To the Kind Grandmother, Thanks for the Umbrella

Dear Caring Grandmother, 

I am quite sure that you are still praying for us since you left us in the rain with your umbrella. I don’t know why I feel the need to explain how I wound up fast walking through a rainstorm with a 3 and 4 year old on each hip, but I just know that you find me insane and want to defend myself. 

You see, I felt myself reaching a level of insanity after lunch today and when I was asked from the millionth time, “can I play a video game?” I shut my laptop and said, “that’s it we are going to the park.” After a good thirty minutes of picking out the perfect park outfits, cleaning spaghetti sauce off their faces and begging my three year old to please try to go potty, we were out the door. I got so involved in conversations about what slides they would slide down and what swings they liked best that I, unfortunately, failed to notice the dark storm cloud over our heads until we were half way down our street. At that point I did say, “oh, no we need to turn around and get in the car to go to the park incase it rains.” But my rational minded response was met by a four year old who insisted that walking was the best part of going to the park. How do you argue with that?

I did begin to pray a bit when the sprinkles of rain started hitting the sidewalk in front of us and the cars driving by had their wipers going. I did think for a moment that we should turn back, but then my girls laughed while holding hands in front of me - they needed this. They needed mommy to get away from the computer, to put work on the back burner and go out for an adventure. We probably shouldn’t have stopped to count the turtles in the drainage ditch, but there were more than we had ever seen before and just as we were counting the tenth one I saw the wall of rain coming our way. 

If you knew my three year old you would know that she has two speeds, run as fast as her little legs will let her or slow old grandmother (no offense) and it should be no shock to you because I think you’ve been in my shoes before that that child was in little old grandmother mode even as her hair become drenched in rain. So, I swooped her up onto my right hip then I thought, “I could go even faster if I carried Bekah, too.”  And that is when I went from a cute mom of two preschoolers to a hot mess running down the side of the road in the rain with a child on each hip. So, I know absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt why you pulled over and said “get in, I have carseats.” This is where a shake my head thinking back and wonder, “was I being stupid or smart?” refusing a ride from a grandmotherly type in a sedan. 

You see, there are two reasons why I said, “oh we are okay, we are almost there.” First, and oh I hate to admit this, but it’s true - I do not ask for help. I completely and totally suck at asking or accepting help from others. I have been told that it’s the curse of being a single parent for so long, but in a case like this I think “it’s not a big deal we will run up here under the edge of the clubhouse and be fine.” And that is exactly what I thought, there was no thunder, no hail, so we got a little wet - the three year old thought it was completely awesome. 

Secondly, and I blame Lifetime Television, the news and my mother (equally), I am not about to put my children in the car with anyone I don’t know, sorry. You looked kind, your car looked nice and clean, but really you could have been a crazy baby snatcher. Sorry. 

So I said, “thank you, but no thank you” and we made it safely to the covering of our neighborhood club house just steps away from the park and the end of our journey. As I was ringing out the girls shirts and pushing the wet hair off of their faces I heard a horn honk and Bekah sigh, “there is that Lady that you said no to.” That is when I knew you were most definitely a grandmother, when you yelled, “I have an umbrella, please take it.” As you place the umbrella in my hand I asked, “how do I return it to you?” Now, I know your response was something like, “God will provide” or hmmmm…I really can’t remember, I just felt in that moment that you were praying for the well being of my children and I blanked. I did say thank you multiple times and waived off another car that pulled up behind you. There was a run on caring people trying to help the insane woman out of the rain (that lasted less than 3 minutes). I didn’t mean that to sound snarky, sorry. 

I do thank you, thank you for showing your heart. Thank you for your prayers. Thank you for taking time out for drive to help us. And thank you for leaving us with your cute umbrella. 

We continued over to the park and the girls slid down wet slides and swung on dripping swings, but they had the best afternoon. They needed that time, they needed that adventure out side of the walls of our house and the small rain storm made it even more exciting. I needed the reminder that people are kind and caring still even when I don’t know when to get out of the rain.