Morning Thanks--Best Friends

I’m not sure where she found them, but leave it to my granddaughter to discover things in our house, things she can use or would like to. Jocelyn may well have a better sense for where my stuff is—even here in the basement—than I do.

Her mother was no different. I remember my mother-in-law, out on the farm, deliberately asking her granddaughter—then eight or nine or ten—where something was, maybe a serving plate, because, she’d say, little Andrea would know.

As does her daughter. Is that genetic?

Anyway, Jocelyn found these cards her grandmother probably lugged home purposefully, then promptly forgot to give away when the kids came. Lo and behold, she freed them from whatever junk drawer dungeon held them.

Immediately, she went to work. She once told her mother—she was no more than seven years old—that she didn’t have to clean up after her multitudinous projects because, well, she was an artist. I’m not sure that appraisal cemented any kind of bond betwixt mother and child, despite similar genetic codes.

But Jocey found ‘em, a whole ton of cards, then came up with a magic marker and began to address them, alphabetically, to her friends.

Just one of the joys of childhood is spontaneity, I guess, because once the card thing got old—maybe ten minutes later, they were abandoned, some of them dutifully addressed.

So when she and her brothers left that day and the dust had settled, I picked up after her, not being an artist myself and therefore sadly subject to Adam’s fall. Maybe a half dozen were addressed, but three even had messages. The first one—to Brianna—said, “Thank you for being my best friend.”

Now it doesn’t take much for my granddaughter to sweep me off my feet, so I thought that was just darling, even a little saintly.

Then I opened the second—to Makala—which said, “Thank you for being my best friend.”
Okay.

You can guess the third. Three sweet little cards to three best friends.

Is it any wonder why Jesus just loved kids? Sheesh. Wouldn’t I like to go back to a time when I could, in haloed innocence, repeat a single, stand-alone superlative three times over? I’ve seen sin in six-months-old kids, but I honestly don’t think that Ms. Jocey had any sense that what she’d written was duplicitous. She doesn’t even know the word. Of course, she is my only granddaughter.

She’s going into fourth grade this week*. I’ll give her this year—at best—in which she can get away with that kind of overdraft , and then, sadly enough, it’s the end of childhood, I suppose, and she becomes ineligible to sit on Jesus’s knee with the rest of the squirts.

But really--still. . .cute, eh? My goodness. When you're a kid you get three best friends.

Grandpa speaking, of course.

And that’s my morning thanks.
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*Jocelyn is now a college freshman, and this little meditation is nine years old. For the record, I should mention also that she is no longer our only granddaughter. Times change :), for which we're thankful too.