21. I'LL BE WITH YOU

We do this thing called First Friday. Dave and I gather our grandkids, the ones who are still willing to spend a Friday night with their grandparents, and do something worthwhile. Worthwhile can be anything, basically, as long as you're together. And while we generally gather on the first Friday of every month, sometimes we shift to other days. Tonight it was Second Friday, because thats when Quincey's Jr High play was in full swing. We started with a little cooking lesson where we made linguini in lemon butter sauce. Then we loaded into the van and headed to Salt Lake City.

Quincey's school not only has an actual stage with auditorium seats, they sure know how to put on a show! Q was the most lovely of all dancers and singers. We whooped and hollered for her and her classmates as they told the tale of Moana. There was warmth and tenderness, laughter and magic, tragedy and triumph, all in spectacolor. We love cheering for each other, like we did last fall when Tess was a townsperson and a bumble bee and Beth was Elsa in Frozen. Hooray for cousins!

 

Early in the show there was a tender scene between young Moana and her dying grandmother. The young girrl is torn between staying with her beloved grandmother and answering a call to save her island. The dying patriarch pulls her grand daughter close and promises: "There is nowhere you can go that I won't be with you." The scene pulled at my heartstrings, which is a testament to good acting, staging, writing and a mushy heart. 

My first thought was that those who precede us in our family lineage have a divine right to journey silently with us. But my second thought came in the van ride home, where the cacophony of young voices in the car were putting me right at the edge of  bubble-bursting. As we were licking our Arctic Circle soft twist cones, Beth's voice pierced the woven conversation with the words, "I'm just weird. That's all!" And Tess's voice followed with "We're all weird!" Meanwhile Calvin was in the far-back seat with his friend Eli and cousin Walter, singing Radiohead's hit song "I'm a Creep... I'm a weirdo," minus the swear words. 

It struck me, there in the front seat with two generations down from me rocking human existence in the back, that even when I'm not dead they are stuck with their hovering grandma. I'm  not just a whisper of encouragement or disappointment living in their heads, or spiritual guidance from the other side of the veil down the road, I am stuck in the little quirks that wriggle out of their skin, tiny word combinations that sift through their lips, the ASL word shape for I Love You thrust  toward the window when they say goodbye. Maybe its not so much that I will be hovering close to them when I'm gone. Maybe I can still be wholly me, still be present and also be part of them.

Maybe, when I cross over to a new realm and leave my body, I'll find out little quirks and talents I think are all my own were actually inherited from some great-great-grandfather or long lost aunt, drained like maple sap in late winter, working its way down our family tree.

First Friday March 2026