Curtains

My grandchildren are getting older every day. Sure, one is only three and the other two are only two, but still, they are getting older every day, and I challenge anyone to prove otherwise.

Fortunately, I’m just the grandfather, not the father, which means I don’t have to deal with such conundrums as wondering when they should begin to take on more responsibility. But I do remember wondering that very thing a long time ago, when my own three were young. When should we start doling out more responsibility? When they lose interest in Sprout TV (back then it was Nickelodeon)? When they learn to drive? When they start to give us grandchildren?

Thinking about this reminds me of something that happened when my daughter Kate was 17. She wanted to arrange a Broadway outing with nine friends that she had met at sleep-away camp. Because none of them lived nearby, the arrangements were quite intricate, including everything from ticket orders to parental approvals to travel plans. It was a challenge, but I believed that such a challenge would give Kate a good, basic grounding in logistical management and in learning how to deal with people. After all, I knew even then that she may have to take care of me one day when I start to lose all sense of reality (which, with the stress I was feeling then and am feeling even now may end up being the day after tomorrow).
        

Anyway, at one point Kate asked for some help writing a follow-up letter to her friends concerning the reimbursements. (She had laid out the money for all the tickets so that the seats would be together.) But I wasn’t able to help her out because I had a ton of problems of my own to deal with. For one thing, I was fighting with a contractor who insisted that accidentally putting his foot through my bathroom ceiling was simply par for the course.  Secondly, I was trying to discover the source of the knock-knock-knocks coming out of my heating system. (I was convinced that Tony Orlando and Dawn had taken up residence in my basement.)

So who had time for Kate and her letter? 

With all the preoccupations, you might imagine how mortified I was to open the mail a few days later to find a check with the word ‘rent payment’ written on the memo line. Why mortifying? Because I had no idea that we were renting anything! Was I so preoccupied with my own problems that I didn’t even know—as I believed at that moment—that my wife had rented the room that my older daughter had recently vacated when she went to college? 

Frantically, I sought out my wife and complained. “Honey," I said, "it’s not that I don’t want the extra income. I do. But for heaven’s sake, can’t I be involved in some of the decisions made in this household? Why in heaven’s name are we getting a rent check from a Mr. Patrick Wilson?”

At that point, Kate, who was in the same room, looked up from her homework, a pleased look on her confident face. “Oh, that’s from Kelly’s dad,” she said. “It’s for the Broadway show we’re seeing next month.”

“What Broadway show?” I asked.

“'Rent,' of course. Where have you been?”

Which only goes to prove that sometimes even fathers shouldn’t be given too much responsibility. I’m wondering now if the same goes for grandfathers.