October 9th, 2026
My grandson, Asher, is in most ways a typical five-year-old boy. He goes to kindergarten and he likes to come home and sing the songs that he learned in class. Actually, he sings the melodies, but he often changes the lyrics to suit his fancy. He plays with his copious supply of toys. He likes to draw and paint. Asher especially enjoys convincing me to engage in “stuffie talk”. Stuffie talk involves the spontaneous making up of stories for his plethora of stuffed animals. These stories are mostly Asher’s creation and they are wildly imaginative.
Asher has a favorite stuffie. It is an absurdly rotund blue seal that we bought at a Love’s travel center in August. his name is “Big Blue”. Asher insists that, when Big Blue is in the game, I use a special voice for him. You might ask, “So, what does a fat blue seal sound like when he talks?” I’m not sure, but I have apparently been subconsciously channeling the voice of a Saturday morning cartoon character from my youth. There was TV show called “Tennessee Tuxedo and his Tales” that I watched as a child. The main character was a wisecracking penguin named Tennessee Tuxedo. He had a dimwitted walrus sidekick named Chumley. My stuffie voice is similar to that of Chumley.
Asher has been beginning to learn how to play chess. When we visit his mama, we wind up entertaining ourselves with board games. When we visited last Saturday, Asher wanted to try chess again. He’s only played it twice, but he picks up on the rules and objectives quickly. He likes to play defense. On Saturday he barricaded his king with other pieces to protect him. After I set up the pieces on the board but before we started playing, Asher looked me in the eye and said,
“Grandpa, I’m just learning this game! Don’t play me hard!”
His mother laughed and said, “Don’t play me hard?”
My wife exhorted me to refrain from being over-competitive. She told Asher that she would kick me under the table if I played too hard.
I let Asher take my queen with one of his pawns.
Sometimes, Asher is surprisingly mature. He has an old soul. There are a few children who act older that they are physically. Asher is one of them. He can shock me with some of the things he says.
Last night, he crawled into bed with me. He always asks me for my left arm to use as a pillow. Then he wants a few minutes of stuffie talk with Big Blue. We did that, and then I told him we needed to go to sleep. Asher got quiet and I settled down to doze off. Then out of the darkness, he spoke to me,
“Grandpa, are you going to be my legal guardian until I am an adult?”
I was awake again. I told him,
“Yeah, probably. I will be here to take care of you.”
Asher went to sleep. I did not. I thought about what he said, and actually I think about that topic almost every day. I am 68 years old. Asher will turn eighteen in twelve years. Will I even be alive then? Will his mama get healthy enough to care for him before he is all grown up.? I don’t know.
I do know that Asher asks perceptive questions and expects straight answers. That is unnerving to me. On most days, he’s just a little boy. Then suddenly he is my age.
