Visit from the Surrogate Grandson

He has permed his hair,
he is wearing a white top
with a cable pattern
and two gold rings
(one his mother’s,
who doesn’t know
he’s got it; ‘Take
very good care of it,’ I say,
‘There’ll be hell to pay
if anything happens to that’)
and he is smiling
because it’s so long
since we saw each other
and now we are....

I was about to crack,
to ring him up and say,
‘Isn’t there a bus?’
it being now too far i.e. too long
to drive over and fetch him,
leaving Andrew alone, still weak
from the recent illness,
and no-one else who could stay—
but he beat me to it,
phoned this morning
excited with details
of bus timetables, saying,
‘Can I come over today?’
and yes, we were free!

Oh, we just did
the normal things, you know,
like bringing him with us
to Andrew’s check-up
where we sat in the waiting room
and waited, with time
for all the news
of each other‘s lives,
and when we were through
we drove down to Subway,
left Andrew in the car
while we went to choose,
and he chose Chicken
Teriyaki, so I did too.

Back home, I made him
strong coffee the way he likes,
and he played us his new DVD
of Tina Arena looking weird
in an awful dress, but sounding
surprisingly jazzy,
so I liked her after all
which made him glad
and me too; I even decided
to get some of her tracks
on my iTunes, which I never
would have thought of
before, when I didn’t
think I liked the way she sang.

We played around
on the MacBook Pro
where I showed him
Mickie’s new photos
on facebook, sliding
down a sandhill, looking
happier than I’ve ever seen her,
and a photo of her new man
who, we agreed, looks
very gorgeous, and
I told him how the rest
of the old mob are going,
and then showed him pics
of the new mob here in town.

The time went fast
of course, and too soon
I had to get him back
to the bus; we were just
heading out the door
when Andrew said, ‘Hey, wait!’
and gave him a huge hug
and to me an admonition
about meridian tapping
which indeed I did show him
at the bus stop hastily
(he wasn’t even embarrassed)
before it lumbered along
and he kissed me and went.


8 Days of Happiness: 2  / Six Sentences