Another day, another celebratory meal, another pretty table.
No, not really. Yesterday’s birthday dinner was more than just another whatever. Yesterday, my newest granddaughter Tayler, turned eleven years old. Yesterday, I worked my fingers, if not to the bone, at least to dry chapped wrinkly skin, to make a meal perfect for a young girl whose name I barely knew two years ago.
How is it that this young lady can already have claimed a place in my heart? Is it because, no matter what or when, she always wants to spend the night at her new Nana’s house? Is it because she has the wisdom to know, at such an early age, how sisters truly make the best of friends — even when they are young kid sisters who have a bent to tell sibling tales to parents with wagging tongues — wisdom it took both her mother and me years — or should I say decades? — to realize about our own wonderful sisters?
Pensive one moment, giggly the next, Tayler is a “good egg”, to borrow a favorite expression of my mother-in-law Janice. Tayler is not afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve. She asks for what she wants, come what may. When she goes down in defeat with a circle of ‘no’s’, she bounces right back with a smile and a new plan.
We enjoyed a red banner evening together — spaghetti with red sauce, red velvet cake and her favorite cookies, swirled with red food coloring, that I bake, whenever a grandchild is promised to be in sight. With two dozen cookies left over, Tayler asked if she could carry them to school today to share with her classmates. “Of course,” I said. Mostly, it’s easy to say ‘yes’ to Tayler.
Grandmother’s are better at saying ‘yes’ than ‘no.’ As a parent, I said ‘no’ too many times. No. No. No. Sometimes in a string, just like that. My new grandson Ryan — Tayler’s older brother — wanted another piece of cake. “Yes,” I said. His new mother — my daughter, Kate — said “No.” If I had been Kate, I, more than likely, would have said “No” too. But I’m thinking the world is filled with too many “no’s”, that it’s up to families to speak the much-needed “yes, yes, yes.”
Of course, my final word last night was “No.” Predictably, Tayler asked to spend the night. After a rough night of sleeping, after working all day to make her birthday dinner grand, and with my husband, the disciplinarian, out-of-town, I spoke the safe and sorry ‘No’.
I wish I had said “Yes.” I wish I had thrown common sense out the window and remembered what it was like to be eleven and spend the night at my Aunt Jo’s or my Aunt Carol’s. Then maybe I would have said “Yes.”
Sometimes we need to say no. It’s not about being selfish; its about husbanding resources.
Look at it like this; imagine she’d stayed and you’d snapped at her when she woke in the middle of the night not sure where she was. Children take as much as they give.
You need to be cherished and taken care of yourself right now. I wish I could take you for a good cup of coffee somewhere nice and we could pick apart the cake and complain it isn’t as good as ours and giggle a bit.
You are in my prayers; be gentle with yourself.
xx
Looking at Tayler’s photo and reading what you say about her, it seems to me that she’s getting very close to the right mix of “yes” and “no”.
All of one or the other leads to rather different but equally unhappy outcomes. We need both. A girl already willing to ask for what she wants knows the pleasure of “yes”, and her ability to bounce back from “no” means she’s developing a good set of coping skills.
All in all, it sounds like she had a perfect birthday celebration!
Viv,
You are a kind soul.
Of course, you’re right — sometimes we do need to say ‘no.’
There will be other times for spending nights together with Tayler and my other ‘grands’, God willing.
And who knows but that maybe one day, we will sit across a small table from one another with a slice of cake and a cup of coffee. It’s a good thought that I think I’ll hang onto for a while. It’s a nourishing thought.
Janell
Linda,
Yes, Tayler did have a wonderful birthday.
I wish I could recall her exact words of gratitude, when she came up to give me a hug, while I was washing dishes at the sink. But those words softly spoken are locked away in the past; only their meaning and the memory of her speaking them remains with me now.
I think it was something about how special the evening had made her feel. Did her mother Kate or father Glen remind her to express thanks or nudge her toward my general direction? Perhaps. Probably. But her words warmed my heart all the same, because of how naturally and sincerely she expressed them.
Fine words spoken fine. They were a definite ‘yes.’
Janell