My daughter and grand daughter live on Long Island. Just far enough to be a trip I can't make as much as I want to. When the month has a long weekend I usually see them twice. Otherwise they visit for a few days each month and then go home. They visited this past weekend and went to the Skylands March for Babies with me yesterday. Today I have to bring them home. I look forward to the weekends they visit but taking them back is bittersweet.
Before I became a grandpa I heard other grand parents say: "The best thing about grand kids is that you can spoil them and send them home." Maybe I'm weird but for me it's just not the case. The time they visit goes way too fast and I feel like they go home way too soon.
Thanks to Facetime I really don't miss much but there's nothing like the feeling of waking up in the morning and having them right there. Some grand parents live far away from their grand kids and see them one or twice a year. I see Gracie more often so I feel I'm fortunate. Hopefully one day my daughter and her family will move closer.
Kids grow up and have their own lives. That's the way it's supposed to be. However, I can't help missing the days when my own kids were younger. Nothing brings that back like seeing my grand daughter.
Author Ruth Goode wrote this about grand kids a long time ago. I think it's perfect.
" Our grand children accept us for ourselves without rebuke or effort to change us-as no one in our entire lives has ever done-not our parents, siblings, spouses, friends and hardly ever our grown children."
Oh well, Memorial Day weekend is only 3 weeks away.