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Posts Tagged ‘grandchildren’

One Special Barbie

Posted in humor, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2024| Leave a Comment »

dollhouse

“One of the hardest jobs in this world is to be able to preserve the innocent face of our childhood in our adulthood as well!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“Let’s play in my room,” my four-year-old granddaughter says.

I’m accepted as another kid. A genuine compliment. My daughter-in-law smiles. Very few preschoolers have a playmate named Grandma.

I take the observation seat on the floor as our granddaughter begins a run with various dolls through the girls’ dollhouse. She includes a monster at least twice the size of several Barbies. Monster is given the part because her hair is twice her size. Something like a fuzzy hot-air balloon the color of a faded blue dishcloth.

“Ahhhhhhh!” our little girl yells. I suspect the drama is for my benefit.

I watch as each doll slides through the window. Enthusiasm complete.

I grab one of the team from the stack. It is wearing a short, semi-existent top. No pants.

“Uh, I think this Barbie needs some pants.”

“Oh, it’s okay she just wears a butt.” My playmate’s voice sounds matter-of-fact as she finds a fresh antagonist for her play. A rabbit taking on the role of a skunk. Is the show for me or is this a standard activity?

I face fairy tales with a twist.

“What’s wrong with your hands, Grandma?” my playmate asks as she studies the smooth back of her hands.

“Not a thing, sweetheart. It’s a thing called age.”

Oh, well! I guess I didn’t escape reality as thoroughly as I thought.

 

 

 

illustration made from public domain image

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Painting in Color, Color in Real Life

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 15, 2022| Leave a Comment »

cat on chair

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. (Mahatma Gandhi).

As the age of 76 appears in my too-near future, I study acrylic painting. Its layers. Its idiosyncrasies. I tend to find optical illusions without trying. See how this twig seems to come directly from the child’s arm, my teacher says.

Nope, I hadn’t seen that at all.

I take flat stripes of one color and blend them into another with or without water depending upon the stage of development.

White paint makes colors opaque.

Green should contain more than one syllable. College art courses teach about this elusive color. For an entire semester. And more.

A drop or two of black added to cobalt blue brings down its power.

I watch the May leaves on the trees with fresh enthusiasm. The power of reflective light working with shadow.

The power of light and shadow in life. Both real. A memory of intense fear strikes me. Unexpectedly. I don’t deny it, but don’t embrace it either. I add another memory.

My grandson and I are gathering rocks in a wagon. “You won’t live forever,” he says.

“That’s right. So, let’s enjoy the sun today and get some more rocks.”

“Okay. Want to go up the street and look?”

I smile. Why not?

We come back to paint our collection. My grandson blends every color in a messy experiment. Gray. I watch as he explores. Perfection is not the goal. Celebration is.

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Bruised, But Only on the Outside

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , on March 30, 2022| 3 Comments »

Addie and me after my fall (2)

Love, the moment and the energy of that moment, will spread beyond all boundaries. (Corita Kent)

Both the smile and the purple bruises on the side of my face, are real. I fell. Tripped over an air vent and landed on something hard enough to raise a bump the size of an extra appendage. Okay, I’m exaggerating. The bump is no larger than the average oversized walnut. The pain, however, made me think a tank had parked in my kitchen, and I’d been thrown into it.

My husband took me to the emergency room.

I was fortunate. Hematoma with no brain-bleed. I came home to heal. On St. Patrick’s Day—wearing the wrong color. Healing will take time. There are no prescriptions for patience. If there were I would ask for double-strength dosage.

In the meantime, I treasure holding my two-year-old granddaughter during a rare moment when she isn’t experimenting with perpetual motion.

“Precious child Addie, thanks for overlooking bruises and seeing me behind them. We will conquer the imaginative world again after you are rested.”

Okay, maybe I should rest a little, too.

 

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Inside Dreams

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 9, 2021| Leave a Comment »

inside dreams

Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere. (Albert Einstein)

 The hotel bed is large, comfortable, with sheets cleaned by someone other than me. I’m on vacation. And yet, my closed eyes don’t travel toward dreamland. Two hours pass. A thunderstorm hits both outside, into the noisy street, and inside me, into a series of both recent and long-gone events that refuse to change their reality.

 Facts. Time to change channels. Silently my brain sings Summertime from Porgy and Bess. My one and only standing ovation for a vocal solo more than 55 years ago. The only song my arthritic fingers can strum on a guitar after a broken middle finger. Nope. Too many replays. I am yawning. Not a good sign.

I try grandchild stories. Smiles. Nonsense. Happy trouble. Words. Not the quiet needed for sleep.

Gratitude. Simple. I move closer to warmth. The man I married fifty years ago. And sleep steals my body and mind, the anesthetic necessary for healing. Perhaps as I waken not long after seven, my dreams didn’t have enough time to do a full night’s work. And I don’t remember the tiniest dream sequence.

 The sun rises and dries the cement-sidewalk world outside my window. My eyes open to a day that could take me anywhere. It doesn’t ask for perfect. Perfect has no place else to go. Sounds boring.

Boring ends across the street at a local coffee shop. A young girl behind the counter. Her name is Kay. I buy a croissant-sandwich and then survey the homemade treats. We talk. The beauty in her spirit speaks louder than her words. I don’t have enough change for the cookie I buy.

“That’s okay. I’ll spot it,” she says.

I pause. The difference is one-third the cost.

“That’s okay. I’ll spot it,” she repeats.

And I tell her I will announce her kindness in a larger forum. This blog.

Thank you, Kay! May your fondest dreams come true.

 

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Are We There Yet? A Poem

Posted in inspiration, tagged , , , , , , , on September 3, 2021| Leave a Comment »

country road_LI

What you're missing is that the path itself changes you. (Julien Smith, The Flinch)

Are we there yet? 
my child voice calls from the past.
And I recall waves of heat
on the road ahead, illusions of invisible fire
as my dad drives toward them.

Are we there yet?
a younger brother repeats
as the road continues
past neat rows of corn.
And cows, a rare sight for a city child. 

Are we there yet?
my siblings and I wonder.
We’ve asked too many times.

And now I watch
a different road. My beyond grown
wrinkled hands grasp the steering wheel.
“You really are old,”
my honest granddaughter says.

And we pass the full summer
beauty of leaves soon to ripen red
and drop.

My granddaughter and I
laugh as the light turns green.

Are we there yet?
I answer a long-ago child.
You were already there.



(pic taken from public domain photo)

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Chrysalis: a Poem

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , on August 12, 2020| 1 Comment »

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up. (Pablo Picasso)

Chrysalis

 

You laugh when I say Daddy and Uncle Steve were my babies. 

Pool water drips from our bathing suits

through the white plastic slats of our beach chair.

The dark puddles mimic gray shapes shifting overhead.

We sit wrapped in the limited safety of a gold beach towel.

I breathe the scent of your chlorinated hair as if it were medicine.

My embrace would save you from more than chill if it could,

make you a princess at the age of three. 

 

But I think of a chrysalis,

spared the struggle of opening its own cocoon yet denied flight.

I kiss you on the top of your dark, wet head

and tell you how wonderful you are.

I pray for your spirit to sing whenever gray clouds

meet inevitable dark patterns below.   

You giggle. Daddy and Uncle Steve. Babies.

It’s okay, Kate. You don’t need to understand.

Your small body curls next to mine.

I am in no hurry for you to grow up.

I have no idea how soon you will learn about loss.

 

That winter your friend slips under an ice-covered lake.

An accident. She’s critical. Her prognosis, unclear.

As the months pass and your birthday arrives

I prepare for your special dinner.

You come into the kitchen as I cook.

I expect you to ask about your presents.

Instead, you mention your friend,

in a coma now, a sliver of the child she once was.

I pray for her every day.

You appear unaware of the power of words larger than you are.

Your fresh four-year-old trust widens a chrysalis opening.

Gray skies shift overhead, bash the ground below,

and leave you twice as beautiful.

    

illustration made from public domain image and cut paper

published in For a Better World and Piker Press

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Happiness, Sadness, and Lifting Up Kids

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , on July 2, 2020| 2 Comments »

When I was 5 years, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. (John Lennon)

 The young Beatle-to-be obviously didn’t have nuns as teachers. He would have been knocked down a step or two, or three, or four. With or without a cracking ruler.

If only happiness didn’t need to be pursued. I tell my grandchildren they are important often. Sure, action and discipline remain necessary. The-world-owes-me makes a sad goal. However, a happy-to-be-alive everyday life isn’t easy to achieve.

“You need to live to be 138,” one grandchild told me recently. “I’m going to need you that long.”

Sweet. Yes. And yet a potent message. A need to be assured remains powerful.

The little things. Always the little things. How well or poorly are they set together?

 

 

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A Stranger at the Door, Someone in Need

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2020| Leave a Comment »

 

open door

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them. (Ernest Hemingway) 

In 2012 I wrote a journal during Lent when memories of trauma ate through the present. Today I survive, as imperfectly as everyone else. I decided to reread an entry or two. This story appeared on an ordinary Wednesday when I was babysitting two of my granddaughters. Rebe was four and Ella was a toddler:  

I’m rinsing breakfast dishes as the doorbell rings. Jay is busy with Ella, so I answer. Outside a young girl stands sobbing. She asks to use our phone.

     “Who are you?” I ask.

     She doesn’t answer. Instead she tells me her boyfriend beat her up, and she wants to call the police.

     Jay is standing behind me by now. He holds Ella. I don’t know what else to do. I don’t want this girl standing out in the cold. I let her in and get her a glass of water, then finish the dishes as she calls from our living room.

     When I get back, Ella blows kisses to her and the girl smiles and tells me she has a one-year-old child.

     “How old are you?”

     “Eighteen.”

     The girl’s skin is a flawless ebony. I would have guessed she was much younger.

     While I don’t watch the clock, it seems like a long time until two policewomen arrive in two separate cars.

     We leave the room. I need to change Ella’s diaper anyway. On our way into the bedroom we hear one of the officers ask, “So why do you stay with him?”

     Apparently this is not a first-time event.

     After the girl leaves with bus money we provide, one of the policewomen comes back into the house and chides us for our kindness. This girl’s live-in is trouble. It is her choice to remain in jeopardy. Drugs are an issue.

       We should have called the police and made her stay on the porch. Twenty-twenty hindsight. (Although, an addition added to this entry in 2020, I doubt I would have followed her advice. After all, an abused eighteen-year-old girl is a child in need.)

Ella as a baby

       I am relieved later while Ella and Rebe watch Caillou, a children’s cartoon show, where a lost toy dinosaur is the only problem. Two little girls wrapped in the discovery of a stuffed toy and the loving concern of Caillou’s father.

     Real life isn’t always that sweet. I have been fortunate. My flaw today was trust. Yet, I pray that our little Ella’s blown kisses can be a blessing into the soul of this lost girl. A seed, perhaps. One that can grow someday, even if I never see it blossom.

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A Salt-of-the-earth Acquaintance, or Two, or Three…

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on October 17, 2019| Leave a Comment »

It’s in those quiet little towns, at the edge of the world, that you will find the salt of the earth people who make you feel right at home. (Aaron Lauritsen, 100 Days Drive: The Great North American Road)

She hands me a five-dollar bill and I can’t think of any reason to refuse. The giver’s name isn’t necessary. She lives among the many who have more health-need expenses than income. “For Jay’s birthday present.”

I’ll think of some way to get the money back to her. In another form maybe. Although I need to admit the cash-concern is my problem, not hers. She gives because she is my friend. The salt-of-the-earth kind of acquaintance. The Matthew 5:13 variety. The kind who is entertained with a cup of coffee and background oldies music. And asks no more. “I’ll be your friend forever,” she says. I believe it.

Later that afternoon I glance around the neighborhood. The gentle couple next door. He cuts our grass and trims the edges. Both husband and wife watch our house when we aren’t home. Another couple, their friendly house on the corner—these two young persons have saved us more than they know.

Our little town. Inside a hostile world. Government crime and greed remain. I continue to work toward a better world for all. Yet, I’m not sure I would have the energy without companions who care on an everyday level. Thanks. May karma, the good kind, embrace you.

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Trick-or-Treat, Ella-style

Posted in inspiration, positive thinking, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2019| Leave a Comment »

The simple things are also the most extraordinary things, and only the wise can see them. (Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist.)

Ella and I play trick-or-treat any time of the year. Our version transcends reality. The costume takes over the wearer. A skeleton drinks apple juice and it passes from bone to bone to the front porch.

Today Ella wants me to be permanent trick-or-treater while she adjusts the treat to the visitor.

“Hi,” I say, then complain. “I’m a tree, and yeah, I know the peaceful nature scene. Quiet. The woods. All that. But I have bugs climbing all over me. Squirrels are nuts. They don’t just eat them. And the birds? That early morning song is nice enough, but the pre-dawn time can get on your sap after a while.”

Ella smiles and then takes on a composed expression. “Okay. Here’s a woodpecker.”

I’m immediately out of character. Our girl has a sense of humor. Down syndrome, yes. Up personality? No question about it.

 

photo a combination of pic taken in our backyard and portion of public domain pic

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