I really don’t think I felt all that old when my great-granddaughter, Anastasia, was born last September. Oh, sure, there were all those “great-grandpa” jokes everybody thought were so funny, but among all the other emotions flooding through me — pride, joy, love, wonderment — I think “old” was curiously absent.
But things change.
And they changed for me last week, when I went to Anastasia’s first birthday party.
For one thing, her name has become Asia now, settled into the everyday nickname that she will probably wear for the rest of her life. It happens to most of us, doesn’t it, as Anthony becomes Tony, Elizabeth becomes Beth, William becomes Bill, and Jane wonders what all the fuss is about.
But that’s not what made me feel old.
One of the first people I met when I walked into the outdoor yard party was Jim (probably James at some earlier time, way, way back.) He was a guy about my age. We shook hands as we met, and he asked me how I was connected to the party. I pointed to Asia and said, “I’m her great-grandfather.”
Jim’s eyes lit up. “Me too!” he said, and I tried to do the math. The party was being thrown by Betty and Jack, the great-grandparents of Asia whom I already knew. I guessed that Jim might be the great-grandfather from Punta Gorda, Florida, whom I had heard Asia’s father talk about, but he said, “No, I’m the one from Phoenix.” And it suddenly occurred to me that I never realized how many great-grandparents a person can have.
Even if you discount potential step-members and only include blood relatives to the list, we all have eight great-grandparents, because the numbers keep doubling every generation. Two parents, four grandparents, eight great-grandparents, and so on and so on until you need commas to keep all those numbers from falling apart.
All of my great-grandparents had died before I was born, along with one of my grandparents, and by the time I was out of school they were all gone. With so much grand-ness missing from my early life, that’s probably why I never added it all up. That and the fact that I am a moron when it comes to math.
But the abundance of co-codgers at the party wasn’t what made me feel old, either.
Besides the great-grandparents, there were grandparents at the party too, and aunts and uncles and siblings and suchlike.
And babies….
So. Many. Babies.
There were at least six little spuds under the age of two, always with some combination of them on the breast or bottle to keep them quiet and happy. There was an even larger number of preschoolers, dashing across the lawn or falling on the driveway as they burned up their sugar high from too much cake. And there were still more who were a bit older, glancing at their cellphones to see what they might be missing in the world churning along outside of a baby’s birthday party.
And, yeah, I started to feel a little bit old when I watched them, mostly because of the bottomless reserve of energy that their parents tapped to keep them all from exploding or spinning off into space. It exhausted me just to watch those baby-parents hold it all together.
Oh, I was once like them, I knew, but it’s been a long time since my kids spun and dashed with such nuclear fission just this side of total meltdown.
Both of my own adult children were there at the party—Jenny, who is Asia’s grandmother, and Dave, who is Asia’s… grand-uncle? Uncle once removed? I don’t know. The math just makes me dizzy. Their very presence was proof that it can be done, that somehow those young parents will find the strength to get those infants to grow up before they blow up.
But even Dave, whose own kids are tumbling teenward, shook his head as he watched all the frantic babies and all of their capable, energetic parents.
“Wow,” he said, “I feel so far past all that.”
So yeah, that’s when I started to feel a bit old.
But my ancientness really came to a head after another hour or so, when Asia started getting a bit cranky from all the attention and activity. She was probably missing her naptime. I sympathized with her, because I was, too.
She started crying, and Johannah (her mother, my granddaughter) soothed her and said: “Hey, you can’t cry at your birthday party!”
“Sure she can,” I said, and I started to sing: “It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to….”
I stopped then, waiting for others to join in and finish the line, but all I got was stares. Crickets, as the young people would say. I wondered if anybody at the party had any idea what the next line was, or who sang it.
That line never got sung.
And I suddenly felt old, because it seemed nobody at the party remembered the unforgettable words to a song that was popular a mere 60 years ago.
Next to me, my fellow great-grandpa Jim smiled and nodded. “Leslie Gore,” he said quietly.
I thanked him, because I wanted to cry.
You would cry, too, if it happened to you.
Author, musician and storyteller TR Kerth is a retired teacher who has lived in Sun City Huntley since 2003. Contact him at trkerth@yahoo.com. Can’t wait for your next visit to Planet Kerth? Then get TR’s book, “Revenge of the Sardines,” available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online book distributors.
