My granddaughter, Maddy, is now thirteen years old, but the changes I’m going to talk about have been coming on for some time.

We used to go to Target to spend hours in the Barbie section.  She was very selective, but I always tried to talk her out of the more expensive dolls.  Sometimes I prevailed; sometimes she did.  Okay, I admit more often she did.

It was kind of crazy because the minute she got home – no, no, the minute she got in the car she ripped the package open and started stripping off the clothes.

When she got home, she took the hair down and rearranged it to some other style.  She added her own makeup, which consisted of various-colored markers, pens, and fingernail polish.

Barbie was transformed within minutes and then put into various tableaus or scenarios – some of which were questionable. Maddy was so involved, yet oblivious.  Her mother recorded some of the scenarios on camera.

The great thing is, though, she really, really played with them.  In other stories I’ve mentioned how I tried to get rid of some Barbies, and I exaggerated by saying she must have had a thousand of them, but I might have been close.

Somehow, I never could get away with dumping Barbies; that is until she started wanting:

Mascara

Contouring powder?

Eye shadows

Foundations

More mascara

Now, she doesn’t wear any of that to school.  It’s for rehearsing  in the evenings along with hair changes involving:

Rubber bands

Straightening

Curling

Gels

Sprays

For a recent family event, she braided her hair the night before, and when she took out the rubber bands and let it hang loose, it was a beautiful cascade of waves.

She still asks me to “tickle her arms” to help her sleep and massage her feet, and she stays pretty sweet to me,  giving her mother the worse times.

But we understand she must rebel; she must strike out on her own.

She spends way too much time on her phone, but she’s also in her school choir, and I can tell she loves the music by her performance.

This year she made the Madrigals, the highest singing group, after having tried out for the one-step-lower group. I’ve rarely seen her so excited.

She’s a terrific volleyball player, too, and way beyond her age in her skills.  Poetry in motion.

I know what you’re saying; I’m required, as her grandmother, to worship her every achievement, and I’m living up to that requirement.

When she was born, I thought she was the most beautiful child I’d ever seen.

I thank God she got to meet my parents, if only for a brief time.  When we took her to the assisted living place where they lived, my mother was practically speechless with love and adoration.  “Oh, I’ve never seen a face like that!”  And my father, “They say she looks like me,” said with such pride.

Like a lot of very young children, I believe they are still on the bridge of life; children are crossing to their new bodies and life, while the old ones are crossing past them on the same bridge to another life.

After my mother died, Maddy often said she had spoken to her or seen her, or remembered things my mother had done —- “Yeah, I know.  Grandma Godi told me that.”

Of course, small children have vivid imaginations, too.  When my future son-in-law told us about the farm in Massachusetts where he grew up, she said, “I had a farm once.” 

I’d like to think she was channeling Isak Dinesen, who started off her novel ”Out of Africa” with the line: “I had a farm in Africa.”

Who knows.  Maybe she did have a farm.  

Whoever she is, I love her immeasurably.  I look back with nostalgia when she was a baby, to a toddler, to a kindergartner, to a middle-schooler, but in truth I love each stage and can’t wait for the next one. 

I’ve discovered that she’s very bright and deeper than one might think at first. I’ve eavesdropped on her conversations with her best friend, Elliott.  (They knew I was listening.)

I know she’s growing away from childhood, and I’m aware of her faults, but she’ll never stop being my granddaughter, and that’s a gift that will keep on giving.

The End