Going Back in Time

It was almost 47 years ago that I left for my second tour in Vietnam. Leaving the second time was much harder than the first time. I was leaving Louise and two small girls, Leigh (2 years old) and Julie (one year old). I hated missing out on an exciting and very important year of their development, but Louise kept my spirits up by writing every day – no one in Vietnam got more mail than I did. She also sent videos of “The kids in the yard, Parts 1 – 42.”

Well, this week I was able to relive some of what I missed. Leigh’s granddaughter, my great-granddaughter, Lynleigh, spent the week with us in Clemson. Since Louise was in school most of each day, it was me and Lynleigh getting in a lot of bonding time. After this week, I have a much greater appreciation for moms or dads who watch young kids all day. Lynleigh kicked my butt, but we did have fun. She reminds me so much of Leigh at that age, not just because they look so much alike (picture on the left is Leigh at about 2 or 3 years old, picture on the right is Lynleigh at 2 1/2), but it also seems that their mannerisms are much the same. Maybe that’s just me trying to bring Leigh back for a few days, but that is surely what it felt like. Lynleigh showed her grandmother’s courage and strength at the playground as she climbed every kind of ladder and insisted that I lift her up to the horizontal bars so she could try to walk them. Of course, the bars were much farther apart than the length of her arms, so all she could do was hang there. Leigh didn’t start talking until she was almost two years old, as we were living in Panama where she heard about as much Spanish as English. When she did start talking, though, you couldn’t shut her up. I saw a lot of that in Lynleigh this week. She would ramble on and on about something very important to her, but, for the most part, I had no idea what she was talking about. This morning, our last day together, I was just beginning to better understand her language.

We did have some interesting conversations, though, mostly centered around the question, “Why?”

“Can we go to the playground?” A question that came up several times yesterday.

“No, it’s pouring rain outside.”

“Whyyy?”

“So the grass can grow.”

“Whyyy?”

“Because grass is better than mud.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m reading the paper.”

“Whyyy?”

“So I can be as smart as Jimmy Addison and Cecil Huey.”

“Oh.” That seemed to make perfect sense to her.

The best times were when she climbed into my lap with her doll, her blankee, and 4 stuffed critters to watch “Llama Llama” with me, a show about a bunch of four-legged animals that walk upright on their hind legs and talk (except for the birds, who can’t talk). The school teacher is a zebra. She’s got me hooked on that show now. It’s on Netflix. Lynleigh is hooked on tangerines – she went through two bags in four days. I think it was the thrill of peeling them as much as the taste.