Do I Look OK?

After teaching at the Fort on Friday, and, btw, I did get my employee ID and it does say FACULTY, I ran down to Charleston to pick up my grandbabies. My daughter is spoiled to me getting them every other weekend. I oblige because when my children were young, I had no one to give me a little break, so I do that for her; plus, I am one of these grandmothers who needs to see her grandchildren on a regular basis. Anyway, we headed back up the mountain and the wind was blowing hard—I struggled to keep the car where it was supposed to be and The Boy, who talks a lot and loudly, is telling me the story of not getting a library card—mental note: get The Boy a library card—and I’m trying to think of what I am going to do in the Delta and I say, wanna listen to my Ipod and he says, yeah and so he listens and is singing, although the wrong words, and I’m thankful for the reprieve from having to answer a four-year-old’s whys and whens and all of that and then he says, Nana, I gotta pee and I say, didn’t you pee at the house, and he says, yeah, but I gotta pee again and I smell smoke and see the fire on the mountain, a control burn, and I say, this isn’t a good place, and he says, but I gotta pee and by now he’s holding his himself and bouncing. So, I pull over with big trucks passing and big wind blowing and he and I get out and he starts to pee and admires his arch and says look at that and I say, ouch as the wind blows the pee on my pants leg and I get behind him and use my jacket to block the wind off of him and it might seem as though I am peeing but don’t care and when I get him back in the car, I see that two cars have pulled up and after I get him buckled back in, the thought of serial killers and perverts send chills down my back and I rush behind the car and hold my hand up to let them know that we are fine, and I get in the car and lament the fact that I didn’t wear a belt and my damn jeans are falling off and the new panties are even more lose than the old ones, and just as we are about to pull out, a cop walks up to the car and says, is there a problem and the Boy says, is that a real gun and the cop’s chest swells and I say, officer, my grandson here had to go pee and there are no bathrooms in sight and he is only four and I had no choice but to let him use the side of the road as his own personal bathroom. The officer smiled and said, just making sure everything’s okay. As I pull out on the highway, I wonder about okay and appreciate that while everything in my life isn’t okay, it is tolerable.