My Daily, Breathless, Update

She arrives home by bus from school just after four in the afternoon every day. The telephone will ring any time from ten after four until quarter to five, for my first briefing of the day. Yesterday her first question shot at me was whether I'd spoken with her mother. I had, I assured her, and knew her mother was fine. That it was an unfortunate accident, but not a serious one, simply a result of someone not paying due attention while driving and attempting to make an illegal lane change.

Her mother, sitting in her vehicle, just happened to be in the way. And was thus hit, side on, the rear door behind the driver's side crumpled somewhat, but the door was still functional, could still be closed and locked. He'll be charged by the police, fumed our granddaughter, and I agreed. We both agreed that it was very nice that another motorist had stopped to hand his business card to her mother, with the assurance he'd seen everything unfold, and offering himself as a witness.

Feeling the subject sufficiently aired to the point of exhaustion, she burbled the good news. Her books had arrived. Not those picked up at the post office on the week-end, the Anne of Green Gables and Emily books ordered through Amazon.com. They'd already enjoyed their brief period of fame and pre-enjoyment. These were the books she had herself ordered through the Scholastics catalogues that every elementary school distributes to their students.

Now, she said, she's broke, nothing left of the money we'd given her for books. We'd give her more, I assured her. And then she explained that she and her school pals had decided to go out for lunch together on Friday. We'd already explored the financial side of her mother's vehicle repair, that the insurance would completely cover it and a car rental, to her great relief. Had it been otherwise, she would have hesitated to ask her mother for lunch money.

We'd give her that, too, I said. Along with more money for books. Thank you, she responded. She doubted she'd order any more books, she said; she has more than enough. She's proud of her home library, likes to boast she has more books, more interesting books than her school library. Then she laughed, listening to herself, said she's just like me, claiming she'd not order anything more, but fully realizing she's been bit by the bug, and more books would be in the offing.

She called back after dinner to let me know her friend Leanne wouldn't be going out to lunch, after all, and that's a pity because, even though they wouldn't be paying for Leanne's lunch, they planned it to celebrate her birthday. For which she had already bought lip gloss and a Teddy Bear as a birthday gift. Lip gloss and a stuffed bear; just the ticket for eleven year-old girls, one tentative foot into the teen years, the other lagging in childhood.

Well, I suggested, offer to buy Leanne's lunch - thinking money was the problem. I obviously don't understand, said she, it's punishment being meted out by her exasperated parents for something Leanne shouldn't have done. And part of it wasn't her fault anyway, she said indignantly, it was her older brother, the one in grade eight, pointing the finger of malfeasance at his sister, their parents believing it, and disciplining her for it.

Postpone the lunch, I suggested, have it another day. It was going to be cold and blustery, likely freezing rain, or snow, anyway. Was I kidding? She and Sarah were looking forward to going out for lunch. "Going out" rather an elaboration on their relatively modest plans to visit the recently re-opened poutine stand on the main street of their little village. Poutine and onion rings; comfort food perhaps; not high on the health-and-nutrition scale as standard fare.

Throughout our conversations, there's a background of wild activity, as the family dogs clamber over and about her, clamouring to be noticed. The little ones under foot and annoying, the larger ones assertively nudging her, taking her wrist in their mouths to pull her into play. Which isn't so bad, she says. It's the gripping-to-sliming she objects to. She loves them all, but prefers to herself select the time when she will give them attention.

And oh, they had a math test today and she did pretty well in it. What a relief. Math tests, the bane of her school existence. She just doesn't "get it", she laments. Despite the times her mother has sat down with her. She will not ask for help at school. Her teacher will only yell at her, she claims. And her friends, for whom math isn't the huge puzzle it is for her will only give her the answers, not spend the time to instruct her on method. She doesn't want the answers. She wants to know how to arrive at them.

Our conversations are notoriously tangential, no single topic is worth spending all our time on, and we verge and diverge, speaking of many things. She on this occasion to speak of an item she had seen on television, about a funicular cog railway running up a mountainside and how utterly neat it was. Then other trains wending their way through long tunnels deep in the sides of mountains. I describe the cog railway on Mount Washington, tell her of the long, dark tunnels trains travel through in the Fraser Valley.

And always, forever and ever, before the conclusion of the conversation, will come the query: what's for dinner? She has an abiding, consuming interest in food. Her appetite for food and for talk of food is vast. She likes to hear all the details of exactly what will comprise our evening meal; whether salad or soup, what the main dish is, the dessert, then offers her approval or withholds it, depending on the meal content.

When she's with us for a few days I marvel at the bottomless pit of her appetite. Wonder where she finds room for it all on her tall, fairly spare newly-curving frame. But she does, and she relishes all she consumes, the touch, the fragrance, the taste and texture. She has her favourites, and will ask for them to be prepared for her, and it is with great pleasure I accede to her requests. The way to touch a grandmother's heart.

And how are our conversations concluded? "Guess I'll let you go now?" she queries. Yes indeed.