With a spare moment, while flipping backward dollars and unfolding folded bills, a fond memory of my Grandma surfaced.
“Can I hold it?” she had asked years ago upon seeing my large billfold of cash. I can’t quite remember why I had taken it out; Was I proudly showcasing the hundreds of dollars worth of tips I’d received the night before dealing poker, or was she reminiscing about her time as a bank teller, causing me to bring out the money? Whatever the reason was has left me, but what remains strong is the sparkle in her eyes when she was handed a binder-thick stack of Scrooge McDuck cash, and how adeptly her crooked knuckles went to work, sorting and stacking.
“Oh, how I love this,” she said, not really talking to me but to herself, reminiscing about the bank’s president caring for his employees and her close bonds with the other women tellers (back in the 40s bank tellers were women). Such a simple moment, observing my Grandma with the money, but how alive she became, and how profoundly she communicated this other life in that moment has always stuck with me.
In all the years of dealing poker and supervising it, I was never far from a till. There’s nothing like the joy of the bill’s slide with a snap off the thumb’s edge that assures it and every bill that follows is accounted for. No longer dealing with $50’s and $100’s, I took my six $1s, two $10s, and one $20, pressed their neat pile into the respective slot, and felt grateful for the connected moment with Grandma.
Having a toddler, or wait, is she now a young child? I went to a message board on Reddit, and people agree that four-year-olds are little kids.
Anyway, so I’m starting the after-book, teeth-brushing bedtime routine. Evelyn wants Dave to carry her into the bathroom, but he won’t. What does she do? Pull herself from the living room, belly down, doing the crawl stroke, palms gripping the tile to slide her forward. I’d say she moved a good 15 feet in that motion before slinking past me to her place in tooth-brushing position.
It was a completely normal thing she was doing this, and then I thought, do the people reading my blog experience this from their family members or roommates? But what if they did? “Uh, honey… You coming to bed?” “Yes, dear,” then they proceed to drop to the ground and army crawls their way there. Oh, and don’t forget to long, drawn out, and whiny, “I’m too tiiiiiiiirrrrrrred.”
With a couple of hours all to myself – Evelyn’s in bed, and Dave’s downstairs playing board games with his friends – I’m doing an old favorite of mine; watching a documentary series. See ya tomorrow!
Love, Jaclynn
Going On 40 