Susan Writes

“Gran, your lunch looks like a dead mouse with a chicken on its head,” my 5-year old Grand told me while he ate lunch with Husband and me. How could half of a ham sandwich look like a dead mouse? I could stretch my imagination to see a chicken created from five triangular pieces of cheese.

“Jesse, have you ever seen a dead mouse?” Husband asked.

“No, but it’d look exactly like what Gran’s eating,” he said. Looking at his plate where I’d created face features using grapes and tangerine segments, Jesse said, “I like teeth and eyes, but I don’t like hair so I’m glad my guy is bald like Pop.” He giggled, ducked his head, and lifted his eyes to look across the table at his Pop.

There are several Jesse quotes in a little book entitled “The Grands Said” where I’ve collected things our grandchildren have said.

When he was four, Jesse put his face against the window of the van on a dark night.  Those of us who could see by the headlights were talking about a small animal that had run in front of the van. “I can’t see! Somebody turn on my outside lights!”

Recently, on a cloudy dark night while Jesse and his family traveled in their van, Jesse again stared outside. “It’s splish-splash dark,” he said. His mother repeated splish-splash dark. “Yeah, it’s really dark.”

A few minutes later, Jesse’s older sister asked, “Jesse, do you mean pitch-black dark?” (Siblings often interpret.)

“Yeah, pitch-black, splish-splash dark,” said my Grand.

While eating ice cream, Jesse stopped, put his spoon in the bowl and his hand over his face. “Oh, I’ve got a cold mind!” he said.  His cold mind was like other people’s brain freezes.

When Jesse, then 4, spent the night with Husband and me, he didn’t like the plain yellow pillowcase that was on his bed and asked for the Star Wars pillow. He looked at the flat pillow case made from fabric with Star War characters and asked, “How do you blow it up?”

Yesterday, I underestimated my Grand’s vocabulary.  He and I sang “She’ll be Coming Around the Mountain.” On the second stanza, I sang, “She’ll be driving six white horses when she comes.”

Jesse yelled, “Gran! Stop! How could she ride six horses?” Drive, not ride, I explained. “How could she do that?” I described a big wagon, like his red wagon but the size of his family’s van, and maybe with a top. Someone could ride in it and guide the horses with long leather straps attached to the horses’ bridle. “Gran, don’t you call that a carriage?” Jesse asked.

Jesse was barely four when he dumped about 50 colored building blocks on the floor. He sorted them by color: red, green, orange, blue, yellow. Then he made stacks by color, largest to smallest.  Sitting tall and straight, he looked at me and said, “Look, Gran, I’m really smart.”

My young Grands make me laugh just by what they say. What gifts!

Filed under: Grandchildren | Tagged: Grand Said |