My youngest granddaughter and I were preparing to leave my neighbor’s house after dropping off a “Thank You” card. Myah had signed the card for Barbara, who had given her a book. As we prepared to leave, Myah turned to Barbara — she calls her “Mimi — and said, “I love you.” She hugged Mimi and I sniffled as Myah and I crossed the grass that separated the two homes, heading back to my door.
Myah had spent the night and the next day with “Clop,” her grandfather. There were late-night shenanigans as we made a FaceTime call to her cousin, my first granddaughter. (My eldest child called me onto the carpet for calling Imani at 12:22 a.m. on a school night. I got my revenge by noting that she had worn the shoes that I had sent to Imani — shoes designed by the artist, Shaunt’e Lewis — without telling her daughter.) The next day, Myah and I played games and painted. She asked me if the paints that I had chosen for her were watercolors; I assured her that tempera paints can be used with water. As she bent to execute her next iteration of Edward Scissorhands — don’t ask — she murmured “I love you.” Myah does that.
When Myah wants to spend time on my iPad, I negotiate with her: We read two books first. She chooses from the bookshelf I’ve stocked for her and when she has read “Hop On Pop” by Dr. Seuss, and “Baby Bird,” she cues up YouTube Kids and asks me to watch with her. As we quietly watch people animate puppets and dolls, Myah will whisper, “I love you.” When I told Myah’s mother about her propensity for dropping the love bomb, she told me, “Yes; and it doesn’t have to be about anything. It just pops out.”
In “I Love You Too, Man” (The Weekly View, December 15, 2016) I wrote of my family’s reticence about demonstrating emotion, and my decision to change that with my siblings. In a call to one of my brothers, I told him, “We didn’t grow up hugging and saying that we loved each other.” I made a commitment to him and my other siblings that, “When … I think ‘I love you,’ I’m going to say it.” In the last nine years of his life, he suffered gladly the fool who told him that he was loved. And the last two of my siblings hear it from me on every contact. But my three grandchildren are the greatest recipients of the expression, and my youngest, because of her closer proximity to me, gets exposed to the bulk of my declarations of love.
Myah will murmur “I love you” to me many times during each day that we spend together. I will respond in kind and tell her that I love it when she says that to me. I have notes from my first two grandchildren, who are 18 and 14 years old now, and most of them are signed, “I love you.” I’d like to believe that I have had some influence on their expressions of love, for I have not been shy about saying it to them. And their 4-year-old cousin has added hugging to the emotional mix. She will raise her arms to me, saying “Huggie?” and I will pick her up and we will hug, while she whispers to me, “I love you.”
On February 14th, many people will celebrate Valentine’s Day, the origin of which is shrouded in mystery, but the tradition of which is clear: Tell someone that they are loved.
And Myah tells me that.
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