When we lived across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C., youngest daughter Amy's best friend, Nancy, came from Lincoln to visit.
These darling children had a glorious time, teetering around the flower bed edges of the sky-high Washington Center for the Performing Arts, wandering among a kite contest on the Washington Monument Grounds, staring at the fish in the national aquarium in the basement of the Commerce Department, reading Archie comic books, and generally thinking the world was their oyster.
Early one Saturday morning I drove them "to town," for a special tour of The White House. Those were the days when The White House was not barricaded behind concrete blocks or a huge security staff. Those more innocent days found me telling the girls that if I wasn't right there to pick them up - I was almost always late -- they were to walk across Pennsylvania Avenue, along tiny picture-perfect Lafayette Park, to the Hay Adams hotel, a fancy place then and now. Grandly, I gave these little girls $5 for a brunch snack.
When I raced into the Hay Adams to reclaim these youngsters, I found them delighted with their waiter who kept their blue glasses filled with ice water, hung their coats on the back of their chairs, and brought them orange juice and bagels. I needed to rescue them from the bill. Even in those less expensive days, $5 did not cover a modest meal at the Hay Adams.
I was reminded of that incident when both Amy and her oldest daughter Charlotte told me of Charlotte's plans for her 12th birthday party. The actual day of Charlotte's birthday the week before, she spent lovely time with her family, with a family of best friends, and all four of the Thone-Altwies clan out for supper to their favorite Italian restaurant near their house at the south end of Seattle's Lake Washington. There, this reasonably sophisticated 12-year-old girl, our Charlotte Francesca, this precious granddaughter, ordered Caesar salad, spaghetti, and tiramisu. Dear god, I thought, imagine a 12-year-old ordering tiramisu, such a fancy pastry desert.
When Hans and Amy and Charlotte and I ate at this restaurant when Charlotte was about two, Hans laughed as he pronounced that their daughter and her grandmother were a perfect pair: "Charlotte loves to be looked at and her grandmother loves to look at her", he accurately observed. Even at that tender age, Charlotte managed to eat spaghetti quite adeptly, not making a mess.
The Saturday night after her birth date, Charlotte and her three best friends - Sophie, Ivy, and Isabelle -- will go to dinner at an elegant café in downtown Seattle run by her godfather, Brad, originally from Bridgeport, NE. The girls will be dropped off at the café at 5:30 so as not to be there during the crowded dinner hour, and the parents will disappear for a while. Amy and Hans and Stella Blue, six-year-old sister, will pick them up after dinner to go to a movie.
Charlotte called to let me know what she was going to wear, knowing that I was anxious to hear all about this adventure. She was going to wear a new black dress her dad had bought her the week before on her actual birthdate, sleeveless, with a belt, and a full skirt and black flats. Her mother lifted her brown hair up in a clip and she added a pair of sparkly earrings I gave her for Christmas.
In my mind's eye, I see these precious girls ahead of time, figuring out the perfect outfit to wear for this exciting evening, thinking about what to order from what must seem a complicated menu, and generally acting like the grown-ups they are fast becoming.
Suddenly I remember our blessed girls, when they were very young, having supper at a Kings' Restaurant, and gleefully emptying packets of sugar into their water and dulling their appetites before dinner.
Thirteen years ago, recovering from an aneurysm that burst in my brain, I said I only wanted to live long enough to watch Charlotte grow up.
How wonderfully I have been given that wish, and so much more.
(Ruth Raymond Thone, author of books, magazine articles, columns, and radio commentaries, finds enormous pleasure in her granddaughters, and is grateful for anything that raises her spirits. She may be reached at ruththone@hotmail.com).
