A Conversation with my Grandchild

When she and I first met, she couldn’t look me in the eye, and the silence between us was uncomfortable. I have always been especially awkward with new people, and she, well, she was only a few days old.

Let’s call her D, just D, because her mother, my daughter, has not authorized this article. D is my granddaughter, my very first grandchild, who at the time of this writing is already a mature seven weeks old. She was born shortly before I myself hit the mandatory retirement and perfect lolo-hood age of 65. Impeccable timing on her part.

Over the course of my extended visit to her home in the great State of Kentucky, U.S.A., she and I spent every day together, countless iterations of cry-feed-poop-repeat and an endless fashion show of super cutesie onesies. By the end of my stay, she was following my movements and holding my index finger in her tiny hand. D and I had gotten to know each other quite well through our many long conversations—

“Lolo is your favorite,” indoctrination being one of the skills I learned in my younger years, “Lolo is your favorite,” constant repetition, one of the techniques.

In the beginning, she resisted. She accused me. She pled with me. She felt betrayed by me. All with her eyes. Eventually, however, hunger and sleep deprivation took their toll, and she began to accept that Lolo was indeed her all-around favorite. By way of reinforcement, I sang her a variation of the lullaby used by my own grandmother and passed on through the generations:

                        Go to sleep my darling baby,

                        Mother is not far away.

                        Sleep, my darling baby, sleep.

                        Lolo is your favorite.

Her loyalty to her animal friends hanging from her play gym was slightly more difficult to overcome. She’d smile every time the padded cloth figures of a whale, crab, and octopus wiggled in front of her, until I opened her eyes to reality. “Whales are not fish, but mammals,” I explained. “The Japanese hunt and eat them. Crabs, meanwhile, are crustaceans. Chili crab is a must in Singapore. And, although Tita Jessica and Tita Marissa refuse to eat octopus, the marine mollusk is one of the best things you can have in Spain and Portugal.” Doubt, skepticism, disbelief, consternation, and confusion played across D’s face. “Yes, we eat them all,” I assured her.

“Cow?” she said. Others say she was cooing, but I heard a word.

“That, too,” I replied, “We eat cows, but we hide the fact by using the French word beef, similar to how we disguise our eating chicken by calling it Kentucky.”

She smiled at Lolo, her favorite.

What is it about a first grandchild that makes old men aspire to poetry? The photos of other people’s grandkids left me cold, but the first, grainy shots of D were like magic. My heart leapt, not out of mere affinity, but raw consanguinity, a blood bond, a genetic link. At that moment, she was a sunrise in a dark winter, an ice cream cone on a beach, and a three-point basket to steal the final game in a winless season. She is hope, relief, and redemption.

I’m back in the Philippines now. Can’t wait to see her again. I hope by then she’s really talking.

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