Physical Intelligence - Day 84

While my daughter had a great idea to celebrate both her son's birthdays on the same day, since their birthdays fall just days apart, there were a couple of things on my mind.  The first was realizing that parties and functions are still events that I not that physically intelligent about and that includes not being that heads-up about food and drink combination.  I do know (after-the-fact) that drinking a vanilla flavoured yogurt and then choosing a fizzy mandarin orange drink are not drinks that go together - for the simple reason I would never combine them in practice, yet unwittingly I can mix both drinks in my own stomach.  Perhaps the alkaline balances out the acidic drink, but that is a stretch, clearly these drinks are not compatible.

The second thing is my grand-sons, especially my 1 year old grandson rather than the 4 year old one.  He has reached a stage in his life where he is now curious in his motions, and I am at a place where I can keep up with his movement.  This is a perfect combo, I can follow him around all day and that following can be physically challenging.  In other words, he is at an age where I can see he wants to have more independence to move and I am happy to chaperone him.  The only problem is that my in-laws have decided to take him to visit some of their relatives in India, for an entire month.

To me, it is a really unsound idea, to take a 1 year old child to central India at the hottest time of the year, for an entire month and knowing that he is very selective regarding who he wants to be around.  He will only go to certain people and is anxious in the company of strangers - in short, he already is exhibiting highly introvert qualities.  Having him away for a month is a bummer to start with because he has grown up to be a spitting image of his mother, and so I love the fact that he reminds me so much of how she looked when she was one.  Moreoever at the very time  I would welcome the challenge of chasing him around the home, he will be far away for weeks on end.  That is something I think of as a double whammy.

Now it is not a case of treating my grandson as a piece of  physical gymnasium equipment, I like being with him and not because it aids in my exercise and not something like this video :

Rather than expect my grandson to copy my movement, I am quite happy keeping up with his movements and change my movement in tandem and shifts of where he chooses. This evening he was doing acrobatics with his toy box and then decided to crawl rather than walk to another part of the house.  Some members of my family consider it unbecoming to give allow my grandson to engage what he wants to engage.  For me, being at his level does reveal the world he see's at his eye-level and that had already alerted me to one potentially choking hazards in my daughters home.  My own mother has certain mores about how a man should behave in public and as an adult, she reads the book on his imposed personal branding to me on a weekly basis - and for me the freedom to play with my grandson is among my greatest freedoms.

So I take the social criticism on the chin, just as I do those who expect me to engage in social rituals that they ascribe to, rather than entertaining sufficient curiousity to exist directly in the world my grandson see's on a daily basis and allowing me to appreciate this mode of discovery. Especially today, when my daughter had invited several families and close friends to share in both my grand-children's birthday.  As usual I did not enjoy the conventionality that is associated with social ritual, but I did enjoy those moments in the day when I got to be with my youngest grandson and not care that as a social & family related function, I should keep up an appearance of a grandfather who is inhibited by social expectations.  That is not my way of life, my way of life is to enjoy time with my grand-children, in exactly the same way I enjoyed my life with my older children.  It is then quite ironic that even my daughter has developed some social rules around her own son - and she is willing to deny herself in order to conform to social expectations.  I am not - and I am not getting any younger now - and I will miss my grandson for the several weeks he is visiting a house of my in-laws in India.

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