I should be a grandma

In a way, me being a mother was all about being a grandma.  I was born to be a grandma.  I bring many qualifications to the table, of course, but I think I would make a super stellar long-distance grandma. I totally rock the whole concept of gift boxes.

If I had a grandbaby right now, for example, I would be sending the Rosemary Wells boxed-set of stories called "Voyage to the Bunny Planet".  This was originally a set of three tiny books about bunnies, which came in a box. It has since been published as one book, with three stories, but the tiny box with three tiny books is best. Clearly, Wells is riffing off the Peter Rabbit stories, which also have a history of being published in teeny, tiny books with beautiful illustrations. Bunnies are adorable.  The Peter Rabbit tales do other adorable animals, like Jemima Puddleduck. And cats are involved.  But bunnies are probably the cutest of cute animals. And bunnies are all about Easter, although sure, chicks are also cute.

Bunnies. Spring time cometh. Easter is next month. It is time to be reading about bunnies to children you love.

But I aint got any babies or bunnies, no anywhere there. Come to think of it, this would be a perfectly good time to get into Winnie the Pooh. A.A. Milne did a couple books of children's poems that rocked my childhood. One of Milne's kid poetry books was "When We Were Very Young" and the other one "Now We Are Six".  Both books are awesome. At the end of one of those books, the kid in the poem wants a rabbit but there weren't rabbits anywhere. So, moping, he goes for a walk to the end of the town and there are rabbits everywhere.

Blah blah blah.

Rosemary Wells does a contemporary spin.  Her bunnies are just as adorable as Beatrix Potter's rabbits but the stories are more contemporary.  Potter started out, I think, as a nature illustrator.  Wells is also a gifted illustrator but her stories have more lightness for me.

And when you have a dumpling toddler you love sitting on your lap and you read First Tomato, life is perfect.  And you might as well talk to the plumpling about growing tomatoes and talk about the garden. It is time to be planting tomatoes, at least where I live. Where I raised my dumpling, it is too soon to plant tomatoes but not too soon to begin imagining the garden for the year.

There are many fun aspects to growing tomatoes. What is the most important?  Hard to choose, but in this moment, I wish I had a toddler on my lap. I would talk to him about the magic of planting a microscopic seed (maybe explain that word:  it is so much fun to explain everything to a smart child), put it under the top of the ground, cover it, water it. And then ask the child to imagine what the seed will do. Does it get wet?  How does the seed respond to the wet, to the soil, the dark? Does the seed feel itself changing? What would change first?

At some point, we know, a tomato seed responds to its environment. It changes. How do such changes begin? What happens first? And then what happens next?  How does a seed grow? How does a seed change from being a seed to being a tiny plant, to rising up in the soil into the sun? Does the plant long to feel the sunlight, is that what makes it grow out of the dirt? How does the urge to feel sunlight get put in the seed?  Magic?  Love? Spirit? Think about it honey, for this is the story of life.

These are the kinds of things I would natter about to any grandbabies on my lap.

I am not lonely for grown ups. I am lonely for children.  I have a lot to tell some lucky kids.  Kids would be lucky to know me.  And if we found ourselves talking tomatoes early enough in the day, we might go out and buy some and make something with tomatoes.  I am thinking I'd like to make tomato soup from scratch and have grilled cheese sandwiches. What would we have to buy? The child (or children) and I would work this out.

What a great day that would be.

An old friend just visited. She has two granddaughters, age two and four.  I am not exactly jealous.  I am glad my friend has those girls in her life.  Where am I going to get a grandbaby?  I'd even take a boy.