Dylan

He was my first grandchild.  My first grandbaby to hold and to love unconditionally.  He made me a grandma and I thank him for that.  He was adorable from the get-go, with huge eyes and curly brown hair. He stayed with me while his mom took evening classes at the local junior college.   

The first thing he did when he got to my house was to take his shoes off.  It was hard to get him to put them back on, too, when it was time to go home.  He would scream and bang his head on the floor.  I watched in amazement as his mother asked him which shoe he would like to put on first.  The decision to put on his shoes was made for him, but he got to decide which one first….and it calmed him down.   

As he got older, he loved to watch videos.  First it was “Bahhrey” (Barney) and then it was Disney movies.  I remember the evening he asked me if he could watch “Reck U was” and I didn’t understand what he was saying.  I asked him to repeat it and I still didn’t understand.  Frustrated, he took me by the hand, down the hall, to the bookcase where the movies were kept.  He grabbed the video and showed it to me:  “oh, you want to watch “The Rescuers”?  With a smile and a big sigh of relief, he replied “yes!”  

  

As he got still older, he loved to play with Legos.  By this time, his family had moved three hours away, and our visits were limited to a few times a year.  He would spend the weekend with me, never wanting to go anywhere, and just play with Legos.  When he was six or seven, one of the Jurassic Park movies came out on video.  As I sat next to him, he warned me when the movie was going to be scary, so I could hide my eyes.  “You can look now, Grandma” told me that it was safe to look again…. 

As he got even older, his passion became video games.  He would sit for hours and hours and play them, when he was with me.

I always let him stay up as late as he wanted since he only came to visit on weekends.  I didn’t make him shower, either, unless he got really dirty.  His favorite breakfast became Lucky Charms  and root beer, which I always  had on hand for his visits.  His local cousins would come to see him and the older one would always want to stay the night.  Of course, I said yes and prepared myself for a night full of giggles and other strange boy noises.   

And then he finished high school and tried junior college.  He felt lost and didn’t know what he wanted to study.  He was/is very interested in philosophy, but that won’t pay the rent.  And so, he enlisted in the USAF.  After basic training, he was sent to Germany.   

That was nearly two years ago and I miss him every day. Oh how I would love to have another weekend of Legos, Lucky Charms and root beer.  Miss you, Dylan!