Feeling Five

Our granddaughter Sarah turns five this week. She spent the night at our house last weekend, and we were asking her if she thinks she’s going to “feel five” on her birthday. She had to ponder this question for a bit, and as I looked in her eyes while she was thinking, I remembered another little girl who considered the same question.

My grandmother, Momo, lived with us until I was fourteen. She had her own “place”, the converted one-car garage attached to our house. Her door was always open, ready to receive me. I visited her for many reasons: for advice, because I was bored, or because she always kept a Mason jar with cold water in it on the top shelf of her Muphy refrigerator. She never cared if a lazy girl took a sip! Mostly, my reasons were selfish ones. But, from these visits my worldview was shaped. And she was the first to ask me if I thought I was going to “feel different” on my birthday.

I’ve asked all our kids that question in their younger years, wondering if they would be as flummoxed by it as I was. Now I’m asking my grandchildren, getting tickled as I watch them trying to figure out the question, which of course they must do, before they can land on an answer.

When you’re younger than, say, seven, life goes pretty slowly. Parents measure those years in inches and lost teeth, accomplishments that are based on coordination, and distance you’re allowed to travel alone from the front door. But kids view them differently.

When I turned six, and Momo asked me if I felt six rather than five, why, I couldn’t believe she had to ask! I was in FIRST GRADE, after all, wasn’t I! And didn’t I get to lead the line for lunch now and again? And didn’t I have homework to do every night? I rode the bus to school, and Holly was my best friend. Milestones! She just let me rant, smiling the whole time, loving me and loving what I had to tell her, as if it was all hitherto unknown to her.

So, as Sarah was thinking about why five felt different than four, and I was thinking, watching her, about whether Momo felt like I did when she asked that question of me, Sarah suddenly perked up, her eyes dancing. She had an answer!

“Mom lets me open the blinds in the living room every morning! She must know I’m going to be five!”

Her sixth birthday will be very interesting. I can’t wait.