Ben is twenty

"Grandchildren are the crown of the aged, and the glory of children is their parents." — Proverbs 17:6

My grandson Ben is twenty years old today, and I am spending the first part of it in my booth at the diner on Main Street, by the front window, the way I spend most Tuesday mornings.

Linda had the mug on the table before my coat was off, the heavy white kind that keeps coffee hot longer than it has any right to. Eggs and toast. The street outside is gray and wet and the post office flag is hanging straight down for lack of wind.

Ben is my daughter Becca's boy, the middle one, between two sisters. I mailed his card last Thursday from that post office across the street, so I have spent this breakfast looking at the place where I sent it. I wrote more in it than he will read. That is a grandmother's privilege, and I take it.

He was born on a Friday in November, and Earl drove us down to Roanoke that evening after he closed up at the feed store. At the hospital Earl held him the way he held anything new, carefully and a little too long, and then he handed him back to Becca and said, "Well, he's got the Hayes ears." That was not true then and it is not true now. Earl said it anyway, and Becca laughed, and I have kept that laugh for twenty years.

When I was twenty I was at Ferrum with Ellen, writing my mother a letter every Sunday and believing I knew a great deal. I did know some things. I did not know that the things I knew would turn out to be the small part. I would not tell Ben that. A boy of twenty has to find out the size of things on his own, and the finding is part of the gift.

He has a class this morning, so I will call at noon. His uncle Dan has promised to call him today and actually talk, which I made him promise, and Dan keeps his promises.

The proverb says grandchildren are the crown of the aged. I have never once felt like a woman wearing a crown. But I know what the proverb means, sitting here in a booth on a gray morning with a cold piece of toast, thinking about a boy at college who is probably still asleep. It means he is mine and I am his and neither of us earned it. It means there is a weight on my head I would not take off for anything.

Lord, the boy is twenty today. Keep him in the places I cannot reach.