Nine

Here is Anna, nine years old, with the pumpkin she carved all by herself with a sharp knife and her personal vision. Anna has a sturdy sense of herself. 

Among all these twenty kids we deal with two times a week in the junior garden club at the elementary school, Anna stands out. She is the one who can plant seedlings, no problem with extricating them from the nine packs. She seems to know the spacing, the depth, how to firm the earth around them. Anna's spouts will always grow. She knows how to plant seeds at the right depth and pat them down. 

Last week the garden club had a soup extravaganza featuring vegetables from the garden. We had spent an hour cooking everything and setting up for the expected parents and friends who would attend. 

This was a beautiful event. Many of the parents and siblings came, and by now the kids have learned a few table manners and are not so wild. 

Near the end of the afternoon, when everyone was full of collards and had said how much they loved this soup and salad and garlic bread, all made by the kids, Anna came up to me and asked could she say a few words. 

So we got everyone quiet and Anna stepped up in the front of the room. Anna's family did not attend, but if they had, they would be so proud of her.  With no notes, no hesitation, Anna proceeded to tell everyone how much the garden meant to them all, how thankful she was to have had this experience, how much she treasured the fellowship. I was blown away! Worth living for.

My own grandson is also just nine, and this time when he is staying here (not just a visitor, he has his own room), we have noticed such a change. He is no longer just a lovable kid. Yes, he's still that, but now he is a real partner in the workings of our place, takes his place in the chores and business of being a part of this household. And we have such wonderful conversations and partnership in learning new stuff.

One dinnertime he asked us something very few of our friends or family ever have: "When no one else is here and you are just here together what do you do?" He really wanted to know! It's still a big stretch for him to think that we have a routine that includes an hour of exercise, foreign language learning, etc. But he can relate to the hours we spend outside in the gardens and mending fences and tending to the land. He wanted to know when we did this. For all the many years he has often visited, he has known us as the folks who make delicious breakfasts, engage him in many activities, read aloud to him for far longer than a parent could, and try to explain just about anything. I think it is the greatest affirmation when someone, even a nine year old, really asks about you.

So, this is the beautiful NINE! I love it.

The Madness About Gift Giving for the Holidays

This stuff about shopping for the holidays is crazy! Why do we think these ideas of blockbuster sales, get this or that in the next nine minutes, leave your Thanksgiving table to stand in line overnight for that flat panel t.v. are all so great?

My daughter came for the weekend to hunker down in my studio to make many wonderful gifts. There were bags and puzzles and useful holders for this and that. There were stuffed animals, all amazing and lovely.

"Who are these things for", I asked her. They are for distant family members she barely knows, but she feels obligated.

Where did this come from? This obligation everyone seems to have this time of year?

When I was a kid soon after the end of WWII, no one had any money. My folks strived to make Christmas special for their five kids. My dad, who was never a carpenter at all, sawed maple 2x4's into a huge set of blocks. He spent his evenings from Halloween until Christmas in a neighbor's basement, sanding these and waxing them. A month before Christmas my mom sneaked away all the dolls my sister and I had and made new clothes for them, and dresses to match for us, to reappear on Christmas morning. One Christmas I found an entire Girl Scout  outfit my mother had made right there above my stocking. Another Christmas there was a bicycle for me - a lovingly restored used bike. To tell the truth, I was always just a bit disappointed because I really wanted the new and store-bought.

Now that I am old and have no need of anymore stuff, I find it harder and harder to understand what this impetus is to GET MORE STUFF!

I think that many folks rely on the holiday gift exchanges to  get things they need and luxuries they crave. We spent last Christmas with some in-laws of our family and we were amazed at the sheer volume of the gifts and the obvious expense and thought that had gone into this extravaganza. Giving these things (and receiving them!) is a part of doing the expected thing in so many families.

So, back to the hand made items, the repurposed things, the regifted and the giving of old family treasures. Everything has a place in this crazy holiday frenzy. I just wish there was not so much stress about it.

Free Day!

Once in awhile I have a free day, no meetings, no classes for kids, no commute the 65 miles to see friends in my old community. And so, I hunker down in my studio and paint. Right now I am painting a large vision of Victorians, stiff and sitting for their portrait. Right now it is all potential. Tomorrow I will have to remove it from the table so it will be free for a clay workshop when ten people will come to make earthenware planters. These folks will come and have some hours of creativity, energetic talk, and a soup and salad lunch from the garden.

I really enjoy these adults, so different from the needs of the kids in my class you see in the photo here who made scarecrows to discourage the sandhill cranes from all their pecking in our community garden for kids. But what they all have in common is the desire to make things. The kids have made wonderful clay planters, kind of rough, and they are waiting in the queue to be fired.

I have rolled out the clay slabs in anticipation for the group to come. I love it that adults who have no experience with sculpture/clay take a chance and end up loving it! Unlike the kids' classes, I do not have to get my energy up to make it happen. It is a gentle thing to conduct a class for adults who want to be here.

Free days mean I can exercise my three miles with weights, do my language lessons, do my meditation walk in the woods, and anything else. So great to be retired!

Beat with a buzzard

Here is Lola, fifteen years old. Today she had ten! teeth removed. Maybe it was worse for me. Used to be when I asked my mom how her day had been, if it was awful, she'd say, "I feel like I was beat with a buzzard".

Well, today I was beat with a buzzard. I had no choice. It seemed that this wonderful one blue eyed lovely dog had major tooth infection and she was in pain. When I signed her into the vet, I assented to the disclaimer that sometimes something happens!  So I went to a political luncheon in Tampa with my phone on vibrate.

The vet's office called me and said that all was well, she was in recovery, and I could pick her up that afternoon.  When I got there and she heard my voice from the office she began what we call the dog opera. I was so glad to hear her saying that she was o.k. I could hardly pay attention to the post operative instructions. (Do you want to save the teeth for the tooth fairy?) Gak!

We all love our animals so much. As I left off Lola this morning there was a couple in the next car in the parking lot. They were telling their huge black dog goodbye and they were shaking with tears. I touched the woman and told her how very sorry I was. I know that I will be there in that same place sooner than I'd like.

Even this evening, I have hunkered down next to Lola's crate where she's holed up in some pain. I stroke her ears and tell her what a good girl she is, how much I love her, and that tomorrow will be better. A small amount of blood from the surgery drips from her mouth and I am not sure she'd do well sleeping in the bed with us (as she has for her whole life). But I will ask her. I know I will check on her many times during the night.

I had thought that at Lola's advanced age this kind of dental surgery would just be over the edge. But our vet said that this would be fine and she'd feel a lot better for it. So, you take your chances. I keep feeling Lola's side to see if she's still breathing..

I am imagining that young dachshund who ran and leaped and had fun with toys, who spent many miles with us as we walked in the Green Swamp. Don't think this will happen again, but, hey, she loves her rides in the golf cart!

Grandma with the Middle Ones

Three cousins, second, third and fourth graders now get together a couple of times a year (they live at opposite sides of the continent) and I am in wonder at how they take up just where they left off! They swim like fish and spend hours in the pool and hot tub. They have amazing and inventive games going all the time. This year it seems to focus on Greek gods and goddesses. These imaginative games seem to seamlessly segue from the fields and gardens to the pool to the upstairs playrooms and bedrooms where they have spread out Legos and blocks and villages and trains. Then, suddenly, like birds taking off, they all ride bikes like mad up and down the road and over the fields. Or they appear at my studio where they can find anything they want - paper, paints, clay, glue, scissors, yarn for some project or other.

Our usually tidy place suddenly has bikes thrown in the bushes, swim towels left in heaps, tiny bikinis on the couch. At the end of the day I grump around and all is put back in some semblance of order. I love to read to them before bed- seems like something I have done forever with kids. I always try to read some book that has not been made into a movie or game. The three older grandchildren remember when we read 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. And there were many others. Because my grandson, Quincy, lives nearby and spends a lot of time with us, we've been through the whole Little House series and a whole lot else. Cuddly night by night.

Our children, who had been read to through all of their childhoods really seem to understand how important this daily event is. But they are tired at night after their work and some of the time this daily reading doesn't happen with their kids, the books pile up and get scattered under the laundry etc. So, I am pleased to have this grandmotherly task, among others.

I always knew that I would be a rotten home school Mom. And I never was.  So being Grandma all day for a number of days is a new and exhausting experience.

When I awake I think about all the stuff we'll do today. It begins with enormous breakfast that lasts for an hour. (Usually, I would be into my exercise routine for an hour, then half an hour of Spanish on line, then some brain games, and then tending to the many gardens.) So, none of that today. Pancakes or French toast it is.

And todayI have promised to fix the stuffed horse made so beautifully and lovingly a few days ago by my granddaughter out of an old cashmere sweater. It has suddenly gotten a tear in her neck.

Today we'll go to the library and then visit Patty Cakes (the Cake museum) and then do a few errands. Every time we have to get out of or into the car there are the issues of the booster seats etc. I forgot about this.

I am too exhausted by now to be able to think about going home and figuring out lunch, cleaning up after it, so I say I will take them to McDonalds. (They are aghast! They know that I never do this. Well, this is the first time in three years.) We order for the two vegetarians, after asking about what fat the potatoes are fried in, the really picky eater who eats only white food. My bottom line is no sugary drinks. Actually, it was O.K. We threw away the trash and all was easy. I love those conversations I have with kids and at lunch we discussed David and Goliath. And, also, was Jesus real?

So, we try to pick up the tire that was supposed to be fixed, and then head home. I was imagining a period of lying supine on the couch and reading the NYT. It kind of worked but I heard lots of small shrieks as the posse went from here to there.

But there is a whole afternoon to explore in the fields and in the garden and swimming in the pool before dinner. My husband monitored the pool to give me a break.

The best time of the day is when they are in their p.j.s, teeth brushed, ready for the story to be read aloud.

I love thinking that these kids and the other older grandchildren who have also spent so much time here will have these idiosyncratic grandparents to remember. And I look forward to having those very youngest ones have this experience too.

Overwhelmingly Grandma

Here is Caroline, seven years old. You can see the stuffed horse she made today out of some old mice eaten cashmere sweaters. She loves it and takes it everywhere. This is a grandchild I don't yet know very well; she lives across the continent as far as one can go from here and still be in America. So I treasure her visits.

I think our time (a whole week!) will be spent in my studio where she is already feeling comfortable finding out where everything is. She drew the picture of the horse she wanted to make and we carefully translated it to the soft knitted cashmere and I sewed it up on my sewing machine - the body, the head and the legs. Caroline carefully stuffed everything with polyester filling, I sewed them together, and then she decided on the ears, nose, eyes and the mane and tail. And, suddenly everything came together and she now has this wonderful horse (Esmerelda) that now goes everywhere with her.

Yes, I am deft (daft?) to eagerly help kids make stuff. But it is so satisfying to send him or her off with a real product they have had major input in making.

Caroline is fascinated with everything that hops, wriggles slithers or flies. Our tables are covered with shed snake skins, screened jars of monarch caterpillars about to pupate and containers of tree frogs who are just visiting for a little while. After two days this little girl knows everywhere to find lizards, skinks, frogs.. Of course, I love this child after my own heart!

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?  Such joys of being a grandmother!

I could keep this essay purely about Caroline, but, actually she did bring her dad and brother with her, and this weekend there were many relatives visiting. But maybe my time so far with Caroline is pure. We connect - who would have thought?