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Women's Empowerment Stories ...
Time with Gaelin
~
Luanne Armstrong
Luanne shares the gifts of time and joy with her grandson
My grandson is a magic shining child, with laughter on his face and delight in his belly. He can do amazing tricks. He can hide in piles of Grandma's clothes, he can chase away monsters from the back yard, he can tease his aunts and uncles into helpless laughter. But the most amazing thing he can do is make time disappear.
When I was a mother, time was in short supply. I was always in a hurry. "Hurry up," I was always saying. "Come on, get dressed, the bus is coming, get in the car, we have to go, no you can't stay and play at the beach or at your friends', we have to get going, hurry up." Now, my kids, in their kindness, tell me I was a good mother but I don't remember that. I remember I was always tired, and always in a hurry. I wanted more time, I said, time for me. I once said to someone that I would do almost anything at all for fifteen minutes to myself.I don't like to remember myself in those days. I think I was a big impatient bully, always fretting and fuming about time. Then the kids grew up and left and there was nothing more to fret and fume about except me.
It's different now. I have a lot of time to myself and I am rarely in a hurry. When Gaelin, my three year old grandson, comes by, there is nothing I want to do at all except hang out with him and watch him be himself. But I didn't realize this magic quality of disappearing time until we had gone on quite a few walks together. I'm not sure how it works and I don't much care. But I can tell you what it feels like.For example, the other day, I went for lunch with Gaelin and his mom and dad. After lunch, they sat there talking as grown ups seem to do, planning the day, next year, the rest of their lives. It was pretty dull so Gaelin and I went for a walk.
We went about almost two blocks. We saw lots of stuff, flowers, and cars, a huge dog, an airplane going by overhead, a boy on a skateboard. "Looks like fun," said Gaelin, and I agreed. We crossed the street, watching for cars, and then we sat down for a while. We had some books and we looked at those, and then we watched the cars some more and talked about important things like monsters and dinosaurs and bikes and his friend next door and ants and ladybugs. After a while, we got up and went back down the sidewalk. We were going to go the other way, but there were too many cars on that street. We both saw that without needing to discuss it. We sat down again and read part of a really good book. After a while, I suggested that mom and dad might wonder where we went and we considered that. Then we got up and went on, looking at some more stuff. When we got back, mom and dad had figured out their lives and were sitting, waiting. I had no idea how long we had been gone, maybe ten minutes or an hour. When we go for a walk at my house, everything is interesting. We don't actually go for a walk. We kind of go out the door and then we're pulled places, by the cows, the chickens, the fact that the road slopes downhill and goes around a mysterious comer, by flowers, by the neighbour's boat on its boat trailer, by a big brown puddle, by a jet going by. Time with Gaelin turns around and disappears into itself. There is no time and there's all the time in the world, take your pick. There is nothing to do and everything to do, and everything is interesting, a leaf, a flower, a puddle, a stone on the road. The time I don't see Gaelin vanishes into some enormous gulf filled with working and eating and sleeping and the times I do see him are bright and luminous as a picture I live within. Time spent with Gaelin is no time at all. We have all the time we need although there will never be enough time because it runs like lightning when I don't see him. When I do, the universe kindly holds its breath and together we have all we need and all the time I need and have wished for is present, full and whole.Click here to return to the women's stories index
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