The Twenty-first Century, Here I Come!

A few weeks ago, Jackson, our almost-four-year-old grandson, came to spend the night with us because his mom and dad were really under the weather with the New Mexico crud and allergies. He was so excited about staying all night with Grammy and Pop, and needless to say, we were elated to have him.

During the early evening, he was fine as he ate dinner, chatted with us, punched holes in paper; I think we even watched one of his videos. As bedtime grew near, however, he started talking about going home to sleep. We tried talking to him about how sick his folks were, but nothing comforted him: he wanted to go home. I thought maybe putting his pajamas on him and reading a story would help, but it didn’t. The tears came, and my heart broke. He wanted to talk to his mommy.

I made the call; Wendy tried to convince him that he was a big boy and would be just fine. Their being ill didn’t impress him one bit. Frank was sympathetic with the little fellow, but I was empathetic. I could put myself in his place because flashes of my childhood kept coming back to me. When I was a child, I absolutely would not spend the night away from home. I got so homesick for my mother that she would have to come to get me, sometimes at 2:00 in the morning, even if I was just next door. Homesickness is the sickest sick in the world, and my heart went out to little Jackson!

We all knew that he would stay with us, but getting him to sleep was quite a problem. We read his favorite book twice; I lay down with him for about fifteen minutes; he assured me that he’d be okay. Just as I pulled the covers up when I finally went to our bedroom, he began to cry again. Sigh! It would be one of “them nights.”

When I went back to Jackson’s room to try to convince him that he could go to sleep, that everything would be fine, that pretty soon he’d wake up to a brand new day (his term for the next morning), he looked up at me with those big teary blue eyes and very solemnly said, “Grammy, if I could just listen to your iPod, I think I could go to sleep.”

Imagine his surprise when I told him, “Jackson, Grammy doesn’t have an iPod.”

“You DON’T?” He was amazed. Everyone has an iPod in his little world, maybe even more than one.

Did Jackson ever go to sleep without music, without an iPod? Oh, yes . . . after I lay down again with him for about 30 minutes, this time not getting up until I knew that he was asleep.

And just why have I written about this important event in my life? I just want everyone to know that I have truly entered the twenty-first century because of a little boy with a broken heart, a little boy who is my heart. Never again will he wish for an iPod at our house. I now have a lovely little turquoise iPod Nano. It really is neat, and I think I’ll even use it for my own entertainment, not just for Jackson’s.