I’m looking forward to an upcoming visit to see my daughter. My grandson can’t wait, because he knows we’re going to fix his cars.

I made some wooden cars for my grandson Jed a few years ago. He was really kind of little for them then, but has since grown into them with extreme prejudice – all have broken wheels. The fix is simple and my daughter could easily do it, but he wants me to fix them. He’s linked those cars to me; therefore in his three-and-a-half-year-old mind I’m the only one who can do the job.

And I’m fine with that. The fact that he knows and understands that I made those cars, and that I have the ability to make them work again is important to both of us – for wholly different reasons, of course.

However, while Skyping with him the other day, I suggested that I might need his help to fix those cars, and that has planted an entirely new thought process in his little head. He has no idea how he’s going to help, but he now firmly accepts that fixing those cars is something he and I must do together, and he’s excited about it. In fact, I hear from my daughter that it’s all he talks about right now.

The whole thing takes me back about 30 years when I did similar things with her, planting a seed that’s blossomed into her own love of carpentry. The thought that I might get to do the same thing with my grandson pleases me to no end.

A.J.