That’s not what I meant, but it began so innocently.

As I picked up my four-year-old granddaughter from the rural church where her parents were working, we began chatting. Curious as usual, she asked why there were flowers on some graves in the cemetery across the road. I reached into the depths of my grandmotherly life experience for a straightforward answer and explained that people put flowers there to show they loved someone. It seemed simple enough, and we carried on.

The next day, as I drove past a different cemetery with her and her siblings, she said, “Grandma, see those flowers?” pointing to some headstones adorned with bouquets. “Those are the ones people loved.”

NOOOO…she had connected the dots in a way I hadn’t anticipated. From her point of view, if people put flowers on graves to show they loved someone, then by extension, the ones without flowers meant no one loved them. That’s not what I meant!

Horrified, I called her mother as soon as I arrived home. The only words out of my mouth were, “Did your daughter tell you…” when she immediately interrupted with, “Oh, yes.”

NOOOO…When my daughter tried to correct her daughter, the little one responded with the absolute certainty possessed only by children, “Grandma said.”

Have you ever tried to change a child’s mind when the information has come from an authority figure? Grandma trumps Mommy. I guess it’s in the rules somewhere. So the youngest of the daughters viewed, with great suspicion, Mommy’s explanation that what Grandma meant was… Consequently, Grandma backpedalled in a hurry.

We sang a song in Sunday School when I was a child, “Oh be careful little lips what you speak…” Too bad I didn’t pay more attention.

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