With the swamp now drained and refilled with new alligators, with swamp gas up everybody's nostrils, and with tragedies everywhere attesting to a deeply troubled world, let us cheer ourselves up today by seeing everything anew through the eyes of the young.
My little helpers in this project are named Nash, Tillie and Lucy. They are my grandchildren. In the last few weeks, they have come in two separate waves to visit their Papa and Ya Ya.
Nash is aged 1 and lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., the son of my son Jim and his wife, Katie. Every night before bed I pray in my old-fashioned way that Nash will not grow up wearing a man bun, a hairstyle endemic in the Brooklyn area. Please Lord, not that.
Once gritty, Brooklyn is these days ground zero for gentrification. It has more baristas per square foot than I reckon anywhere else in America. When I went to be a soldier long ago, they had advice for new recruits: If it moves, salute it. If it stands still, paint it green. The advice for new arrivals in Brooklyn could be: If it moves, buy it a latte. If it stands still, no worries, it is waiting for an Uber.
Not that I have anything against Brooklyn; it is a wonderful place, at least if you are young and have hair enough for a man bun (that is strike two on me for those keeping score at home).
Jim and Katie love living there and Nash is doing very well. He walks everywhere now and also has a great arm. He can throw a ball a great distance for a 1-year-old, like 4 feet. I have high hopes that one day he will pitch for the Pittsburgh Pirates. The way they are doing he might be signed before he gets out of kindergarten.
Nash even has his own eccentricity. He growls. Passers-by can be forgiven for thinking that he is being raised by wolves. Of course, I think the growling is a passing phase. Besides, growling is not uncommon in progressive precincts these days. He probably picked it up in a coffee shop.
To be fair, when Jim, Katie and Nash came to visit us for Easter, Nash hardly growled at all. He was just very cute. Of course, as I often say, the trick in life is to be cute at age 69, a trick obviously I am still trying to master.
Last week, with the Brooklyn family long gone, the cuteness factor was doubled. Tillie, now aged 5, and Lucy, aged 3, arrived on a visit from Australia, with my daughter Allison, who is living my life in reverse, and her husband Critter (originally Christopher).
I have written many times in the past about this little Down Under family and a progress report is in order. Tillie recently started kindergarten in a Sydney public school and simply loves it. Amazingly, this once tiny sprite of a girl is now developing long legs to propel her slim frame. Her mind is growing up, too: She is starting to read and so conspiratorial parents and grandparents can no longer spell out letters to keep secrets from her.
Tillie is sensitive, thoughtful and studious, whereas her little sister Lucy is an elfin comedy show specializing in Energizer Bunny impersonations. Both have hilarious Aussie accents, which even I find hard to understand, and both are very close when they are not biffing each other.
Being still tiny, Lucy does not like dogs, at least big dogs, or "them dogs" as she says. "Why don't you like dogs, Lucy?" I asked. "Because they bite." "They won't bite you," I said. "They bite themselves," she said. Why? "Because they are hungry," she said. Can't trust them dogs.
In a restaurant the other night, a woman patron came up to Allison after seeing Lucy dancing about before dinner arrived. She said that Lucy had a special energy that was filling the whole room and that she believed she had been someone special in a previous life.
Of course, we live in California now-so that sort of thing is to be expected. But the amazing part to me was that the lady's theory seemed plausible. As Allison herself observed, how can so much personality be loaded into a person not yet 3 feet tall?
Oh I will miss them when they are gone back home. It will be back to the real world and the not-so-innocent growling.