Sixteen and eight

"Sons are indeed a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward." — Psalm 127:3

Two of my grandchildren have a birthday today and there are eight years between them.

Emma is sixteen. Caleb is eight. Same date, eight years apart, and every year since the second one arrived I have sat down on the fourteenth of September and thought about the two of them at once, because the calendar makes me.

Emma will get her license this fall. Becca told me on the phone that she has had her permit since spring and drives better than her mother, which Becca said in the tone of a woman who has been in the passenger seat and has opinions. Sixteen is the year a child starts leaving. Not all at once and not unkindly. But the car is the beginning of it. After the car she can go where she wants without asking anybody to take her, and that is exactly what we raise them for, and it is still a door closing somewhere behind her while she is looking at the one in front.

Caleb is eight. Eight is not leaving. Eight is still arriving. Eight is the age where a child is still assembling the world out of whatever pieces the adults hand him, and he does not get to choose the pieces, and he does not know yet that he did not choose them.

I do not know Caleb well. I want to say that plainly because it is true and because pretending otherwise would be a kind of lying. He lives in Richmond with my daughter Hannah. I see him a few times a year. I know his birthday and I know what he looks like and I know the sound of him in the background when Hannah and I talk, and past that I know what I have been told and what I have guessed.

So on this one day a year I have a granddaughter walking out of childhood at speed and a grandson still walking into it, and I hold them both, and the holding is not the same shape.

For Emma I pray go. Go on. Take the car and the years and the whole thing, and come back at Christmas, and do not feel bad about how fast it is.

For Caleb I pray something I have trouble putting a word to. It is closer to stay. Not stay small. Stay reachable. Stay where somebody can get to you.

The psalm calls them a heritage and a reward, and it does not say a heritage you get to keep or a reward you get to hold onto.

Sixteen and eight. Same day. I will call Becca tonight and I will call Hannah and see if she answers.

Lord, one of them going and one of them coming. Be with them both today.