! Bah-dee! Bah-dee!" He loves her so.

He spends almost every Wednesday with his grandparents, who live on a farm just outside of the city; ten minutes with the fast train, fifteen minutes with the slow. (The fast train goes through a tunnel, which scares Small Boy, so we try to take the slow train.) Wednesday mornings Bah-dee takes the train into the city and we meet her in the train station; she and Small Boy get on the train back out to The Farm and off they go. I wave goodbye and starting at nine-twenty one a.m the day is mine until about 6:00 pm when they drop him back off with the car.

I have no idea what they do out there. When we first started up with this arrangement I got detailed reports of what they did, exactly what and how much he ate, how long he slept, each of their activities; R's parents were (are, still, I guess) so grateful that we trusted them enough to send them the Boy for a whole day that they wanted to make sure that I knew everything they were doing, that they were taking care of him and feeding him well and making sure he got his nap and that he was having fun and that he didn't cry and and and.

Now? I have no idea what they do all day; all I know is that he comes home happy and is always eager to go back again. Sometimes he smells suspciously like chocoate when he comes home, and he always has dirt under his fingernails and all over his boots. Based on photographic evidence he: digs in the garden and fills his wagon with dirt; plays with the dog; walks in the woods; gets pulled on the sled (when there was snow, which wasn't often); climbs up into the real tractors and forklifts (it's a working farm, after all); plays in the sandbox; and plays on the slide. Sometimes they bake Zupfe (a traditional Swiss braided bread) together, and they dyed Easter eggs last week. Now that spring is coming, I can imagine he will help his Bah-dee in the garden. He brings home little art projects sometimes, and he often brings me a fistfull of wild flowers.

Honestly, when Small Boy first started spending one day a week at The Farm I was primarily focused on the fact that this gave me some much-needed breathing room; Small Boy is attached to me in the extreme. I knew it was a win-win-win situation, but as far as I was concerned I was the biggest winner; but as the months have gone by I've come to see that of course Small Boy is the biggest winner. He has a relationship with his grandparents that is completely independent of me and R; the three of them make their way together at The Farm, they do their own things at their own pace. They've had to negotiate their own rules and routines and in doing so they've gotten to know each other on their own. Small Boy loves and trusts his grandparents and he is comfortable and safe in their home. My in-laws, in turn, have been forced to learn to say no now and then and to enforce a few rules;* they've had to decipher his sign-language and his made-up words (my favorite example: I say toothpaste, R says Zahnpasta, and Small Boy calls it "Badong." Why? Your guess is as good as mine) and to be aware of his shifting moods. They've all gotten to know each other in a way that never would have happened if I'd been around.

I'm grateful for this relationship in so many ways. I'm grateful that Small Boy has people in his life who love him. I'm grateful he gets to spend part of his childhood on a farm, next to a wood with a pond and ducks and, if it is dusk and if you are quiet and if you are lucky, foxes. I'm grateful that he spends a day exposed soley to Dialekt. I'm grateful that his grandparents are slower and more patient than I and think spending an hour throwing sticks into the little creek is wildly exciting. I'm grateful R's mom bakes Zupfe with Small Boy and picks wildflowers. I'm grateful Small Boy's uncle shows him his horses. With my own parents dead and my brother far away, I'm grateful Small Boy has this family so close at hand, and I'm grateful that they love him so.

I'm also grateful that he loves them. From what I know, my mother-in-law's relationship with her own mother was complicated (aren't they all, but I mean complicated), and her relationship with her sister can be a bit prickly. R and his mother have a fine relationship, but they are very different people and at some point I think they can't quite understand one another across the chasm of their different personalities. But Small Boy loves his Bah-dee with the bottomless and straightforward love of a child, and I'm glad R's mom has this love, this simple and uncomplicated love. I'm grateful that Small Boy knows how to love different people, knows that different people can love him. Of course I'm glad for the free time and I'm glad knowing that R and I can leave Small Boy with the grandparents and take some time for ourselves. I'm glad that somebody else can put him to bed and get him to take a nap but these things I was so grateful for at the beginning - the free time, the chance for a night out - are almost afterthoughts now.

That he is loved, and that he loves. For this, I am most truly grateful.

* Though there was that time when everybody overslept and R dropped Small Boy off at The Farm in his pyjamas and ten hours later Small Boy came home...in his pyjamas.