Granny

It surprises me how much my Granny comes into my head since having AJ. Last night while I was putting him to bed, it happened again -- I was singing one of her lullabies and I just got teary. Some days I miss her so much, and I wish she was here to know MY little boy. She had four of them, and I think that's why, maybe, I feel an even stronger bond to her now, as opposed to before AJ. On my other side, my Mom has 2 girls, me and Sis. Her Mom, my Grandmother, has 2 girls. But Granny, she had BOYS, and by the stories she told, they were the boy-est epitome of boyhood. Living on a farm, it's not hard to imagine that: skinned knees, torn jeans, muddy shoes, sticks and snails and firecrackers and rocks.

Maybe it got to me last night because yesterday AJ and I spent a good long while outside, in the 70-degree weather. (Snow on Monday, summer by Thursday -- this is Georgia winter.) Starting with his dirt-stained corduroys from when he played outside at daycare, it was the perfect scene: he walked the perimeter gathering sticks ("tcks"), played in the rock garden ("rie"), fell a small way (on purpose) into a muddy hole, tried to eat some dog poo, and did not want to come inside. :) I just ADORE the "little boy" in him. I want to squeeze it out and drink it. He loves to send Polie away and then call him back, loudly, "Budd-ee!" He's practicing "clicking" his tongue against his back teeth like we do, to call the dog, and getting pretty good at it. He loves to swing, but always stops to look up at the sky if he hears an airplane ("ay-bee"), and if THAT FACT, in my family, doesn't say BOY, then nothing does. Of the four boys of Granny's, three are or were pilots, and two of her grandsons, as well.

Fitting, then, that Granny's song asks the "Angels, dear, [to] hover near, watch o'er my darling boy tonight." Hovering. Like flying. So I always pray that she's one of the angels hovering at AJ's window. When she used to sing it to us, she had to say "Watch o'er my darling girls tonight," but I thought last night how strange that way feels in my mouth -- and how strange it must have felt to her, the first time she sang it that way.