“Hi, Cool Papa, It’s me, Imani.”
When my granddaughter was about 4 years old, and her mother put her on the phone to speak to me, she would always announce herself in that way. I never thought of the announcement as unnecessary, despite the fact that I had called to hear my grandchildren’s voices, and Imani was effusive, where Xavion, her brother, was more reserved. If Imani knew that I was on the phone with her mother, she would bounce around in the background of our conversation, demanding to say and be heard about — something.
I spent some extended time with my two grandbeauties in late July and early August. When the time for my leaving was getting close, Imani — now 7 — sat at my feet and worked on sheets of newsprint that she had cut into 4 1/2” by 6” rectangles. Before I left, she presented me with a 14 page, hand-bound and handwritten book, “My Cool Papa, by Imani Crosby.”
When my grandson was younger than his current 11 years, his mother tried to get me to establish a pen-pal relationship with him. I’m not sure of the process by which that plan fell apart, but that my letters never got into the mail. My youngest daughter, after I had moved away from her to St. Louis, had wanted to be my pen pal too, but once again, I did not do my part. These failures were partly the impetus to my purchasing and addressing note cards and envelopes that I recently sent to Imani. I wrote a note to her and told her that if she wrote to me, I would write back.
“Imani got up early,” her mother said, “to mail her letter to you.” Imani does not do “early,” so I marveled at the effort and sacrifice that had gone into the note I received. “Then, she told me to call you and tell you to look for it, since you had called to tell me to look for her package.” Lisa told her to stand down, since the mail does not fly from their New Jersey address to my Indiana one in a day.
I sent Imani five brightly colored note cards with matching envelopes; she chose the rose-colored set as her first to send to me. She wrote to thank me for the note, and to tell me that she “(LOVES) ME SO MUCH!!!” Her card was adorned with hearts, peace signs and caricatures of herself. My more reserved response was to send her a picture of a red-bellied woodpecker on my old bird feeder, and tell her about the squirrel that chewed through the rope and sent the feeder crashing to the ground. I told her that I would send her a picture of the new feeder.
As I write this, my granddaughter has not received my return note (mailed at the same time as a note to her brother). I imagine her picking note paper as carefully as she picks her clothes, selecting her writing tools, and crafting a missive for me. On each visit to see her and her brother, I leave with notes from her. I once found a note in my suitcase, concealed there for me to discover at home. (I have named these surprise discoveries “love bombs.” My youngest daughter was especially adept at leaving these for me.) I asked my daughter if my habit of writing in all caps would be a problem for her children; she said it would not, and Imani wrote to me in upper/lower case, with all caps for emphasis.
Every scratch on that paper proclaimed as loudly as a call: “It’s me, Imani.”