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Posts Tagged ‘grandchildren quips’

Water Wisdom

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 23, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure. (Oprah Winfrey)

Water is a symbol for the unconscious. I may not be in a deep sleep, approaching a great sea, but the Y pool brings its own unexpected gifts. I find myself drawn to people who tell me stories, or share wisdom. Some of the facts in the next paragraph have been altered—for the sake of anonymity. The purpose of this sharing is for enrichment, not gossip.

Two women always smile when I arrive. They live generosity. The father of one of the women is being forced to move to a nursing facility. He is neither ill nor feeble. She stands with him, not with the convenience of other family members. I listen, blessed. The other woman cares for her brother-in-law who has a debilitating illness. This does not keep her from volunteer work among other disabled people. The gentle spirits of these women blend into the pool water, mix with the chlorine somehow, and make me richer.

On another day I bring my granddaughters to the indoor swim lanes. Rebe pauses at the shallow end and picks up a water weight. Her imagination continues on land or in water. She pretends to be an instructor, directing me, her make-believe daughter.

“These are really heavy,” she says. “So be careful.”

“How much do they weigh?” I grin knowing that she has no idea how much is too much.

“To infinity and beyond,” she answers with make-believe authority.

“Such a goal,” I think. A few minutes ago I encouraged my girls to go for their dreams. Actually I have no idea where my five-year-old granddaughter gets her ideas. But in the water today, her eyes tell me she is happy. This is female-bonding day: Grandma, Kate, and Rebe. We have plenty of time left before Mommy and Daddy arrive to bring the girls home.

Nine-year-old Kate continues to swim laps, grateful that there are no adult-swim-time interruptions in the indoor lanes.

And the water responds with caresses as gentle as the strokes we create. I celebrate the sweetness of this “now.”

Sure, life on life’s terms continues. This time in the pool is only a respite. I can only pray for my friends who face injustice. A raging thunderstorm makes the drive home slow, as I calm a frightened kindergartener by telling her to count after she sees lightening. If the boom takes a while, the strike is far away. If the thunder comes quickly it has already passed by—and it hasn’t hit us.

“Okay, girls, hit the garage door opener!” I call as we arrive home.

They don’t need to be asked twice.

The troublesome storm continues a little while longer. But the sun has never left. It returns like a good parent.

sail boat

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THE BIG PICTURE AND PINT-SIZED PERSPECTIVE

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 1, 2013| 1 Comment »

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does. (William James)

Five-year-old Rebecca knows the days of the week now, and she knows I pick her up from preschool whenever I can on Wednesdays. However, the message didn’t get through the system today, and the kids lined onto the buses a minute or two earlier than usual. Since the parents and grandparents have to wait outside, this freeze-cat grandmother waited in the car until the last minute.

Rebe sees me from her bus. She had already told the bus driver, “Grandma could be coming.” All turns out well. I am known at the school and my appearance is part of an established routine. However, I am glad the confusion happened because it is concrete evidence of how important I am to this little girl. She told all her friends, including her favorite bus driver, she was spending the day with Grandma.

Rebe grins. Fun time begins. A stop at the grocery that should take five minutes requires twenty because Rebe sits in a car cart, her taxi, and we stop in the wider sections of the store to pick up and drop off imaginary passengers.

When I bring her home she becomes the mother and I am the child, always an interesting scenario.

“I’m going to have a baby,” she says as she pats her cousin’s cloth doll, positioned under her shirt. “Today.” The delivery, of course, is simple. She pulls the infant out from under her shirt. No hospital admission. No paperwork. No bed necessary, really.

“So what is the baby’s name?” I ask.

“She doesn’t have one yet. She was just born.”

At least we know the baby is a girl. “Oh, well then how about Emily, Grace, or Mary?”

Rebe looks at me with complete seriousness: “Hadalittlelamb.”

“The baby’s name is Hadalittlelamb?”

“Yes.”

Do not laugh. Smiling is okay. But the full-blown guffaw is forbidden. “Okay.”

“We can go home now.” All life is shortened and edited in Rebe’s imaginary world. I don’t always know where we are in it, however.

“I’ll go get the baby’s car seat. Okay, Mom?”

Apparently I made the right choice. It’s hard to tell with a child’s fluctuating imagination. But Rebe forgives me for not reading her mind in the world of pretend. After all I’m pretty rusty at it.

I do know that there will be Wednesdays when I won’t be able to be at school for a variety of reasons, so she will have to ride the bus to her babysitter’s house. My little girl will need to know—in advance.

Yet, somehow, I feel like I will be missing something on those days, too. We’ll catch up on the next week. She won’t be little forever, and my wrinkles deepen just a little bit more every day. May I savor every precious moment.

pic from What Makes My Heart Sing

from What Makes My Heart Sing

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Pretending to Hide From the Paparazzi

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on January 7, 2013| Leave a Comment »

For a man to achieve all that is demanded of him he must regard himself as greater than he is. (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, poet, dramatist, novelist, and philosopher 1749-1832) 

My two older granddaughters love one another. However, sibling rivalry lives, and Grandma needs creative energy to keep the girls from fighting for her undivided attention.

The three of us sit on my bed as Kate and Rebe create a unique pretend-family scenario. They are two-month-old twins who have grown and developed with freakish speed.

I laugh. “You know in the real world you two would be followed night and day. The paparazzi wouldn’t let you make a step without taking a picture of it.”

“I heard that word before on a show,” Kate says, “but I didn’t know what it meant.”

I explain the word paparazzi and the girls chant pa-pa-razz-i, as if power were in the sound and rhythm of the syllables. Even five-year-old Rebe squeals,” The paparazzi are here,” as she hides under the blankets.

We dramatize situations where our impossible infant geniuses walk, talk, draw pictures, and even write a story about being attacked by a lion, then survive. The monster spies appear at every turn. Before long Kate discovers that fame may not be what it is cracked up to be. She wants to play something different.

Rebe says she is going to stay with the game. The paparazzi have captured her. She is going with them to be famous. Run-and-hide hasn’t taught her the flip side of glitz. At her age, time and place haven’t been pinned down yet. Real life and play wear indefinite edges, like one waterway merging into another. Nevertheless, our five-year-old is reaching for something greater than herself.

As the mood settles Kate decides to write more of the story about the girl, named Kate, who survives a wild animal attack. Maybe she understands metaphor more than I realize, and she’s playing the same game with different characters.

Learning comes in bits and pieces.

enjoy little things words of wisdom

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Story and Time, Seen through the Eyes of a Child

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 3, 2013| 2 Comments »

Remember the quiet wonders. The world has more need of them than it has for warriors. (Charles de Lint)

My two other grandchildren are on their way to the Y with Grandpa. Our middle granddaughter isn’t feeling well today. She is staying home with me. When I ask five-year-old Rebe what she wants to do during Grandma-Rebe time, I already know the answer: “Let’s play house.”

Rebe is Mommy, and I am Daughter, no other name necessary.

“It’s time for school, Daughter. But first I have to wrap you in toilet paper.”

Okay. I expect confusion sometime during this experience, but not generally within the first few seconds.

“Uh, did you say . . . ?”

“Toilet paper. It’s Halloween, and you are going to be a zombie.”

“Oh.” That sounds more like a mummy. But, at least we’re back on the same page, and Rebe doesn’t request an actual wrapping. It all happens magically, as if the decision alone makes it happen.

We climb into the “car,” which is actually our rocking chair as a front seat and the couch as the back. I’m buckled into my imaginary car seat. “And tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” Rebe says, appearing pleased to tell me the news.

Wow! Time flies quickly enough in the adult world. In pretend existence the speed of light seems slow.

I expect our little girl to forget the sequence of her plan, but in a few minutes she stops at my crib set and steps out of character. “Grandma, can I move these to the living room?”

I want to say, no. After all, the set was a gift from my parents. The figures are large and breakable. But, Rebe needs to know she can handle the situation, that she doesn’t have to be afraid. She is capable.

“Carry one piece at a time, doll baby. And use both hands. Then, tell me a story about what you are doing.”

She follows directions. However, her voice is so soft and gentle that I don’t hear many of her words. I do catch a sweet, innocent reverence.

Finally, after she has placed the infant in the manger in the center of her scene, she crosses her hands over her chest. “You can be in my heart now,” she says to the figure on the floor.

I smile—at Rebe my granddaughter, at Mommy, my pretending partner. They both need a tissue. But then again, right now maybe I do, too.

the world as it should be

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The Old-Person Corner of Kindergarten in the Jungle Gym

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 21, 2012| 1 Comment »

What a bargain grandchildren are! I give them my loose change, and they give me a million dollars’ worth of pleasure. (Gene Perret)

Rebe (Rebecca) and I are the only persons in the playground at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday. It’s Grandma and Rebe time, those precious moments when I take our middle granddaughter out of the house so Grandpa can get her cousin Ella ready for a nap. Then, Rebe and I will pick up Kate from school.

The playground soon turns into an imaginative world.

“Come on up to the top with me, Grandma?” Rebe calls from the other side of an orange tunnel, on a metal portion of one of the play structures.

Ordinarily I wouldn’t consider it. I mean, this stuff was designed for children between the ages of five and twelve. I hesitate mentioning how many times I have been twelve. Besides, there’s no sign mentioning weight limit. However, Rebe doesn’t have anyone else to play with.

“Okay, sweetie. But if there is any hint of a creaking sound, I’m going to have to go back.”

The wide, but low tunnel between slide and steps doesn’t groan. I’m grateful that I am barely five feet tall. Perhaps a parent or two has needed to rescue a sobbing child once in awhile. Maybe the engineer had that in mind. Nevertheless, I regret a hardy lunch.

“This is kindergarten,” she announces in her official I’m-the-teacher voice, then begins mimicking the sign language posted in one corner. Good. Reality. I can follow this, even with an almost five-year-old girl as instructor. Then Rebe says she is going to sit in the old person corner of the classroom—the entrance to the slide. (The way downhill, I guess)

“In the where?” I’m lost again.

“I’m an old person now, so that’s where I go in the kindergarten room.”

“Okay.” Rule number one in let’s-pretend interaction: Accept any scene as long as it is innocuous. “How old are you, old person?”

“Ninety-nine.”

Well, at least that truly is old. I expected her to say nineteen or twelve—or something closer to my age.

I break pretend mode and ask, “When you go to kindergarten next year, can I go with you? I didn’t get to go when I was five.”

She shrugs. “Sure.”

That game ends. Perhaps I broke the spell. We go to a bench with a steering wheel attached at ground level. Rebe is now my mother. The front and back seats merge in the imaginative world—no sense mentioning inconsistencies. That would only confirm my lack of pretending experience.

“Can I drive, Mommy?” I ask.

“No, Mommy has to do it.”

“Because it is dangerous for kids to drive?”

“Yes,” she says with mock certainty.

But I have brought too much adult truth into play. “Why is it dangerous for kids to drive?” she asks later as we leave to get her older sister.

“Because kids don’t know how to do it yet.”

But that doesn’t mean you aren’t someone now, I think. That what you know, decides much of anything. Sometimes simply being is enough. I notice that the tightness in the back of my neck from weeks of stress, has relaxed.

“I love you, Grandma.”

“I love you, too.”

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