Ralph and I just spent almost a week in New Orleans together babysitting while my daughter and son-in-law were away. With the change of scenery came a change of perspective.

Here on the farm, life plods along. We get up in the morning and drink our first cups of coffee together and then we go about our days.  I have various deadlines, meetings, and activities at home and around town that keep me active so I’m not necessarily paying attention to how Ralph is filling or not filling his time. Of course I check with him regularly to make sure he is following his life list and of course he calls me repeatedly—whether over the phone or in person from the bedroom to the kitchen or over the phone from the bedroom to the kitchen—to ask whatever question has lodged in his brain for the day. And yes I am increasingly involved in getting him to do small activities (Did you take a shower? is one of my favorite nags and is about to go on the life list) and driving him to doctor appointments. But I don’t yet have to think about him minute to minute.

In New Orleans, we were much more in each other’s faces. While BabyRalph was in pre-pre-school, Ralph and I were alone in a house with an open floor plan where neither of us had space to escape to. Ralph wasn’t tucked away in an office or the bedroom. Ralph actually found the stairs to the bedroom too steep to climb more than absolutely necessary, a fact I have to note as I look for a house for us. He was either on the living room couch “reading” (mostly with his eyes closed) or on the back porch smoking. I was sitting in the kitchen trying to concentrate at my computer as he asked me repeated questions when he wasn’t sleeping.

And then there was the smoking. At home, although it drives me crazy that I can’t sit on my front porch anymore, I can almost ignore his smoking. In New Orleans I was responsible for a two-year-old who cried to be with his Bop. If I said, “Bop is outside,” BabyRalph said, “I want to go outside with Bop.” Of course I couldn’t let him outside with Ralph, or to play in his own backyard where the smoke from Ralph’s cigarettes hung paralyzed in the damp heat.  And each time Ralph came back inside, he had to, or at least had to be nagged to de-cigaretize (i.e., wash his hands, etc.,) before he could be around BabyRalph.

And he did love to be around BabyRalph. In the late afternoon for a few hours, Ralph and BabyRalph were inseparable. While they played, and that is what they did-play—I was free to clean up the house and get dinner ready. Ralph was fully engaged with BabyRalph in a way his own children never experienced him.  Of course, we are all more playful and relaxed with our grandchildren than we were with our kids. But there is definitely added-value in Ralph and BabyRalph’s case. Ralph was energized by BabyRalph because they share sense of presentness. BabyRalph has very little past to remember, while Ralph has very little memory of a lot of past.  And neither thinks about the future.

But I do. And what I have realized is that the biggest reason to move to New Orleans is not that we need to downsize or get and give family support but that Ralph needs to interact regularly with BabyRalph, oops now ToddlerRalph, as much as possible because those interactions bring him to life in a way nothing else does.