By Elissa Caterfino Mandel

I’m the least likely person to explain sewer caps to a four-year-old. Who even thinks about sewer caps? For the uninitiated, they are the metal bumps that protrude from the ground on the patches of lawn in front of many suburban houses.

The truth is when you’re as close to the ground as my granddaughter is, every prone object — from acorn to cinderblock to sewer cap — feels fascinating, worthy of discussion. What are the caps for, my granddaughter wants to know.

I realize this is one of those defining moments of our relationship: when I’m about to respond to a question, and I don’t have the vaguest idea of what I’m talking about. Do I punt? Does she have to be six before she realizes that sometimes I make stuff up? I was an English major in college, and while I can talk about Blake and Spencer, my sewer knowledge is — yes, I admit it — sparse.

Before I was a grandma, I wasn’t afraid to be imperfect. I was the parent who dreaded being Shabbat Mom in preschool because I was deathly afraid to light a match. My boys used to laugh at me because when I made them peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, I couldn’t get the two halves of the bread to line up. They probably felt they had a mom who often wore her metaphorical clothes inside out. On the first family vacation after my husband died, I asked my 11-year-old son to go get an emergency tampon for me from the mom in the family we were traveling with. He had no idea what he was delivering or why I needed it so fast. But he appreciated that sometimes I was forgetful, overwhelmed and disorganized.

So, is it any wonder that I want my granddaughter to think I’m all-knowing? That I no longer want to be the person who missed out on all the things adults should know because she was under a tree reading a Nancy Drew mystery? Maybe maturity is realizing that being willing to answer is more important than what is actually said.

Every house has its own sewer cap, I start to explain, which should be painfully obvious since we’ve passed about 20 sewer caps of various stripes on our walk. And then I offer a meager and uninformative nugget — that people need sewer pipes if they want to go to the bathroom in their houses. I just hope my granddaughter overlooks that I haven’t actually said anything substantive about sewer caps. I’m lucky she’s four.

I’ve rarely been with a child who’s as attuned to her surroundings as my granddaughter is. When we pass the man whose drill makes sparks on the sidewalk, she stays still so she can fully process his answer to her question about what he’s doing. And thus unfolds the story of how he’s cutting a baseboard.

My granddaughter speaks (and listens) in exclamation points. Everything is just so damned interesting to her. I love my granddaughter’s questions. My own answers may sometimes be sketchy, but that doesn’t diminish my joy whenever I see the light in her eyes as I start talking.