It’s been a day of changing the cottage from a toddler environment back to that of a single adult. As I took the junior chair, bathtub toys and rattles back to the basement, my thoughts were with my daughter’s family while they winged their way back to Florida. Putting baby shampoo, the bottle brush and bottles back in their storage bins, I could almost hear Skylar’s encouraging voice: “Good cleaning up, Midgee!”

I thought back to my own days of young motherhood when I would visit Mom, kids in tow, at her orderly home set up for two adults. When she first found out she was going to be a grandma, she emptied a large cabinet and went garage-sale-ing for toys to fill it. “I want my grandkids to have fun when they come to see me,” she said.

Her wish came true. Our children and everyone else’s had a blast at Grandma Johnson’s. She encouraged all of us young moms to attend the Bible study at the church across the street, offering to babysit for our mob of little ones. We took her up on it, and when we’d return several hours later, worrying that she might be exhausted, we’d hear her say, “Back already?”

Time flew, because she was having fun.

After our kids had pulled every toy out of her cabinet, Mary and I would always stay to pick them up, encouraging our kids to help. But Mom would take them from our hands and plead, “Oh, let me do this after you leave. I have such a good time thinking back on the morning.”

“But it’s such a mess!” we’d say.

“But it’s a happy mess,” she would counter, “and I love it.”

I remember one morning when Mom took care of several of our kids and made chocolate chip cookies with them. Two year old Klaus had deposited a smudgy chocolate hand print on her white door at toddler height. Before we left I reached for a soapy rag to wipe it clean, but she stopped me. “Don’t touch that. It’s just darling.”

The next time I visited, she had drawn a square frame around the messy hand print and written “By Klaus,” along with the date. Another “happy mess.” I’ll be glad if I can be half the grandma Mom was.

Today I found some precious art-prints of my own. Four month old Micah had loved sitting on the kitchen counter in a blue Bumbo while he was here, watching us prepare meals. Yesterday I had set the Bumbo (with him in it) on the counter next to the glass cake dome, and he’d gently thumped it with his hand, the way every uncoordinated baby does. This afternoon when the sun hit that glass, half of the dome was covered with tiny prints this little guy had left with his dimpled, drool-soaked fingers, and I experienced the same rush of grandma-love Mom must have felt when she’d seen  Klaus’ chocolate hand print.

I confess to washing Micah’s art work off my cake dome today, but not before I mentally “framed” his creation in my memory. Maybe when he visits next, we’ll try to bake chocolate chip cookies together.

“Children’s children are a crown to the aged.” (Proverbs 17:6a)