Love That Kate

I spent Sunday and Monday at my daughter's house in Santa Barbara. She and three girlfriends went to Palm Springs for three nights and I was "engaged" to help her husband with the kids. Monday he went to work early in the morning and I had the whole day to take care of the young ones.
I would have moments when time stood still and I would imagine what it was like when I was 22 and had babies of my own. I had my children much earlier than my daughter did. My son had curly hair and white skin like my granddaughter Kate and my daughter was persistent and inquisitive like my grandson Rhett.
However I had many distractions at 22, mainly hormonal escapades and longings. I was a sucker for men. They caused a lot of problems for me because I let them.
My daughter is going through raising babies at the age of 42 with a reliable, employed husband. There is a big difference!
I used to sit on my patio in Laguna Beach and watch the traffic go by. I was interested in the boys who had hitchhiked to California from other parts of the country and they all used drugs. There was Zeus and Milo and Don and Fred...a very long list. I hadn't met people like that before and they would play flutes and guitars and smoke weed. Some of them would take to the kids and that would be nice until my duties as a mother would interfere and I couldn't be quite as free as the others. I try to imagine now being a young mother then with an old heart. I try to imagine wearing cut-off jeans and throwing my long hair around and lying in the sun and having babies too. Being around my grandchildren definitely makes me remember; yet I can't remember.
Being able to see then what I see now. But alas! It doesn't work that way.
It is a different world and now the kids are the main focus in my daughter's world...I fed them, washed them, read them stories, watched movies, put them down for naps, changed diapers, cleaned up endlessly and took them to the park. Each child had a conveyance: Rhett had his bike with training wheels and Kate had her "plasma car." They each wore a helmet. They were way ahead of me and I had to stay ever vigilant.
When we got to the park there was a birthday party in progress: about 8 little girls and a couple boys. Rhett is very interested in girls already.
I wish people could skip the big hormone surge but there wouldn't be any more people if that were the case. (Maybe that wouldn't be so bad.)
My daughter returned rested and happy from her vacation and had to jump right back in. And I came home; driving down the coast for the beauty of it all.