Great, Great

Life has been whirling by...

So many things my son is learning to do, my Great Grandma is forgetting.

He learns to pull himself up to standing, teeters back and forth grasping my hands, then drops to his bottom in a burst of giggles. She is helped to stand on her aching legs, gripping the handles of a rarely used walker, a wheelchair is pushed behind her as my Mom helps her to sit as gracefully as possible.

He opens wide his gummy grin excited to experience the tastes and textures of new foods. When it runs down his chin we joyfully capture the moment through pictures. Formula and medication are inserted into my Grandma's stomach through a feeding tube by a syringe and a machine. The tube hangs from her belly, a foreign object inside and outside of her body at the same time. She gets to have bites fed to her of thickened treats like grape juice and apple sauce. We lift her elbow so that she might wipe her own chin with dignity.

They have a special bond. We all put in so much effort to entertain him, encourage him to babble, laugh, and play. My Grandma does little more than look into his eyes and he lights up. He stares right at her, bouncing his body around and making every noise that he knows. There is something rare that is shared between a Great, Great Grandma and a Great, Great Grandson that I can only imagine to understand.