Sweet Distractions

     This is not the column I intended to submit. It was supposed to be about cursive writing. Granted, first you would have had to get over the irony of me typing a column about the benefits of cursive writing, but after that I think it would have been an interesting topic. Y’all, I had research and everything. Then life happened.

     I was asked to watch my granddaughter Olivia and thought, “Olivia entertains herself. I can type while she plays.”  Ha!

     Whenever the two baby strollers Olivia insisted on using got stuck, she screamed. An ear-splitting, bolting from my chair, is there blood? sound I didn’t think possible from the sweet looking one-year-old who wore an “I love my papa” shirt. As soon as I helped her, she would smile and continue on her way until another bump in her road. Smile. Shriek. Smile. Screech.

     I longingly looked at my chair by the fireplace and thought, “Only a couple of hours ago, I sat there to read, pray and write in my journal while I sipped a cup of hot coffee. It seems so long ago.”

     When Olivia rubbed her eyes, I rocked her to the nap that took mere seconds for her to find and gently placed her down where she slept for almost an hour. When she stirred I ran to pick her up and rocked her for almost another hour during which I may or may not have dozed off.

     The next day I was asked to watch my other granddaughter Adeline and bring her to get a flu shot. “I can type while she plays,” I naively thought for the second consecutive day.

     I spent the morning reassuring Adeline that yes, I would bring her to her sitter, and yes, she would see her sitter soon. In the meantime, she abandoned her fruit to eat my yogurt, placed strips of scotch tape all over the house like it was her job, and didn’t stop talking.

     “I go outside,” she said.

     “I’m trying to write a column.”

     “I go outside,” she repeated, so we went outside to water plants and write with chalk on the patio.

     “That’s okay,” I thought. “I will still have time after her flu shot to read through the research on cursive writing and complete the column.”

     As soon as I dropped Adeline off at her beloved sitter, I sat at my desk and heard a key in the lock of the front door. Victoria, my college sophomore, had come home for a visit.

     “We can go to lunch as soon as I finish my column.” I offered.

     “I’ll go to the gym while you do that,” she said.

     “Trying to make me feel guilty about not going to the gym since last week?”

     “Not at all,” she said. “I just hate the sound of you typing.”

     Another point in favor of cursive writing - it’s quiet.

Ronny may be reached at rmichel@rtconline.com.