By James T. Carney
I’m in love with my one-year-old granddaughter. She is known as Squiggles—aka Francesca, an Italian name that I disregard along with all other names from nationality groups beginning with “I.”
Now, I want to set the record straight. I hate children. The best that can be said for them is that they are adults in training, although I would prefer that they be sent away to boot camp for some twenty years to get trained before I have to deal with them.
Someone once told me there is some good to everyone (a proposition I disagree with) and offered in proof of this that “Hitler loved small children.” I replied, “You just proved my point.” (His alleged love obviously did not extend to Jewish or Slavic children.) Actually, I regarded my own children as the government of South Vietnam, “SOBs but our SOBs.”
The best thing that happened to me in terms of my own kids was moving from the Law Department at United States Steel to Benefits Administration, where I was working with 60 individuals. I started to regard my own kids as employees—they weren’t images of me (God forbid), but they were people who had their own identity—both strengths and weaknesses—and whom I had to help to make the best of their abilities. They could not, as a practical matter, be fired, and murder had unfortunate consequences, so I lived with them.
My daughter-in-law (Nina) noted that when we learned that my first grandchild would be a boy (James Theodore Carney III), I said “Thank God. I wouldn’t know how to deal with a girl.” Ironically, my wife, Donna, relates much better to Teddy than I do, although I am sure this will change in time as he learns to love my great-grandfather’s log cabin in the Adirondacks.
I obviously have a pro-boy prejudice, and my own two children were boys. How then do we account for my love affair with Squiggles, who is definitely not a boy? Well, Sherman once explained his relationship with Grant this way: “Grant saved me when I was mad and I saved him when he was drunk.” Squiggles and I both fall on the Grant side of the equation since we both love beer.
Well, for whatever reason, Squiggles decided that I was her favorite person and wanted me to pick her up as soon as I came into the room, which I learned to do. Of course, I began to call “Squeagles” as soon as I saw her and raised my arms out to her and she would run into them. The fact that she would scream whenever I left endeared her to me.
Of course, Donna would complain that Squiggles spends most of her time screaming and I should not attach any significance to her screaming when I left. “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own house and in his own country.” It has gotten so that Squiggles does not want even her parents to hold her when I am around. So, since she loves me, I love her.
Mo will not totally credit the above account since he knows that I am a Machiavellian at heart. From that perspective, I see Squiggles as running third in a three-person race. Her brother, as a first grandchild and a boy, is running way ahead of her. Running second is Dominica, who is named after her “I” grandfather and is the first grandchild from Nina’s sister as well as the first girl in the family. They will both be Carpicos (Nina’s family name). Squiggles is the person to be co-opted to be a Carney. (Indeed, nicknaming her Squiggles is obviously an attempt to control and incorporate her away from the you-know-whats.)
I am setting a pattern of having her stay over with us every Friday night. I may be outnumbered, but I will never be outfought.
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Copyright © 2013 by James T. Carney
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