Now, instead of spending their nights with friends and going out to restaurants, they were shuttling their energetic granddaughter between dance lessons, voice lessons, therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy and play dates.
His great joy is to wheel himself down the road to watch his 10-year-old granddaughter at riding lessons.
Her parents help, covering their granddaughter's horseback-riding lessons.
Entering the fog of Alzheimer's, I speak slowly into the phone: "Your granddaughter wants to take guitar lessons.
She pays for the lessons that her older granddaughter, Tiff, takes there.
One day, while attending a toddler music class with a granddaughter in Brookline, Mass., she saw a sign in the lobby advertising adult music lessons.
Banfield noticed her granddaughter's passion for the performing arts and enrolled her in piano, tap dance, and ballet lessons.
"Why?" her granddaughter asked.
"That's my granddaughter.
If history is any lesson, my just-for-fun jar of jam could turn into my daughter's chore, and eventually into my granddaughter's "liberating" lobster strudel.
