Let the Games Begin!

“You can’t use that word!”           

 “Sure I can. It’s a perfectly good word. W-A-Z-N-A. I waznaable to be at your costume party because my troubadour outfit waznaback from the cleaners!”

            “ARGGGHHH!”

            “OK, how about this one. Z-A-W-A-N?  As in, ‘Is this zawanyou wanted?’”

            “Concede. You lose. You are a loser with 5 leftover letters. There is no hope for you!”

            The laughter escalated into squeals as my sons pelted their sister with Scrabble tiles. They were gathered around the kitchen table engaged in one of their relentless holiday game fests. They are three very different individuals, living three very different lives, but at home, around a board or card game, they still bond in laughter and friendly competition as they did when they were younger.          

We have always been a family that enjoyed playing games. When the children were little we played Candyland and Cootie at home and countless rhyming and word games in the car locating colors, out of state license plates, and “I spying” for miles and miles. The games were fun, but I suspect there was more going on that just moving plastic pieces on a board or spying a cow as we passed a grassy field. We were learning to give and take, to win and lose gracefully, and to respect one another as individuals. Games have a way of encouraging that.

            As the ages of our children increased, so did the complexity of our games. Monopoly, Life, and Scrabble replaced plastic bugs and lollypops. The kids learned how to strategize and think critically, as well as how to get their Dad’s goat by scooping up the real estate he had his eye on or claiming a double letter score and blocking the word I was planning to use. There was equality around the game board as we all learned to laugh at ourselves, to accept our mistakes, to enjoy another’s victory. 

            Special occasions have always been a favorite time for games at our house too. Ever since the kids were little, I’ve enjoyed creating silly games for our family birthday parties. On birthdays, the one celebrating gets to choose the dinner menu and dessert, but Mom plans the entertainment. Several years ago, our daughter happened to be at home on her birthday while on tour with a drama group from her university. All six of the students and their director stayed at our house for a week, doing performances and theater camps during the day and eating and sleeping on every available surface at night.  When I asked if they’d like to join in a family party for our daughter’s 19thbirthday, they were all enthusiastic. They decided to compose a special video for her and I went to work figuring out the games. 

            The night of the party we gathered around a table decorated with inexpensive plastic toys, colorful streamers, and confetti. Our daughter donned the obligatory tacky “I am the Birthday Princess” crown and we dined on her favorite casserole. After the meal, it was time for our games. We had “pilot practice” where everyone had to fly a small plastic plane off the second floor balcony, trying to land near a target placed on the living room floor below. Then in teams they competed to arrange her school photos in chronological order. After that we had a “grand prix” where we raced matchbox cars down the middle of the dining room table, trying to maneuver our vehicles as close as possible to the opposite end without going off. The kids had a great time and so did we. Afterwards, while I swept up confetti and took down streamers, one of the girls came into the kitchen to help. 

            “I couldn’t believe you and your husband got right in there with us. That was so cool,” she said, lining up the toy cars on the counter.

            “Don’t you and your family do silly things together?” I asked.

            “Not really. Everyone’s so busy. And my parents are pretty serious.”

            We finished cleaning up and she joined the others viewing the birthday video, but I sat in the kitchen sipping a cup of coffee. I thought of all the stories these kids would tell about Anne’s crazy parents. And then I thought of something else. How glad I was that we weren’t too busy to be silly now and then. So much of the time we need to be organized and mature. We need to stick to business and accomplish important tasks at work, school, or home. But we also need to remember that it’s a good thing to laugh and play together, to not take ourselves too seriously, to create happy shared memories. Just then a pink plastic airplane whizzed by my nose. I looked around to see my husband standing in the doorway, a victorious grin on his face. Let the games begin!

A Place in the Country

            When I was about ten, my parents decided to look for a “place in the country” where they could spend weekends and eventually some vacation time. The first thing you need to understand is that they only had a few thousand dollars to spend, the next thing is that my dad and mother were self-employed and worked together in a small insurance agency and my dad worked six days a week. Whatever they found had to be within reasonable driving distance and fairly cheap. And then there was the issue of seafood. My mother loved seafood, so she was most interested in finding a place where she could get oysters, clams, crabs and shrimp—preferably for free! We set out on a rainy February day to search for the place of their dreams. 

            At ten, my main interest was in the motel where we got to stay overnight. I recall slogging from one piece of property to the next in an unrelenting cold drizzle, roaming through musty-smelling cabins, and listening to a woman who talked about things I had no interest in like escrow and titles and tideland rights. But the individually wrapped bars of pink Camay soap and the little bottles of hand lotion back at the Drift Inn Motel were another matter all together! That was luxury!

            At the end of the weekend my parents purchased, for $2500. cash, fifty feet of unimproved waterfront property on Hood Canal, a salt-water inlet of Puget Sound, about a 2 hour drive from Seattle. They were thrilled. I was unimpressed. The beach was covered with oysters, sharp and unrelenting, and featured a fifteen-foot high dirt bank that butted against the highway. At high tide the beach completely disappeared under several feet of salt water. It wasn’t quite what I had pictured as a lovely place in the country! I would have been much happier, I suggested, with a permanent unit at the Drift Inn Motel. 

            Initially, we had to synchronize our visits with the tides. We’d rush to the canal, scoot down the bank with our supplies, and set up a firepit on the beach. Mom gathered oysters and clams, both of which were undeniably abundant, and we’d cook them on a grate over the fire. I collected clamshells and made elaborate seaside manors featuring pools and verandas for the tiny rock crabs I caught. Our picnics ended abruptly when the incoming tide began lapping at the coals of our fire. Then we’d pack up our belongings and scramble back up the bank to the car, heading home for another week.

            When I was in junior high my folks had enough saved to build a bulkhead on the property. This twelve-foot high wall, backfilled with dirt, gave us a flat area on which to park the car, set up our barbecue and laugh at the tide as it climbed up the wall, never reaching more than a couple of feet from the top. My dad couldn’t wait to find a used house trailer to park on the bulkhead so we could have a “real vacation place.” Over the years they added a deck that extended over the edge of the concrete bulkhead and, much to my delight, a motorboat! I spent most of my summer weekends during high school and college with friends at the beach. We water-skied, fished, swam, and ate tons of succulent oysters, clams, and Dungeness crabs dredged from the canal’s silty bottom. Even I had to agree it was a much better venue than the Drift Inn Motel!

            After we married, my husband and I and eventually our three children all spent vacation time at the canal. The kids delighted in fishing, swimming, and finding shells to build habitats for little crabs. After some coaxing, they even acquired a taste for the abundant seafood on the shore. Shortly after my father passed away, my mother, concerned about maintenance responsibilities, gave us the property. The house trailer, about 40 years old, had seen better days but building codes in the area were extremely limiting. It took a creative architect, a fearless builder, diligent environmentalists, and unremitting patience, but we were finally able to construct a cabin on the same site where the trailer had stood for so long. 

We are now retired and able to spend time at our cabin on a regular basis. We refinished the old gray Adirondack deck chairs and my husband and I often sit on the deck sipping glasses of wine, as my mother and dad did for so many years. Just like they, we watch the sunset and await the twinkle of the first evening star, reminiscing about the past. Over the decades my parents’ dreams have become my own and I love watching our grandchildren splash in the clear salt water. The beach is still covered with oysters and clams, the crab pot still yields its delicious bounty, and I suspect there are tiny crabs hiding under the rocks, just waiting for some little girl or boy to build a terraced manor complete with a clamshell stairway and a swimming pool at this lovely little “place in the country.”

Reading Buddies

          One of the true joys of being a Grammy is sharing the books I used to love with my grandchildren. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of marvelous contemporary children’s books too. But sometimes I long for the familiar volumes I cherished as a child. Times have changed and I certainly didn’t have social media or Facebook Friends, but in the books of my childhood I discovered a lot about what it means to be a real life friend. Those things don’t change with time and are worthy, I think, of passing along.

            Take those wonderful characters in A.A. Milne’s books: Piglet, Eeyore, Tigger, Winnie the Pooh and all the rest. They were faithful friends. They never ran out on one another if things were going badly. They never gossiped or berated one another for their poor choices. And even when they disagreed, they did it without being disagreeable. They talked things out. They accepted one another’s idiosyncrasies and weaknesses with encouragement and support—not frowning emojis. When Pooh, having consumed way too much honey during a visit with Rabbit, got stuck in the doorway on the way out, did all his friends lecture him on the evils of overindulgence? Did they shame him and then cart him off to a camp for obese bears? Of course not. They sat by his side and read stories to him for a whole week until he had thinned down enough to be yanked out. Faithful friends don’t applaud your pitfalls. They help you recover gracefully and then let you figure out the lesson yourself.

            Friends care, too. Raggedy Ann would never say, “c’est la vie” if she knew a friend was feeling lost or depressed. Somewhere, deep in her candy heart, lived a sincere concern for even the least of the playroom population. The dented tin dog was just as precious as the priceless porcelain princess. Candy or not, Raggedy Ann had a heart for others. The cotton stuffing in her brain worked overtime, planning ways to improve the lot of her friends. She cared little that her painted smile might fade or that a seam in her striped stocking legs might part in the effort. Even when things appeared most desperate, her shoe button eyes never lost the shine of hope. Everyone needs a caring friend like that!

            And what about the delightful and quirky creatures in Kenneth Grahame’s Wind in the Willows? Ratty was polite and willing to endure Mole’s clumsy efforts without drawing undue attention to the latter’s obvious lack of social graces. Acceptance is a lovely quality for a friend to have. Certainly we’ve all been in a position to need a bit of mercy when our savior-faire has slipped a bit. Rat and Mole and Badger and Toad also demonstrated an unswerving devotion to animal etiquette—something that is very helpful in human friendships too! Mole cites, for example, that it is completely improper to dwell on possible trouble ahead or to ever comment on the sudden disappearance of one’s friends at any moment, for any reason or no reason whatever! That kind of attention to propriety, it seems to me, could put a stop to all manner of mean-spirited online speculation and twitter!  Friends certainly need not agree, but, according to the creatures down by the riverbank, they should always offer one another respect and acceptance.

            But perhaps the best example is discovered between the covers of E.B. White’s classic, Charlotte’s Web. Here we find the epitome of true friendship between Wilbur, the simple, bumbling pig, and that great intellectual, Charlotte the spider.  This relationship could have been doomed from the start were it not for Charlotte’s gracious choice to embrace a friend from another class and species. They were neighbors, and therefore friends. And there’s a lesson for us all. It didn’t matter to Charlotte that Wilbur could never return a favor in like kind. She was a giver, that spider. And with her final ounce of energy and her last centimeter of silk, she saved the life of her friend. That kind of sacrificial friendship doesn’t come quickly, and it isn’t cheap. It takes time and plain hard work to be a friend like Charlotte.

            And that’s why I love reading these old books to the littles in our family. Filled with wisdom and life lessons, they encourage us not only to be a good friend, but also to be on the lookout for good friends: a Pooh to be faithful to us, a Raggedy Anne to care for us, a Ratty to accept us, and a Charlotte to rescue us! 

Berry Patch Wisdom

           My 90-year-old mother and I were reminiscing. As her recollections of recent events become less accurate, her memories of times past sharpened into focus. We discussed her childhood with her 10 siblings, her courtship with my father, my youth, and the experiences of my now grown children during their visits to her home. I realized, as we talked, that my mother’s life could be measured in berry patches.

            Growing up in Maple Valley, Washington, she spent her summers outdoors catching frogs, building dams to create swimming holes in a nearby creek, and picking through tangles of blackberry vines for succulent fruit to fill her pail. She never lost her love of picking berries, both wild and “civilized,” and on summer mornings during my childhood we’d head for the U-Pick-Em Berry Patch. We’d kneel side by side in the warm dust gathering strawberries and mother would talk quietly. There were lessons to learn about planning ahead, the value of hard work, and enjoying the fruit of your labors (literally!). When we presented our berries for weighing I smiled innocently at the field owner with juice-stained lips while happily digesting a goodly portion of his profits.

            When I was older Mother took me into the woods behind the local cemetery to her favorite patch of wild trailing blackberries. It was hard work. The berries were small and the vines had needle-sharp thorns. Mother protected her hands and arms by cutting finger holes in the toes of old socks then pulled the sock tops up over the cuffs of her flannel shirt. I thought the whole process ridiculous. Blackberries ripened in the August heat. The woods were boring, the work tiring, and the thorns sharp! I wanted to be with my friends swimming at the lake and gossiping about the latest summer romances, not stuck in the woods in a sweaty flannel shirt, picking through berry brambles with my mother. Mother, however, considered it a great time for discussing the value of perseverance, diligence, and how good things come to those who wait. I knew she wasn’t talking about blackberries.

            After I married and had children, we lived on a series of military bases, none of which was near a berry patch. I bought my jams and jellies at the commissary and made my pies with fruit from produce stands or the frozen food aisle. But one summer we ended up staying with my parents while my husband attended a Navy training course. On a hot August afternoon my 6-year-old son burst through the back door.

 “Gramma, you’ve got tons and tons of berries just growing for free down there by the big trees! Can I have a bucket?”  His grin was as purple as his shirt.

“Sure honey,” she replied, throwing me a look of triumph as she took his sticky hand and headed out the door.

It was another opportunity to dispense berry patch wisdom and she wasn’t going to let it pass. In the days that followed, the two of them gathered gallons of blackberries. She made pies and jelly and froze bags and bags of the sun-ripened fruit.

Now, holding hands, we remembered the berry patches of her past. Back then time was measured in quarts and gallons, boxes and flats. How I wish I could return with her to a summer heady with the fragrance of warm berries. I wish I could recall all the things she told me; the things I hadn’t wanted to hear when I was younger and impatient. I regard her white hair, curled so carefully and remember when dark brown tendrils escaped from her cotton bandana, pulled askew by a prickly berry vine.

She looks at me with a twinkle in her eye. “You never did like to pick berries, did you?”

“No,” I admit, feeling a bit chastened even now.

“But you sure liked to eat them!” She laughs out loud and I catch a glimpse of the girl she must have been, chasing frogs and gulping handfuls of sweet wild berries.

Then she’s still again. “A person can learn an awful lot in a berry patch.”

I lay my head on her thin shoulder and sigh, “I know, mama. I know.”

Grammy Rules

I was a late bloomer. My children didn’t come along until I was in my 30’s and then they didn’t get married until they were near their 30’s and once I started collecting Social Security, I finally had my first grandchild. What this all adds up to is that for decades I had been something of an outsider, as my peers discussed grand-parenting. Although I had nothing to share, I decided to profit from their experiences and thus compiled my observations into what I call:

Grammy Rules

Rule #1: If you want to be called something other than plain old Grandma, make it clear before the child arrives. I personally know a Tu-Tu, a Nona, a Nana, a Gammie, and a Maw-Maw.

Rule #2: Don’t start any traditions you really don’t want to continue. . .forever! I know a woman who thought it would be tons of fun to have a 2-week “Granny Camp” one summer with her long-distance grand children. Now she spends 50 weeks every year prepping for this annual event that features a different theme each summer. Last year was “Space” and they spent time at the planetarium, made their own telescopes, created Astronaut costumes, and built a space ship out of an old refrigerator carton. She told me she’s already researching “Knights and Maidens” for next year. Yikes!!

Rule #3: Don’t speak your mind unless you’re willing to live with the consequences. My friend Linda says honesty is usually the best policy, but not so much when you’re a Grandma.  To illustrate she shared about a time when she and her husband flew in to watch their three grandchildren for ten days while their parents were out of town. Let’s just say that Linda’s style of parenting and her daughter-in-law’s weren’t quite in sync. After returning home, Linda sent a letter to her son and daughter-in-law saying, among other things (and this is a direct quote), “You had better make some changes over there! I’m telling you, the inmates are running the asylum!” She didn’t hear from her son for about 6 months and it has taken years to mend those fences! Her advice: “Unless they are killing one another, don’t say ANYTHING!”

Rule #4: Realize that you don’t have to live up to the examples set by any other grandmas. My friend Shelley is a gifted stitchery artist. She draws her own patterns on quilt blocks and then fills them in with tiny embroidery and counted cross-stitch, creating beautiful colored pictures which she crafts into personalized themed quilts for her grandchildren. My friend, Annie, plants gardens and discusses botany with her grand daughter and my friend Vicki taught her grandson to surf last summer. Jenna attends all her grandchildren’s sporting events and Laura and her grandson run in 5K’s. I get a migraine just imagining counted cross-stitch and my legs cramp up watching a 5K. I’m thinking a trip to the library might be fun, especially if we catch a ladybug on the way.

Rule #5: You are not the expert. There are about a gazillion of those online and in print and parents can find someone to support or debunk just about any child-rearing theory that has ever existed. Whether you think a baby should be lugged around until he’s 6 years old or put on a schedule at 6 weeks, NO ONE CARES! Just smile and nod and be thankful you get to hold the baby at least some of the time.

Rule #6: Never say, “I told you so!” When your children acknowledge some truth about childrearing that you mentioned months ago, let them think it was their own idea. Smile graciously and be quiet, letting them believe they are brilliant.

Rule #7: (And this is the most important rule of all.) Enjoy every scrap of time you have with your grand children. Drink in the sweet fragrance of their freshly washed hair. Nuzzle the softness of their little cheeks. Marvel at the perfect symmetry of their tiny toes. And realize that they are God’s way of rewarding you for all the years you spent raising their parents!

Spring Into Summer

         I get lots of catalogs. They always feature whatever is going to be in style for the coming season, so along about March they’re filled with shorts and swimsuits and cute little sundresses. They also feature women prancing around gracefully on sunlit beaches or basking on the decks of sailboats. I find it all very inspiring. It’s not that I am personally planning to do much prancing or basking, but they do serve to remind me that summer is coming and I will no doubt soon shed my layered look for something cooler and perchance a bit more revealing than my jeans and tunic length sweaters. Such thoughts inevitably lead me to consider “getting into shape.”

            Last Spring I mentioned this to my daughter, who has no need to consider such things since she is thirty-five years younger than I am and is busy “staying in shape.” She is a helpful daughter however, and in her gentle and loving way she suggested some ideas.

First, she downloaded an app to my smart phone that allows me to track everything I eat. Then this miraculous app magically totals up my calories all day long and lets me know when I have reached my daily goal … usually around noon. She also suggested engaging the services of a personal trainer at the local YMCA, where my husband and I are members. “You already go several times a week,” my daughter said. “I’m sure they have trainers.” True, I have been working out there for a couple of years, but I kind of like my routine: 30 minutes on the elliptical machine watching the morning news, then 30 minutes of exercises on a variety of machines and a floor mat while chatting with a friend. Although not super vigorous, at least it is a routine that allows me to assuage my guilt and break a sweat. But my daughter has a point. I suppose the trainers are there for a reason. Her last suggestion was to “find a kind of exercise you love,” but I can tell you right now that is not going to happen. I did, however check out a few options that are out there. After all, I want my adult daughter to know that I value her opinion.

            One morning I tagged along with a friend who goes to a Pilates class, although I was quickly disappointed to realize it had nothing to do with actual lattes. The class opened with some gentle stretches set to soothing music. I liked that. I could get used to that. But then the music kicked up a bit, and we started to do things that I truly believe are impossible. The instructor, an extremely calm and encouraging young woman, told us to lie on our mats and pull our navels into our backbones, then scoop our abdomens while stretching our arms forward and lifting our legs off the mat. She kept reminding us to “breathe deeply,” which was a good thing because I was starting to see little sparkly objects and getting light-headed from holding my breath. I’m not sure I ever saw my toes come up off the mat, and I can’t even tell you where in the world my navel was in relationship to my spine. We did this kind of thing for about 45 minutes. I learned a lot. In particular I learned that Pilates and I were not in love.

            So I signed up with a personal trainer at the Y. She was neither extremely calm nor encouraging, nor young, for that matter. She was, however, a very energetic and muscular 50-something from Eastern Europe who may or may not still be fighting the Cold War. “You need discipline and you need to vork hart!” she announced when we first met. She jabbed her index finger toward the elliptical machine: “I see you on that machine. You go nowhere!” I was about to point out that it was bolted to the floor, but I thought maybe that wasn’t what she meant. For the next hour she put me through my paces and demonstrated challenging exercises with painful sounding names like “plank” and “burpee” and “crunch.” The “dead bug” sounded a bit more doable but trust me, it wasn’t. I think I was more in the market for exercises with names like, “napping tiger,” “rocking granny,” and “meditating jellyfish.” After my first (and last) hour with Brunhilda even my hair hurt!

            When summer rolled around, I wasn’t in much better shape than I had been in March. Fortunately, I didn’t have much time to feel discouraged, because in late July the Fall catalogs started to show up in my mailbox. And I am happy to report that they were filled with a lovely selection of stylish jeans and figure flattering tunic tops. Maybe I’ll start thinking about shaping up next Spring.