Isaac bonding with Grandpa

By Sallie Satterthwaite
sallies@juno.com

Isaac had talked for months about going boating with Funny Grandpa during the summer past. Dave hasn’t had much experience being a granddaddy, but he’s very fond of the lad with the coarse blonde hair, and looked forward to spending time with him too.

He learned a lot Ð about Isaac, 11, in particular and little boys in general. After the family’s get-together at George T. Bagby State Park on Lake Eufaula, the plan was that the two would stay out as long as they felt like it. Isaac’s air ticket home was very flexible; time was of no concern.

The weather, unfortunately, was. The week was the hottest and buggiest of a hot and buggy summer. Not even frequent dips in the water cooled them more than momentarily Ð especially after Isaac saw his first alligator.

The boy had not really believed the horror stories Dave liked to tell, stories that were actually true, although slightly exaggerated. Then one evening he saw a long, flat silhouette slide silently into the water. After that it became difficult, no, almost impossible to get him to go into the lake, even when Dave formed a human barricade that sandwiched Isaac between the green boat hull and the hazardous lake.

Isaac is one of these dear, sweet boys tottering on the brink of young manhood, who spends far more effort making himself look like he’s taken a shower when he really has not. He’s also suddenly very concerned about privacy, and will only hug folks he loves. Kiss? Eeuuwwww!.

I’ve caught him rubbing toothpaste on the front of his teeth, then wiggling it round with his tongue, even though he could just as quickly brush them. He came downstairs one morning with wet hair on the front edges to “prove” he had taken a shower. What he didn’t know was that when the door to the upstairs bathroom was open, anyone in the kitchen can see a little boy splashing water on his hairline

“Isaac, did you take your shower and wash your hair?” The boy doesn’t usually flat-out lie, so the answer is along the lines of, “You can see my hair’s still wet.”

“Isaac, I saw how your hair got wet. Go take a shower and wash your hair.”

“But Grandma……”

“Go.” And off he goes, never complaining, not even pouting. I think it’s a kind of contest to him.

The lad’s attention span is about 15 minutes long, unless the activity is one he loves. And that would be reading. He loves to read, and will sit immobile for hours with a new book. He reads old books too: He figures if he enjoyed a book the first time, he’ll enjoyed it the second time. And the third. And….

Someone turned him on to fishing, and he claims to have caught fish in a drainage pond near his home in Leesburg, Va.

So he took fishing gear on the boat trip, elated to be able to catch “free fish!” he said. But fishing was not that exciting, and 15 minutes later, he was done. No fish in the lake today, or they were sleeping.

Dave discovered one day that he hadn’t seen much of Isaac since breakfast time, so he called to him, and the boy appeared beside Dave’s elbow.

“Isn’t it about your turn to run the boat,” Dave asked him. “Yeah, I guess so,” was the laconic reply.

About 15 minutes later: “Grandpa?”

“Yes, Isaac?”

“Do I look fatigued?”

“Fatigued? Why do you ask that”?”

“Well, I read that you shouldn’t run a boat or drive a car when you’re fatigued?”

The boat trip lasted only another couple of days. I don’t know if Isaac ran out of books, or if the heat became too oppressive, but they were home in less than a week.

The rest of the time Isaac was here, he read, rode a bike we keep for camping, and played some kind of car races and mechanical man games on my computer.

He was contented, and was a joy to us when we met friends. I’d emphasized to him that in the South, one says, “Yes, ma’am” and “Thank you, sir,” and I loved seeing friends’ eyebrows rise with impression. He even shook hands when introduced.

For this kind of gratification, I’ll tolerate the trashed upstairs bedroom and the wet bed where a bath towel was tossed. At least it proved it had been used. Maybe.

I was at his house in early September when his mom, Jean, took an assignment to the Florida floods with the Forest Service. She was a public information officer and had to deal with situations a lot like she has done on fire scenes out West. I was able to go up there for about 10 days to look after the kids.

One evening we were doing something at the sink, and he was sanding beside me. We were chatting about what Funny Grandpa was going to do by himself while I was gone,

I was more than a little worried that he might fall off either the boat or the ladder while he was painting the hull, and there’d be no one to come to his aid.

“He could really hurt himself,” I said to my grandson. Then, to lighten the tone, I added, “I’d hate to go home and find Grandpa dead under the boat.”

After a long pause, the voice at my elbow said solemnly, “Well, he lived a good and fulfilled life.”