The Unmuddled Mathematician

Courage, Love, Determination, and the Joys of Grandchildren

Chris S. Coray, The Unmuddled Mathematician

Bobbie and I have two children, both daughters.  They are great girls.  The raising of the two girls took the usual, i.e. indescribable, amount of work, patience, and time.  Although not possible to see everything from the front side of those years, the back side, while equally invisible beforehand, has turned out to be joyful almost beyond description.  Of course, that means grandchildren.

Running behind my eldest daughter in the street, holding onto her bike as she learned to ride, listening to her loudly telling me not to let go of the back of the bike as she pedaled forward, is one of the treats every dad should have.  And then to be able to say, “But I have already let go, you are riding by yourself”, and experience the soaring of her spirit and confidence as she pedaled off alone.  Money cannot buy these things. 

Watching our youngest daughter, who was born with the shooting touch of Michael Jordan, send a slowly backward rotating basketball towards the net of the orange hoop in game after game, was a sort of real time poetic experience.  But even much better things were coming.

Our first grandchild was born on the last day of the last millennium.  The second just a little over two years later.  With wisdom beyond my own, my wife arranged to take care of the granddaughters (no males in our family) one day a week, Friday.  Those baby girls were very small, only one could yet walk, but yet my wife’s entire attention was directed at them.   All day.  Being a single celled amoeba (read male) I did not fully appreciate the depth of interaction between grandma and granddaughters, but it was there.

When the eldest granddaughter was almost three, the youngest not yet one, Bobbie got cancer.  First there was surgery, on Halloween.  Bobbie insisted on a getting a mask and partial costume in the hospital so when the granddaughters came to visit they would not be frightened by all the tubes, wires, and other post-operative gear.  In the depth of her illness she was thinking of the grandbabies.  Then came the chemotherapy, which is just plain unadulterated poison.  Bobbie would get a treatment on a Thursday, poison plus steroids to help with side effects.  Fridays were artificially OK, weekends were full time bed rest.  But remember that Friday was grandma day and thanks to the steroids she did not miss one.  Our girls did not get to see the physical struggles their mom bore, for Bobbie hid them as best she could.  The granddaughters likely helped her spirits.  And she got better, as in cured.

From then on, with the addition of a 3^rd granddaughter, we spent as much time as we could with the little ones.  Often we would drive to Logan, pick them up in the morning, bring them to Bear Lake for the whole day or sometimes even two, then take them back.  Pure joy here.  A regular feature was my preparation of Saturday pancakes, made in the shapes requested by the girls.  The girls had their own room in our house, an extra playroom with doll houses, and always had us eating out of their hands.  We were easy marks.  With our consent, knowledge, and blessing.  It is fair to say that we never turned down a chance to care for our grandchildren and so we have no regrets, as in zero, about not being there when we could.  Our obituaries will not say that we wished we could have spent more time with the grandbabies.  We spent all that was available.

As they have grown these 3 girls have given us what can only be described as divine joy.  For example, upon arriving at our house, the youngest once opened the house door and in a quiet, happy way said, “Oh, the house smells like Grandma.”  Simple phrase.  What would you do to hear those words?  For us, anything. 

We had the blessing of a week with that youngest one last week.  Bobbie was feeling not quite up to par so we postponed the boat activity for a day and I got to spend the whole day introducing her to stained glass.  By the end of the day she had designed, marked the glass, cut it, and produced a stained glass mermaid tail, all with her own hand.  It took a day but I would not trade any of it.  In her own words she has decided that we are, “Fun to be with”. 

We have reminded the girls that the math help given by grandpa, the golf cart rides here, the lake, the pancakes, all are far less important than what we want them to know and remember about their grandparents.  So we asked them what was the most important thing.  Without prompting the answer was immediate, “That you loved us”.  Yep.

Whether losing (me) at tennis to our eldest, almost declaring a family emergency on our mission in Syria  to come home to watch our middle dance in the Nutcracker ballet, or snuggling with the youngest (who loves to do that with grandma) and watching a movie, our lives are enriched beyond what I could have imagined.  I think my wiser half actually knew what might be coming and she far more than any other made it happen.  The joy cannot be exceeded.