It’s minus four degrees and I’m going to pick up my granddaughter from her mother, who lives 10 miles upriver. I have been advised today is a “No” day. This means every request made to the toddler will be met with a “No!” Not just a “No.” A “Nooooo!” “No diaper” “No pants!” No shoes, no jacket, no Grandma!

When I arrive at their house, having donned appropriate clothing for a minus-four-degree day, the fourth and fifth fingers on my right hand are burning with whatever the stage before frostbite is called. She is bare-assed and sassy. She has been holed up at home with her Mama for four days with a fever that spiked to 103 before settling to normal. Type A flu says the pediatrician. She likes this routine, pajamas all day and night, as much milk as she can drink and Mama within arm’s reach all day and night. No having to squeeze into that bloody tight car seat, no daycare routine, no!

You may be surprised to hear she is a delightful child, when not afflicted with type A influenza, when nothing much is asked of her except to change her diaper and she can build a castle out of MagnaTiles for her dragon to inhabit, or look at/recite books she loves. Recently I caught her singing along at the end of “Frozen”—“Let it go, let it go!” Just one line but it was decidedly musical. I could hear the beginnings of her singing voice, as beautiful as her mother’s.

But now, here was Grandma, wanting to take her away from all this bliss and deliver her back to the real world. And Mama was in cahoots!

Somehow, Mama manages to dress her, feed her breakfast and get her shoes on while the child is screaming and crying and scream-crying, walk across a frozen deck and down a flight of stairs with said child in her arms, and wrestle her into aforementioned car seat, securely fastened.

The child is not just any child of course. She’s my granddaughter Rosie. I’m accustomed to hearing her quietly naming animals in her “Animals” book while riding in my car between daycare and home or my house and hers. Not today. Today she is scream-crying “Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” as if I am kidnapping her. It is pitiful, yes, but I’m not feeling sad for Rosie. Rosie is with me, her Grandma, and soon she will be with Baba Jim and Uncle Gogo and the Schnauzer brothers, one of whom she calls “my Jackson” and whom she embraces with kisses. She will have a new set of markers and a pad of paper and her Duplo toys and puzzles and her own big girl bed in what used to be Grandma’s office. Rosie will be fine.

As I cross the bridge into New York from PA, only minutes after leaving her Mama’s house, I feel a choking in my throat. My head begins to hurt the way your head hurts after crying for hours. “What is happening?” I think. Then sobs burst out and tears run down. “What am I crying about? This is not about her,” I think. This is something else. Rosie’s cries persist over my own quiet sobs, for which I am grateful. 

When I was two years old, my mother and big brother Chris moved to New York City from Pittsburgh. I stayed behind with Grandma Morin and Frannie, the woman who took care of me during the day when Grandma went to work.  I don’t know how long they were gone but my mother always said “It wasn’t for long.” I know it was long enough for her to find an apartment in the East Village and then move out because there were rats and find another apartment uptown on 2nd Avenue in Yorkville. What I don’t know and was never told was how I felt when they left. 

I think there was something in Rosie’s lament that triggered me that cold winter day, that “No” day, and made me feel the loss of my mother and brother so many years ago.

As I pull into our driveway, her cries have quieted. She is asleep. Do I dare to wake the sleeping dog? I open her door, unfasten the car seat harness and lift her gently from the car. She wakes, sees where she is and mumbles “Grandma’s house.” Then she carries her little self inside, calling “Baba! Gogo!” She is here and she is happy and safe. And so am I.