"Take some of these tangerines with you," I found myself saying as Claui and Josie were going out the door after lunch last Friday. They and Justin were heading out to spend the weekend with friends several hours away and suddenly I found myself channeling my grandfather Hudy.
When my boys were young and we would go to Tampa to visit family, on our departure, Hudy always pressed into our hands packages of store-bought cookies or a bag of grapefruit from a tree in his yard. And he would invariably exhort us to drive carefully because we were "carrying precious cargo."
I know now exactly how he felt.
Though I did refrain from the precious cargo line, as to me it implies that the parents aren't as precious. A little like those Baby on Board signs that used to be so popular. "Oh, you have a baby in the car; well, then, I guess I won't sideswipe you and run you off the road as one does."
I digress.
The mental picture of my grandparents -- probably in their eighties at the time-- standing in their driveway and waving us goodbye almost breaks my heart. I know they were saddened by our moving so far away but they never reproached us. Indeed, they seemed to understand our longing for a simpler life-- the sort of life they'd left behind when they moved from rural Alabama to Florida.
And now that Josie has wound herself so tightly into our hearts, the thought of seeing her only a few times a year, as was the case with my grandparents and our boys, is utterly unimaginable. Even watching her leave the farm for a weekend is a bit of a heart tug.
Those tangerines. Were they an unconscious attempt to send something of us with the young uns? A symbolic bond. Don't forget us when you go away. And be sure to come back.
I have no idea-- it was only as Claui and Josie went down the front porch steps and I stood there waving that I realized I'd become my grandfather.