This picture is not my granddaughter but it’s such a right picture. Introspective, sad but it’s passing… My guest blogger Gabrielle, my daughter, continues this week talking about the effect of grandma travelling. Is it grandma don’t cry or is it Missy don’t cry.

Recently we had the worst week of the year….(at least one of them lol)

– Missy (my granddaughter), has never cried to go to school, not even once. Recently at school, there was a boy; a new boy apparently who according to me came into our world and totally upset the balance and order that I’ve been trying to keep. Every day he would cry and wail and try to “break out of school”.

Since Grandma left, I would drop Missy off in the morning to see this new boy carrying on and pick her up in the evening to see him still screaming his head off and turning purple from his effort. Finally it caught up to us! The dreaded long weekend approached….(let me just say for you adults out there who love long weekends, we parents with toddlers have learned the hard way that one “day off” or rather for us “day out of routine” throws the rest of the week out of balance). To make matters worse I also had one extra day off this week to see the doctors.

So first day back to school after the long time with mummy around and here comes the screaming. For the first time in her 2 years of life my daughter says to me “mummy I don’t want to go to school”. This was followed promptly by tears and twists and the whole nine yards. What should I do? For the next 5 days we struggled and she cried in the classroom and she didn’t want to put her clothes on, and didn’t want to see her friends . And she didn’t want to play and she didn’t want to eat and she didn’t want to sleep.

Oh my, where was this coming from, and then add the sprinkles to the ice cream sundae, my daughter breaks down on the final day of school and tells me “everybody take away my things”. On my probing she goes further and says “I want my gogo, my gogo toooo far away mummy”. Tears on both sides. Finally  I find my footing to get home and reset my own self to hug and caress her, and to get online and run up another phone bill to get contact right away with her grandma.

Grandma don’t cry

I am thinking maybe I should be saying grandma don’t cry. She is all alone where she is and certainly we can’t hug and miss each other.

But today is Monday and after my reset and talking and hugging and loving and nurturing, we went to school this morning all dressed and smiling and she said “mummy I get to see my friends! My friends, mummy!” and all is well with the 2 year old world again.