Be in the Moment

My five year old granddaughter spent last weekend with me.  I had been looking forward to the time together as a special treat, but I had no idea that I was about to receive a lesson in mindfulness.

Bean and I are generally together for four hours at a time two afternoons a week, but this would be our longest visit. After having dropped her off at home on Thursday evening, I then picked her up from preschool on Friday at 2:30 and would be keeping her with me until late Sunday night, when my daughter would reclaim her pajama-clad child and take her home to bed.

We’ve been doing sleepovers at Grandma’s since she was a toddler, so we already have a comfortable routine in place.  A nice long bath to slow down her activity level, a cuddle and a couple of chapters out of the book we’re currently reading, then a discussion about what we should have for breakfast (usually pancakes).  Finally I tuck her into bed with a heated rice pack and some favorite friends.  Taking my place in the chair beside her, I sit in the darkness and listen to soothing music with her until her breathing becomes slow and even. Even then I sometimes continue to sit beside her, enjoying the music and the quiet sounds of her regular breathing. Kismet sometimes joins us and her rhythmical doggy breaths join ours in harmony.

The next morning we make the breakfast we had planned the night before, and then there is usually a frantic search for shoes and socks and clothes when her parents arrive to whisk her back home, and I’m left standing in an empty house, wondering where the time went.

This weekend as we sat finishing our pancakes, we were reveling in the realization that we had a huge amount of time ahead of us, and we could do any number of things that we don’t usually have time for. How should we spend our time? Her mother, worried that we would run out of things to do, had given me a rather long list of suggestions, but I never had a chance to bring it out.  Bean choreographed the weekend quite nicely by herself.

Be Present with One Another

We started by sitting on the couch and reading five chapters of Charlotte’s Web all in a row.  Then we drove to Lighthouse Field with Kismet, who decided the parking lot was too busy and scary and refused to get out of the car. Instead of returning to the house, we decided instead to go for a walk by ourselves.  Bean immediately headed for the wonderful climbing trees that Lighthouse Field is known for, and spent the next hour and a half climbing up, climbing down, balancing on, and jumping from branches.  At one point, she simply sat on a horizontal trunk  and looked out toward the ocean.

In fact, without the need to rush gymnastics, or rush to get home, or drive through afternoon traffic to get to some other scheduled activity or a medical appointment as we often do on weekdays, I found her sitting peacefully several times this weekend, sometimes sharing a thought with me, other times simply smiling as she resumed her activity.

I had seen the same kind of meditative quietness at the beach earlier in the week.  We had gone with the specific intent of searching for Sea Glass, but once we had found a small cluster of gems, she began digging a hole in the sand.  That endeavor, in addition to fetching water from the surf to pour into the hole, kept her occupied for a large part of the afternoon.  This is a child who is often described as “super active.”  It is true that during the course of a typical day she moves quickly from one activity to another, almost as if she is trying to cram in as many interesting things as she can. But when given long stretches of unstructured time she often settles in on one pursuit and stays with it for hours.

Be Patient

On our way back from Lighthouse Field, Bean asked if we could stop at her house and pick up some clothes “and things.”  The “things” turned out to be an unopened Lego set that she had received for her birthday last month: a Frozen-themed Ice Palace.

Once back at my house she asked me for several plastic containers and began emptying the numbered bags of Lego parts into them.  She then embarked upon the construction of this incredibly detailed girlie Lego castle. (Here I refer you to a much earlier piece I wrote about gender-targeted toys; clearly we have abandoned the high moral ground and continue to allow them into our homes.)  “Grandma, will you help me do this?” And we were off!

We worked on that palace Saturday morning, Saturday afternoon, and again after dinner Saturday night.  Before breakfast on Sunday (Over Easy Eggs this time), we worked on it some more, then returned after breakfast and a short break for lunch with friends at the River Cafe.  There were some tense moments when Bean accidentally knocked the palace off the coffee table and the whole top level exploded into pieces on my hardwood floor.  She looked at me, stricken, and I kept a straight face.  “We can fix that,” I assured her, and we did.

Enjoy

Just moments before it was time to leave for an Oscar party on Sunday evening, we put the final touches on the palace, bringing in some kittens, bunnies, carrots, and ponies from the Lego Pony Barn in Bean’s playroom.  And for fifteen minutes of pure joy (mine), Bean gave voices to her characters, and Elsa and Ana rode horses and played with bunnies and kittens, using a script she had made up in her head. 

There were lots of other things we could have done together this weekend, and anyone who knows Bean and her “high activity level” would probably have assumed that’s what we were doing.  But we weren’t.  We were building an ice castle.  And sitting beside one another.  And talking.  And not talking. And thoroughly enjoying just being together and building something all the way through to the end.

Not the official 7 Pillars of Mindfulness, perhaps, but three rather important tenets just the same. Be in the moment.  Be present with one another.  Be patient.

And most of all, Enjoy.

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