{"id":4076,"date":"2011-07-05T06:15:13","date_gmt":"2011-07-05T10:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=4076"},"modified":"2011-07-08T06:44:24","modified_gmt":"2011-07-08T10:44:24","slug":"the-rider-chronicles-4-grandpas-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=4076","title":{"rendered":"The Rider Chronicles 5 – Grandpa’s Work"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple weeks ago we camped with Rider and his parents.\u00a0 This adventure was in conjunction with a music festival we attended where Rider’s father was selling his company’s beverage.\u00a0\u00a0I was glad for a mini-vacation, the chance to spend some\u00a0time away from home at a lovely site along the Hudson river about an hour north of New York City.\u00a0 I was especially grateful for the weekend because it gave me time with Rider, the first I’d had since his birth day.<\/p>\n

I enjoyed holding him and watching him in that outdoor setting.\u00a0 I think he liked it too.\u00a0 He loved being held face up so he could see the trees and sky.\u00a0 I was also glad to be there to give his mother a break, even if for short periods at a time.<\/p>\n

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Grandpa hard at work<\/p><\/div>\n

Our first morning there, I was holding the sweet, wee infant and watching the campsite’s hustle and bustle.\u00a0 Six of us, plus Rider, were camping together and it seemed everyone was\u00a0 doing something.\u00a0 Camping is fun but it’s also work.\u00a0 My wife was folding bedding, getting it out of the way.\u00a0 My son was carrying things from our area to the booth where he was making things ready for a day of selling kombucha.\u00a0 One of the people there with us was\u00a0 preparing the meal.\u00a0 Another was digging things out of the cooler. \u00a0 Anybody passing by, glancing in our direction, might have wondered at\u00a0 the beehive of activity, at all those campers over there, so busy…<\/p>\n

…except for the gent with the baby.\u00a0 I was simply holding him, cuddling my beautiful grandson, and he was just lying there, content and inquisitive, looking at the world around him.\u00a0 We’ve flipped through many calendars since I held our own babies.\u00a0 It has been a long time but like riding a bicycle, it’s something you don’t forget.\u00a0 And being the grandfather, all I had to do was hold him.\u00a0 No other worries.\u00a0 Though I walked around with him plenty that morning, at this ant farm moment I was simply sitting.\u00a0 At first, I felt a little funny not “doing” anything.\u00a0 Usually, I would have been in the thick of it, carrying this, folding that, taking out the garbage and being a busy bee myself.\u00a0 Right then, I was content doing grandpa’s work: holding Rider.\u00a0 It was the only task I was interested in, the best job of all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple weeks ago we camped with Rider and his parents.\u00a0 This adventure was in conjunction with a music festival we attended where Rider’s father was selling his company’s beverage.\u00a0\u00a0I was glad for a mini-vacation, the chance to spend some\u00a0time … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[527],"tags":[639,636,637,638],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4076"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4220,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4076\/revisions\/4220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}