Generations

"I remember how I used to enjoy taking your mother clothes shopping when she was your age," I said to my 17-year-old granddaughter, Corrin. "Everything looked perfect on her." We were browsing in a store and Corrin found several things she liked and put them in the cart. Earlier, we had decided to get out of the house and asked if she wanted to go. She is recuperating from some surgical procedures and, like most young people, can't be held back long.

"Yes," she said, "but I will drive, and you and Pa Pa can go with me!" Our first stop was to pick up her final paycheck from a summer life-guard job. My, how time flies. It seems only yesterday we were carting her 4-year-old self and big brother and little sister around in the back seat of our car. We baby-sat them while their mother worked, and I can still hear her piping up from the backseat, "Pa Pa, if you expect me to keep riding with you, you're going to have to get a new car!"

Now her brother is away at college. Although Corrin seemed to be splurging on herself, she stopped at a men's clothing store on the way home and came out with a gift-wrapped package for his 20th birthday next week.

We had lunched at her favorite steak and shake place where I was looking forward to the tempting ice cream treat in tall, fluted, old-fashioned soda-shop glasses. "Why are our shakes in styrofoam cups?" I asked the waitress when she brought them. She said they had been so busy they had run out of clean glasses! They were good, but not quite the same!

Her younger sister Rachel is now the taller sister, with long, straight, shiny blonde hair, contrasting with Corrin's long, straight, shiny dark hair. Rachel comes in each day worn out from after-school cross-country running. Yesterday their route took them up a mountain, and Rachel reported, "My friend almost stepped on a snake! It reared up and snapped at her!"

Nothing is quite the same, with these middle grandchildren of mine growing up! They date, drive, get jobs and college brochures, and I am thankful for the few moments they squeeze out for us, seemingly listening intently to Pa Pa's stories and my reminiscing until their attention darts elsewhere in their busy lives.

Our shopping trip not only reminded me of clothes buying with their mom at that age, it also reminded me of myself as a teen, standing in front of a store dressing room mirror in awe that everything I tried on was perfect. The years have gone by, and though not everything has been perfect, sometimes I think it is pretty close to it!