A Visit with Grandpa
Home is the place where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in.
Robert Frost
Ten months after my husband and I married, we had our first child, Daughter #1 (no comments, please!). My husband was finishing up at BYU, and I was in my first year of teaching. My parents had come to the baby’s blessing in Provo but headed back home to Albuquerque soon after, so we were excited to show off our darling little girl and spend a few days with her grandparents as soon as the semester was over.
At the time, I-15 didn’t exist. The trip was a long, slow event, part of it on the legendary Route 66. The baby hated the car; she screamed a good bit of the way. We stopped often to feed her, change her diaper, soothe her, and to replace the clothes she spit up all over—both hers and ours. When we finally pulled into my parents’ driveway, it was two o’clock in the morning. The three of us had passed all tolerance for being cooped up together.
Since the year was 1970, car seats were only a figment of Ralph Nader’s imagination. The baby had ridden on my lap most of the trip. She whimpered as I lifted her out of the car. The house was locked and dark when we rang the bell. We waited. I shifted the baby to my other shoulder. No one answered. My husband rang the bell again; then he knocked loudly several times.
At last the porch light flipped on, and I heard the opening click of the lock mechanism. My dad, wrapped in his faded flannel robe, squinted as he pulled the door wide—he’d forgotten his glasses as usual. When he saw who it was–I don’t know who else he was expecting at two in the morning?–, he reached out and took the baby from my arms. Over his shoulder he called to my mother, “Marba Rose, the baby is here.” Then without a second thought, he switched off the light, closed the door, locked it back up, and left us standing on the front porch in the dark.
My husband and I looked at each other. We were too tired to decide what to do next. Five minutes passed, then ten. I had headed back to the car and grabbed the diaper bag when the porch light switched. My mother stood in the doorway, her usually carefully styled hair a flattened mess around her head. She grinned at me. “Would you two like to join us?” She picked up the heavy diaper bag from where I had set down on the concrete next to me and ushered us in. Across the room in the semi-darkness, I could see my dad sitting in his favorite chair, his arms wrapped around my little girl, her fuzzy head tucked under his chin. His eyes were closed, and he was rocking my baby to sleep.