She’s almost three now. When he leaves the room, she asks: “Where’s my grandpa?”

She’s not afraid of his eyepatch or his closed eye beneath it. She commands him: “Open your eye. It’s laying down.” He can’t keep it open, even with the prosthesis. One day he’ll tell her how he lost that eye, that beautiful brown eye, so like her own. But not yet.

She knows he takes heart medication. She sees the bottles and pats her own chest: “That’s Grandpa’s medicine. For his heart. From the doctor.”

She knows he’s wearing a heart monitor. She crawls in his lap, tugs on his shirt, and says, “I want to see your heart.” He pulls the fabric over to reveal the monitor. She studies it. Her little brows knit.

She knows he sometimes walks with a cane. She finds it leaning against the wall and carries it to him. She doesn’t appear to recall his recuperation from spine surgery last fall, or that it was months before he could pick her up again. He started doing it before he should have. He couldn’t resist those little outstretched arms and the request, “Hold you.”

She wants me to play hide-and-seek in the house with her so he can find us. She hides in the same place every single time: behind a chair in the living room. She wriggles with anticipation and puts her fingers to her lips with a loud, stage whisper directed at me: “SHHHHHH!” She doesn’t know how obvious we are in our so-called hiding place. He plays along, walking through the house: “Where’s Micah? Where’s Franna? Are they in the closet? Are they in the bathroom?” She answers him with a high-pitched, drawn-out “Noooooo!” When he peers over our chair, she shrieks with delight.

She demands: “Grandpa, upside down!” He takes her little legs, swings her upside down like a pendulum. Her brown hair flies and her face radiates with glee. “Again!” she cries. “Again!” He will keep doing it until his back makes him stop.

She came to the recent wedding shower for her Dada’s younger brother. She crawled under the church fellowship hall table to play. Grandpa, the pastor, crawled under with her.

My first thought: They really are on the same level.

Second thought: Look how that back surgery paid off!

At dinner this week, he told her: “You are Grandpa’s little angel, Micah.”

She looked at him a moment, those dark eyes shining. She replied, “You are Micah’s angel.”

He always will be, my little love.

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with thanks to Two Writing Teachers for the Tuesday Slice of Life Story Challenge