By Bob
January 5, 2000
For more than six years, Bonnie and I helped a single mother raise her two daughters, Sabrina from age 7 on, and Ana from birth on. Starting when Ana was only 4 months old, our goddaughters stayed overnight with us every Friday night, and whenever they were sick or their mom needed a break. I also took the two of them out for dinner every Tuesday night.
Over the years, we ate at many, many different places, including McDonald's, Wendy's, A+W (where Sabrina always got their BLT sandwich), Godfather's Pizza, Pizza Hut Pizza, and Old Country Buffet.
Old Country Buffet is a chain of restaurants where you pay one price and get your own food from a buffet of about 100 different fruits, salads, meats, vegetables, side dishes, desserts, and drinks. For a buffet restaurant, the food is surprisingly good, a lot like homemade. Anyway, Old Country Buffet has a menu that tells you what choices they're going to have each day for lunch and each night for dinner. The menu is different from day to day, but every Tuesday has the same menu as every other Tuesday, every Wednesday has the same menu as every other Wednesday, etc.
I started taking Sabrina and Ana to Old Country Buffet when Ana was a tiny baby. Sabrina and I would get platefuls of food, and I'd give Ana a few simple things, like some peas to eat and some carrot sticks to chew on. As I was getting my own food, I always remembered to grab a handful of napkins to clean up after Ana. Then, the three of us would sit at a table, with Ana in a high chair, and talk and laugh and sometimes even sing songs, with Ana playing percussion by pounding the tray of her high chair with her little hands. In between bites of my own food, I'd feed Ana some apple sauce and tiny bits of chicken or fish. Sometimes, people eating at the tables near us would move farther away from us. Other times, they'd look over and grin at how cute kids Sabrina and Ana were. A few times, someone from another table actually came over to say "hi" to the girls and tell me, "your daughters are very sweet, and they look so much like you!" I'd smile and tell them, "Actually, they're my goddaughters, but I love them like they're my daughters." Over the years, I took the girls to about 5 different OCB's in different areas of the city, depending on where we lived at the time.
For the past more than 4 1/2 years, every time Bonnie and I ate at Old Country Buffet by ourselves, I'd still grab a handful of napkins without even thinking about it. As we sat across from each other, I'd tell Bonnie stories about eating at Old Country Buffet with Sabrina and Ana. If I saw a little baby with chubby cheeks and dark brown hair, I'd say, "that baby looks a lot like baby Ana," or if a little girl with shoulder-length hair walked by, I'd say, "that little girl looks a lot like Ana when she was two or three or four years old," and Bonnie would either agree with me or she'd tell me why that baby or that little girl wasn't as cute as Ana had been.
Last night, Ginny, the girls' Mom, called me because she had a computer problem. Bonnie answered the phone, because I was in bed with a horrible sinus headache (that lasted until 4:30 this morning). So, Bonnie told Ginny that I'd call her back this morning.
When I called Ginny this morning, it turned out that a piece of software on her PC was refusing to start up, and she needed to use that piece of software to complete a college computer course that she's taking. Over the phone, I talked Ginny through the steps of uninstalling and then reinstalling the corrupt software, but it still wouldn't run, so I offered to drive down to her house and work on it in person. Ginny had some errands to do this morning, so we planned for me to go to her house and work on her PC about 1:30 this afternoon, which I hoped would give me enough time to fix the PC and then get home in time to go out to eat with Bonnie at Old Country Buffet tonight (on Wednesdays, they have Roast Turkey - Yum!)
Ginny and the girls live about 25 miles south of us, and because the roads were slick from a new snow, I showed up at their house about 15 minutes late. I had taken along the video camera that I had used for 6 1/2 years to record about 26 hours of video of Sabrina and Ana while they were growing up. Bonnie had worked overtime for several months to make enough money to buy that $850 camera for me as a surprise Christmas present almost 10 years ago. While it had served an incredible purpose all those years that we had had the girls over, we had hardly used it at all in the past 4 1/2 years of not seeing them. That's why Bonnie and I had agreed that we wanted to give that camera to Ginny and the girls, so that they could put it to good use, shooting videos of themselves and of Sabrina's little baby, Mariah. So, I had already bought a new main battery and clock battery for it, and had tested it to make sure that it still worked perfectly, in anticipation of giving it to them the next time we saw them.
When I arrived, Sabrina and Mariah were in the kitchen, where Mariah was eating little bits of meat and apple off of the tray of her high chair. I was really happy to see, again, how much love Sabrina shows little Mariah, giving her lots of encouragement and calling her by little "nicknames of love." The two of them already have several little "tricks" that they do, like when Sabrina says, "Uh-oh!" and Mariah repeats it, or when Sabrina does a little head shake and Mariah immediately does the same little head shake, or when Sabrina tickles Mariah lightly on the back her neck and Mariah's whole little body shudders.
I worked on Ginny's PC for about an hour and a half. First, I uninstalled the corrupt software. Then, I edited her Windows 95's hidden Registry file, deleting about 300 individual lines of code. Then, I reinstalled the software, and it worked! Ginny was so happy that she hugged me!
Then, Ginny said, "Ana should be home in a little while," and an incredible idea came to me. I said to Ginny, "I want to ask you something, and it's OK if you say 'No,' but I want to ask you anyway. Bonnie and I are going out to Old Country Buffet tonight, and I think it would be such a wonderful surprise for Bonnie if I could take Ana along to go out to eat with us." Ginny grinned and said, "Sure, that would be fine." My heart almost leaped out of my chest - Ana was finally going to get to see her bedroom at our house again, and Bonnie and I were going to get to spend some more time with her!
While we waited for Ana to arrive home from school, Ginny had some phone calls to make, and Sabrina had to get ready to take Mariah to day care and go to work herself, so I got to watch little Mariah for about 10 minutes in their family room. What a little delight she is! She wasn't scared of me at all, but instead concentrated on her collection of Fisher-Price wind-up toys. I wound a couple of them up for her, and as they played their tunes, she stood, shifting her weight back and forth from one foot to the other, gently swaying to the music. Then, she started walking around, exploring the room, with me crawling around the room after her, ready to catch her if she lost her balance. After a few minutes of that, she was wearing me out! So, I picked her up and held her with my left arm, while I held a musical toy in my right hand, and we slow-danced for a minute or so, until Sabrina came back into the room. At that point, Mariah made it very clear that she wanted to go back to her Mom!
A few minutes later, almost eleven year-old Ana arrived home from school, wearing a bright-green top and bright-green warm-up pants (bright-green is her favorite color now - when she was little, purple had been her favorite color). She was very surprised to see me, and I was very happy to see her. It was only the second time that we had seen each other since mi-1995, when she had been only six years old (the first time had been Christmas Eve, a couple of weeks ago - see A Christmas Miracle, also on this Web site). We hugged each other real hard, while Ginny told Ana that I had come to their house to fix the PC. Then, I asked Ana if she'd like to go out to Old Country Buffet with Bonnie and me tonight, and she yelled, "Yes! Can we go early so I can see my room?" I assured her that we would get back to my house with enough time for her to see her room and Mini, Pookie and Petey, our dog and two cats. With all that to look forward to, Ana then showed me some of her school work, including a certificate that she had earned by getting 100% on something. Then, I showed her the basics of how to work the video camera. Since Ana is probably the one person in her family who has the most time to learn how to run the camera, she's probably going to be the family videographer, recording precious, priceless memories that the whole family will enjoy for the rest of their lives!
Then, it was time for Ana and me to go. She took along some glitter pens, a homework picture that she would end up coloring at the restaurant, and the "quart of tiny treasures," a little jar, filled with hundreds of brightly-colored, tiny plastic people, household objects, animals, airplanes, and other things that she had spent hours sorting into categories with Bonnie when she was little. It filled my heart with joy to see Ana sitting in the front seat of my Chevy Blazer, a vehicle in which she had never before ridden, facing the little sign that has been on the dashboard of all of my cars ever since she was little. It says, "Ana sits in front next time." When you flip it over, the other side says, "Sabrina sits in front next time." I made that little sign because the girls used to fight over whose turn it was to sit in front when I'd take them places.
On the way back to my house, we talked about school, about me teaching, about Ana's new niece, Mariah, and lots of other things.
When we arrived at my house, I pulled the Blazer into the garage, and showed Ana that, in the front of the garage, we still have Sabrina's 26" ten-speed bicycle and Ana's little 16" Catwoman bicycle. She laughed at how little her bike looks to her now.
Mini met us at the sliding glass door, barking like crazy. I could tell that she was a little confused. After all, at almost-11 years-old, Ana looked different, smelled different, and sounded different that she had when she was only 6 years-old, which was the last time Mini had seen her.
I'm not going to describe everything that I remember about Ana's visit, because that would take about 20 pages, and you'd probably get tired of reading it way before the end. Suffice to say that Ana got to hold Pookie (our long-haired calico cat) in her arms again; she got to see and pet Petey for the first time ever; she got to sit on the sofa while Mini tried to "snuggle" her snout against Ana's cheek; she got to see her bedroom, which we had left exactly the same way it was the last time Ana was there; she got to look through some of her old toys ("My play-doh's still soft!"); and she got to see a photograph of herself as a newborn ("Did I really have that much hair?") At one point, I looked Ana in the eyes and told her, "Sweetie, I want you to know that I've done a lot of different things in my life, but helping raise you and Sabrina for 6 1/2 years was the best and most important thing that I've ever done. I will always love you as if you were my daughters."
When Bonnie got home from work, she was very surprised to see Ana! They hugged and hugged! Then, the three of us went to Old Country Buffet together for the first time in almost five years. Ana sat across the booth from Bonnie and me. It was such a joy to me to listen to her talk and watch her eat again. When she was done eating, Ana took out her homework picture and colored it with several different colored glitter pens. Then, she took out the "quart of tiny treasures," (which she had already sorted into several different colored layers in the jar), and dumped some of it onto the table. Ana, Bonnie and I played with the tiny treasures for about an hour, laughing at the funny little stories that we made up about them as we played.
When it was time to go, we all piled back into the Blazer, and took Ana back to her house. Bonnie stayed in the warm truck as I got out to walk Ana to her door. As I came around to her side of the truck, Ana turned and gave me a big, big hug. I gave her a little kiss on the cheek as we hugged. Ginny greeted us at the door, wearing the sweatshirt that we had given Sabrina several years ago, with the name of the town where we live emblazoned on its front. Ana and I both went inside the house for a minute, so I could thank Ginny for letting Ana go out with us, and tell her what a wonderful time we had had with her. Ana flopped onto a nearby chair and grinned at me. She said, "I love you very much. Remember to tell Bonnie that I love her very much, too."
On the way home, Bonnie and I talked about what a blessing it had been to have dinner with Ana again. We reminded each other what a sweet, smart, interesting, talented, creative, wise, mature, and loving little girl she is. She's doing really well in school, she's on her school's Academic Triathlon team, she plays the flute in the school band, she writes stories and poems, she draws and paints pictures, and she loves to read. On top of all that, she's respectful to her Mom.
Bonnie and I agreed that, if we had a daughter, we would want her to be just like Ana.