SOME GRANDFATHERS ARE JUST INSANE

Spent a long yesterday with the twins and Kaya; I'm much older now. When you get three little girls together, none of whom has reached the age of reason (the twins are about as far as you can get from reasons other than their own; reasoning with them over the number of cookies is like petting bobcats) and all of whom are dominant personalities, you get a combination of chemistry and polarity that would be very interesting to a physicist. A young physicist. I am neither. And I got no nap. Nor did the triumvirate.

For example, while snatching the woodstove door handle out of the honey-sticky grasp of one screaming twin who was testing the glass door with it, and clearing away the fragments of exploded balloons from before the other screaming twin who found them tasty, I had no luck in reasoning logically with screaming Kaya as to why she shouldn't retaliate by hitting the other screaming twin (there's often the illusion of more than two) with the toy train she had just grabbed back, nor should the other screaming twin (see?) strike Kaya about the person with whatever that large thing was she'd found in the toybox, nor was there any way to find out who had spilled the juice and scattered broken chiclets all over the floor. No time for the luxury of logic: reflexes must be hair-trigger at all times, don't play with the butter, dear, and give me the camera. This went on non-stop from 1:30 till some blurry hour, with an energy level that made IronMan look like turning over in bed. This is why young people have the kids.

Then we went out for a walk. Big mistake. Like scuba diving, taking a walk up a mountain road with free-ranging little twin girls and their slightly older sister is something you should never do alone (four or five assistants would be good). The perils are manifold and unforeseen; we all bear the childhood scars of such events. Having brand-new legs, all three fledglings love to walk, and always as far as they can go - refusing to turn back, there are so many exciting adventures ahead - advancing into all the newness until they abruptly reach their limit and do a kind of eel-like scrimmage around the bottom of big grandfather legs.

So all the way back it was one twin on each arm and Kaya piggyback, I'm just glad I've stayed in reasonable shape by chopping firewood for the past ten years. When we got back home I could only slump in a chair and watch as the triumvirate wars resumed...

The horror... the horror...