I feel like a failure as a grandparent about 99 percent of the time. On this occasion, I tried to come up with a fun activity I’d seen demonstrated on YouTube for my grandson, 13, and my granddaughter, 10. Freeze half a watermelon, then chisel a small depression into its surface, pour a little milk into it, and start scraping the sides of the shallow cavity. Very quickly, the milk becomes slushy, and in a few YouTube minutes, you have created a watermelon sorbet worthy of Bas Rouge or The Kitchen at the Imperial.
Except the sides of the watermelon are as hard as granite, and the thing can’t lie flat, so it scoots around on the counter and repeatedly shoots out of our hands. Gripping it for excavation purposes is much like wrestling a greased pig. We abandon our slushies, take our afternoon together to Barnes and Noble, and I throw money at it.
My grandson sits on the opposite side of a café table, thumbing through a book on the ancient Celts. He notes their belief in reincarnation, and we look at each other, shrug, and simultaneously pronounce, “Why not?”
One of the cool things about having grandchildren is getting to watch them turn into people.
People you like. Which is different from love.
Love is inherited and inevitable. Liking is neither. Which is why, watching him talk, I notice the warm rush. My goodness, I like you, I think.
My granddaughter’s bounty from this afternoon together is a package of Styrofoam beads embedded in a malleable chemical substance– from China, no doubt—that you can squish.
She gets a soft handful of green goop out of the package and mashes it between her fingers as we talk. I give it a poke. I have to admit that squishing things is somewhat satisfying.
We have ordered grilled cheese sandwiches, and on the display next to the cash register is a copy of the newest novel a friend of mine has written. The novel is, in fact, stacked on display tables all over the store.
My friend Kate is talented, charismatic, and without pretense, a remarkable combination for someone who just had her first novel picked up by a major television/movie star and adapted for a series on Peacock with an all-star cast. And she did that while pregnant and juggling a toddler on one hip. She is living the exact life I wanted to live at her age. Mother, wife, writer, wildly successful. I definitely accomplished the first three.
As to wild success, I wonder about the shelf life of ambition. While we wait for our sandwiches to cool enough to eat, I wonder again about reincarnation. As it turns out, although I did not know this, my grandson is correct: the Celts believed that the soul continues to exist after death and can be born into new roles and experiences to help it grow, even as an animal.
I balk at this idea, but I’ve known some pretty human dogs, so that tracks…
Before we leave, I walk back up to the counter and buy Kate’s book. It feels good that I wanted to live the success she has earned when I was that age, but not now. I’m relieved that I have accomplished enough of my own dreams not to feel deprived but genuinely delighted for someone else. It’s a new form of generosity, and I feel like slinging it around. Applying it elsewhere. It’s freedom, actually. The freedom to be happy for others, not because you achieved everything you ever wanted, but because you achieved enough.
I go back to the table, rejoin the kids, thinking about multiple lives in the here and now. We are always becoming someone new, though eventually reality takes ambition to the mat. There are a finite number of books left to write, workshops left to teach, grandchildren yet to arrive. New people to meet. Wonders to see.
Or are there?
It feels like the universe is infinite in its unfolding, every day a new discovery, and as if all the time I need is still before me.
(Did you know bumblebees sleep in flowers? Found that out just yesterday. That a group of foxes is called a skulk? Have you seen the Northern Lights yet?)
Being happy with what you’ve done with your life is not the same thing as wanting only what you have. I still sometimes long for the lives I didn’t get to live. The songwriter, foster mother, actress, and archeologist. And yes, I want my column syndicated and my NPR show added to the national database.
Satisfied with what is, is not done.
We clean up our table, toss our uneaten sandwich crusts in the trash can, and give a sympathetic, wide berth to the old man slumped asleep at the table next to us.
At the entrance, the warm rush of summer heat greets us as I open the door. It’s a relief to have ambition without avarice, to still want everything and need nothing.
I learned a while back that comparison is the death of joy. But it’s also a match to tinder. I reverse out of my parking spot, smiling and I hope you are, too.
In my next life I’m going to write a blockbuster.
And star in it.
Ready for a witty, sun-soaked adventure? Grab your copy of Salty by Kate Myers here and dive into the perfect summer read!”
Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.
