The Quilt #5 - Alex
Alex has always been a delight to
us. Our first grandbaby. And I guess we will always think of him that way no
matter how much he grows up.
He had a tiny little time-out
chair in the hallway of our big old house on Robert Street and he loved it.
Sometimes he would just stop by there and sit down for a visit. He never minded
time outs. He would just turn loose his amazing imagination and let it soar.
We have a picture on the wall
here of him sitting in the kitchen window with the sheer window curtains pulled across
him, just staring off into space. I have often wondered what is out there that
he could see, and we could not.
He and his Granny snuck off to
the attic one day to make me this t-shirt. Those are his handprints. On the
back it said “World’s Best Grandpa” all spelled out in Granny’s handwriting.
I could write a whole book about
Alex, and now that I think of it, I may do that someday. One of my favorite
times with him was when the two of us took a road trip to Boone, North
Carolina. On Robert Street, when he was about two, he fell in love with an
audio tape I picked up in a specialty store in downtown St. Paul. It was
Ladysmith Black Mambazo, still in the earliest days of their popularity.
Several years later I learned
that they were going to perform at Appalachian State University in Boone. It
was 748 miles away, an eleven-hour drive, but we took off. He must have been
about nine years old. It was a great concert and a delightful time. His arm was
in a sling at the time. He had broken it in Minnesota before he came down to
visit us for the summer. His last words before it broke were “Hey, watch this.”
On the way home we stopped by the Kennedy Space Center to watch them launch a
manned satellite.
Alex is still a delight. His
relatively new wife, Abigail, and his brand new daughter Ginny are his driving
forces now and it suits him well. Dream on, Alex.
