Sitting Still
I am over at my daughter’s home in Brooklyn. It is a duplex in Columbia Waterfront, which is a happening part of Brooklyn, the most happening Borough in New York. Before the pandemic, this area was almost too hot, with people like my daughter and her family wondering how they could NOT sell to capture the crazy appreciation in house values. About eight and a half years ago, my daughter surprised me at a dinner in Greenwich Village with a gift. It was a baby’s “onesie” imprinted with “My Grandpa is Building The NewYork Wheel”. Obviously, it was her way of announcing to me that she was pregnant with her first child. At the time, I was in the early stages of planning the building of that circular fancy that taught me many lessons, but ended with $450 million “in the ground” with no erected wheel on New York Harbor to show for it. It was shortly after that dinner that I pushed my daughter to look for a bigger apartment and not assume that they could make it work in their small Upper West Side one-bedroom in a post-war building. They found Columbia Waterfront (which I hadn’t heard of before) and their duplex and I bridge financed the move until their apartment sold. It was a solid push I gave them and they chose wisely on a new home since it still accommodates them with their two blonde daughters (ages 8 and 5) and is now worth a small fortune.
To put that into perspective, I would guess that it has almost tripled in value and would now fetch more than my hilltop home in San Diego. Location, location, location as they say, and this location is in high demand. The square footage of the duplex is probably less than half of our Casa Moonstruck, but it works for them. If and when they ever want to trade in their New York Dollars for a suburban or more distant home, they will be able to afford a veritable castle. That makes me feel good that I pushed them all those eight years ago. The place is a bit tight for me, but it suits them well and I like that my two granddaughters are sharing a room for these years. They are close sisters and this sort of bond will last them a lifetime. That may, inadvertently, give them the greatest gift that this house has to offer.
I will take credit for another part of their lives. Their living/dining room is just big enough for their small family. The wall unit they had in here left the TV way up by the ceiling, which was clearly suboptimal in my opinion. Husband John felt otherwise and defended his TV placement. There is one thing I know not to do and that’s to press small issues like this that have no effect on my life and are really 100% their business. However, when it was time for us to move sixteen months ago, I had three large flatscreen TV’s to give my three kids. I let them figure out who got what, but when John and my daughter declared that they would be taking the largest of the TV’s, I knew my TV placement would now prevail by necessity. In fact, this TV, which takes up fully half of the living room wall, was mighty large for the place. I’m sure the standard parameters would tell you to use a smaller screen, but the choice and John’s wide eyes made it clear that those parameters would not be followed in this home.
As it turned out, some flying object made that TV dysfunctional and John replaced it with a new one of the same size. It’s a monstrous and wonderfully crisp beast that makes TV watching a family event by necessity. I am very pleased as I sit here since I think it all makes their lives better (I know my daughter and the girls are always on the go and are only watching TV a bit each day).
Kim and I are over here doing what visiting grandparents do, we are baby sitting to let the parents enjoy a night out with visiting friends. I took the first shift, bringing the girls some dinner treats and watching America’s Funniest Videos, which is always fun for all ages. Kim arrived later with desert cookies and a willingness to play games and read the girls bedtime stories. It’s been a pleasant evening for me and I know how much Kim likes caring for these sweet little blondies. Abe, the family pooch, is racked out with me on the sofa.
Across from me, under the monster TV is the best gift we ever gave this family. It’s a small living room chair with padded rolled arms and a welted slipcover. It looks like a typical American piece of functional family furniture. One of my favorite pictures of young Charlotte (the older of the two girls), was taken on her first real Thanksgiving when she was eighteen months old. She sat in that chair and looked up to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a family tradition very much prized by my daughter. Charlotte looked so serious and in awe of the parade floats in a way that kids seem rarely to be awed by anything in these days of action movies and reality TV. The chair was never not in the living room from what I could tell.
Evelyn was born three years after Charlotte and has always been a bit smaller than her, based on both age and general physique. Sure enough, from about eighteen months onward in age, that chair has been her TV chair as Charlotte graduated to the sofa with her Dad and Abe. That was where I left the state of play before COVID. Now that Evelyn is five and a half and ready to start kindergarten in the fall, the chair has now been made into a doll chair for two of the girls’ presumed favorite American Girl dolls. It still looks like a sturdy chair and yet it also looks like it has been well-used over the past eight years. Evelyn has now moved up to the sofa next to her Dad and Abe and Charlotte is over on the loveseat. Evelyn and her small keister are most comfortable in the middle faux crack in the sofa cushions. Apparently she fights for that comfy spot with Abe.
Nothing in life stands still and thank God for that. Girls grow up to become young women and dogs grow up to be sleepy hounds that leave the running and jumping to the friskier pups. In another five years Charlotte will become a teenager and in five more she will be off to college. Evelyn will never be far behind her and their mother will be by their side planning activities and doling out calm and balanced discipline while Dad says something like, “Let ‘em skin their knee, I broke my leg three times and I survived. It’s good for them.” Meanwhile, their mother will frown and make them come down a rung on the jungle gym.
Meanwhile, Abe and I will sit still on the sofa (Kim has gone back to the hotel early to care for Betty). We are comfortable sitting still and have little need for running and jumping, or even playing board games. The girls know Kim is their playmate and I am Gramps. I will thoroughly enjoy spending ten days with them in Ithaca soon. I will also know when I come over here next and find the little living room chair in a corner of the girls’ bedroom, that life is continuing to move on as it should.