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“What are you doing all the way up here?” Greta asked, finally making it up the hill to the wooden bench, lamenting her ageing knees the entire way. Thankfully, the tiny six-year-old she was chasing didn’t run any further.
The sandy blond head didn’t lift up, and little fingers still picked at a loose thread on his T-shirt. Greta habitually scooped the back of her legs under her knees as she sat, so used to wearing dresses rather than the loose pants. “You wanna tell me what’s wrong?"
“I don’t like tee-ball.”
Well now that didn’t sound right. Her grandson loved all things baseball related. “Why not?”
“Danny and Andy always get me out.” The boy grumbled, fisting and pulling at his shirt in frustration.
Greta bit her lips to hold back her laugh. “So it’s your brothers you don’t like, not the tee-ball? Cause you’re very, very good at tee-ball.” She gave him a light poke in the arm, but by his frown and hunched shoulders, her grandson wasn’t quite ready to be teased out of his mood.
“They don’t let me win!”
Oh, if only it was that easy, Greta mused. “No, that’s true. But that’s because your mum, and GrandCar and I don't let them win either. They had to play better if they wanted to win. Andy especially, and he's much older than you and Danny.”
“I can’t hit as far as Andy can.”
“Well you got me there, slugger. Can I tell you a secret from when GrandCar and I played baseball?”
The boy tilted his head and shrugged, but eventually offered his ever-patient grandmother a very sulky ‘fine’. He didn’t resist when Greta crossed a leg and rubbed his shoulder.
“When GrandCar and I played baseball together, we played with a lady named Esti. She was the fastest baserunner in the league. But when she played with another player named Lupe, they had a secret plan to steal all the bases.”
Under her arm, the young boy snorted in amusement. “Loopy. That’s not a girl’s name,”
Says the boy named after his own grandmother... Not that the lad had had the epiphany that his parents and grandparents had names beyond their familiar titles. To be fair, Lupe was never much of a girl either. “No, silly Billy. Lupe. She’s Mexican.” This time, when she tickled under his arm, the boy giggled. “They spoke Spanish to each other, a different language to know when to steal bases. Nobody else knew what they were saying. I think you and Danny should team up, because I know you two have special words only you know. You're nearly the same age and size, I think you can outdo all of us by being clever.”
“But I wanna win by myself…” He grumbled, folding his arms.
“Sweetie, nobody wins a game by themselves. Have you ever seen a baseball team with only one player? We all need our teams if we want to win. We try harder so we can help our team… Now if you and Danny get really good together, I think you’ll find you’ll get a few more home runs… What do you think?”
She was willing to wait out the boy’s contemplative silence. “But he’s taller than us.”
“Andy?”
“Yeah.”
“Honey, you’re five. He’s nearly fifteen. You’ve got a lot of growing to do.” Greta couldn’t help but twist the wavy locks on his shoulder around her finger, hiding her red nail. It felt as soft as Carson’s hair. “You’ll get taller too. It just takes time.”
Doe eyes—also disarmingly like his grandmother’s—looked up at Greta with a charming sparkle. “Like you? You're tall.”
In her chest, Greta’s heart tightened just a little, though she didn’t allow the sadness show on her face. Greta made her peace long ago with loving Carson’s daughter and three grandsons as her own, despite the lack of blood. They all knew Greta as Carson’s constant companion that they called ‘Grandma’, and when they were old enough, when they were ready, the true nature of her and Carson’s relationship was explained to them. Andy was now starting to understand, after Betty took him for a lengthy walk. But the younger boys weren’t there yet.
It had been decades since Greta gave into the sadness of having no genetics to pass onto the family that she and Carson fought so hard to raise. It didn't matter though. Blood didn't make a mother, or a grandmother. Greta sacrificed as much, loved as wholly and worried as deeply as Carson did. She gave the shovel talk along side her wife when Betty started dating—albeit with an aluminium baseball bat and her approval dependent on, among the many other things, the suitor's attitude to people lile Betty's mothers. At least Betty’s husband was quite tall.
“Maybe even taller! But for now… you’ll have to be small and sneaky.” The smirk thrown back at Greta spoke of mischief, but it was the nose scrunch the boy learned from Greta that warmed her soul. At least he was feeling better. She might have a word with Andrew to remind him that he needed to read the room, and put his own competitive nature away for the sake of the boys' confidence sometimes. “Ready to go back now?”
“Yeah, I think so.” The smaller and younger Carson in Greta’s life lifted his dangling legs up onto the bench and stood as Greta rose, his arms outstretched to her. “Grandma…”
“Yes…?” She knew what Carson wanted, and while he was still small enough and she was—barely—able to, Greta would indulge him.
“Can I have a piggyback?” Greta dipped her chin to glare at Carson over her glasses, until he added: “Please?”
“Alright.” Luckily Carson was still tiny for his age, but she did notice he was getting heavier. Thank God she wore flats today. “Careful on the neck.”
While her wife had a very special relationship with Andrew, Greta immediately clicked with her Carson's namesake. Poor Danny suffered as the middle child to some extent, but his grandmothers made time just for him and he was only a year older than his younger brother, so they often came as a pair. She loved all her boys equally, but Greta did like being Carson’s favourite which often manifested in his kindness and thoughtful treatment of her elderly figure. He did his best to be an accommodating koala on Greta’s back, holding his small arms low on her collarbone.
Once he was settled, Greta cast her eyes down the hill to the two people hiking up the grassy incline; one more easily, a small tee-ball bat in hand, than the other who hobbled behind.
“He alright, Grandma?” Andrew called from under the hand he held to his forehead to block the sun, pausing to lean on the bat he thumped into the ground. Never mind the fact that he was actually wearing a baseball cap, twisted backwards on his head.
“Yes; we’re coming back now.”
Andrew didn’t say anything. He just rolled his eyes and nodded at his little brother’s antics, turned on his heel and trudged back down the hill to where their family was waiting under the large oak tree on Greta and Carson’s tiny homestead. Teenagers.
At her shoulder, Greta felt the press of a button-nose hide in her copper and silver curls. It stayed, even as she took long but careful strides after Andrew, slowing only as they neared a waiting Carson senior.
“I spoke to Andy,” Carson whispered as she gave Greta’s bicep a squeeze and laid a kiss on Greta’s cheek.
"Thank you. How's your shoulder?"
"Starting to struggle."
"Honey—"
"I'll ref this last inning. I promise." A wiggling finger tickled the crown of blond hiding amongst copper. “Ready to come back, Supercar? We’ve got a whole ‘nother inning and you’re first up.”
When the boy hesitated to answer, Greta shrugged her shoulders. “Hey, Coach needs you out there… Or should I drop you here so I can go back and watch without you.”
“No…!” The younger Carson whined, lifting his head and kicking his feet.
“Well, come on then!” Greta took off down the hill again, glad to have her wife by her side. Family baseball—or tee-ball in the littlest one’s cases—always brimmed with concessions. Rules to go easy on the elder grandmothers and the youngest boys. But it taught Andrew patience and allowed them to all play together.
She and Carson still had the boys visit most weekends since they bought their small block of hobby farmland out of Chester, New Jersey. Other weekends, they made the trip back to the city. Not that it was really a farm, but Greta would never, ever do away with the 'farmgirl' name Jo had given Carson. It was difficult to be an hour from Betty and the boys, but the freedom their slightly isolated property granted her and Carson after spending most of their lives in the shadows was worth it.
They had their short rows of fruit trees and a handful of chickens, the first crops of vegetables from the patch reaped and sown anew for the warmer weather; it wasn’t the life Greta might have envisioned for herself when she was young, but she loved it all the same. Dreams of being a movie star didn’t hold a candle to family dinners, or baseball in their yard, or backing her wife against the wall on the back porch to kiss her, lazily or with a gentle hunger. Right in broad daylight. They’d certainly done other things in the safety of their country home that would scandalise their daughter, but Greta enjoyed finally learning to be loud, and she relished seeing Carson dressing down—sometimes less like a lady, sometimes down to nothing.
So while she could still give into Carson’s requests for a piggyback, Greta would.