Sweeter pie

Once a week, my small daughter and I walk next door to visit my father’s father. At age 95, he is the last of my grandparents still living—in his words, the last “mountain on the mountain.” Last spring, while my family and I were living in Tanzania, this elderly and still-avid gardener tripped over his rototiller and fell hard into the concrete lip of the barn, breaking his nose and a vertebra in his neck. He required 15 stitches to mend his skin and several months in a neck brace to mend his bones. But his spirit was unbreakable. Although gardening was among the activities off-limits to him, he visited the garden regularly, picked berries and tomatoes as he could, and looked at gardening magazines for tips about storing sweet potatoes. When a volunteer tomato plant grew from the compost pile, he lovingly cared for it, covering it as the nights grew colder, and all the way into November, he had vine-ripened tomatoes on his windowsill.

My small daughter has a special friendship with her great-grandfather. She calls him “Great Papa Mint,” for the mints he keeps in a jar on his microwave and doles out each time we visit. And he calls her “Sweeter Pie.” She loves to sit on the sturdy shelf he built atop his walker, and he takes her for rides around the circle of his apartment. I marvel as I watch them roll along, wondering why the 93 years of separation between them seem not to matter much. Perhaps it’s because, for all the difference in age, life is similar for these two. They both are courageous and confident and determined. They both like oatmeal, animal crackers, and buttered bread. They both mark the passing of each day by the small, significant things:  waking up and going to bed, watching the birds outside, doing puzzles, playing games with people they love.

For both of them, words are a bit of a mystery. At two years old, my daughter’s vocabulary is exploding, but she’s not yet as articulate as her older siblings. She is still the queen of non-verbal communication, of dramatic faces and silly actions, and when she does speak, some things are lost in translation. As for my grandfather, verbal communication is a daily struggle. A small stroke damaged part of his brain nine years ago, and while he fought hard to regain the ability to speak and to read, the words in his head refuse to come out in an orderly fashion. He carries around a pocket-size notebook filled with the important words—names of friends and family members, animals and vegetables, places and dates. But he frequently switches around nouns with other nouns, or verbs with other verbs. To communicate requires persistence, good guesswork, and healthy sense of humor.

What I love about bringing the very young and very old together is that words are rarely necessary. My small daughter and her great-grandfather share hugs and snacks and watch one another with a simple kind of enjoyment. What Great Papa loves about his Sweeter Pie is that she loves visiting him. Yes, the mints have a draw of their own, but she also asks about him, seeks him out to say hello or goodbye, and sits happily on his lap. The relationship has little to do with what they can do for each other—age prevents both of them from making substantial material contributions to others. What they have to offer is what all of us have at the end of the day:  our presence, our personhood, our ability to love and be loved.

It was G.K. Chesterton who wrote that our ancient God, because He exults in monotony, is in fact younger than we are—like a child, He delights in repetition, in doing things the same way over and over again. If Chesterton is right, then I think God is pleased by the unchanging rhythms of this elderly man and small girl. Like them, God is old enough and young enough and strong enough to rejoice in the simple gifts of life. Like them, He loves fondly and fiercely and freely, loves us not for what we can accomplish... but simply because we are.