My favorite people call me grandma!

I’m a grandmother!  Actually, I’ve been a grandmother for two decades since Ashley just turned 20 and is recently married.  Kayla is 12 so I’ve been practicing  grandparenting  for a while.   But since three-year-old Daniel blew into town, my grandmother flower has bloomed!

I had two wonderful grandmothers myself to serve as examples.  Grandmother was the textbook definition of a perfect grandmother.  She was an old-fashioned grandmother who told stories, let me sit in her lap while she sewed, got down on the floor and played Go Fish! with my cousins and me, made clothes for me and my doll, and loved me.  I was the first of her six grandchildren and the only girl, so I was special.  But Grandmother made all of us seem special.  She lived eight tortuous hours from Fort Worth so I only saw her a couple of times a year.

Gammy was very different from Grandmother.  She lived in Fort Worth, also, so I saw her all the time.  I was her only grandchild and she spoiled me.  She took me to her bridge parties where I sat in a corner, ostensibly reading a book, but watching all the ladies.  She picked me up from junior high on those “embarrassing days.”  She drove a white Thunderbird in which I took my driver’s test.  After my grandfather died, I spent Friday nights with her.  We went to movies and ate on trays in front of the television.  She was always there.  As I grew older, it made me tired.  I didn’t know it then, but she was also the perfect grandmother.

I’m somewhat of a mix of the two.  At first I thought only to strive for the example set by Grandmother.   I adored her.  I bake cookies, play games, snuggle in the big chair, knit caps and indulge at the grocery store.    I play checkers and Parcheesi.  However, I drive a red convertible Mustang, sing with the radio and watch the Twilight movies.  I know Justin Bieber.  I show up at parades, ball games, band concerts.  Kayla spends many weekends with me.    I’m always there.  If Kayla spits in a pond, I’m going to be there to see it!

I didn’t think I’d ever get to know Daniel since he lived in Florida.  However, circumstances brought his family back to Beaumont.  Daniel is autistic.  He doesn’t talk, but his non-verbal skills are sharp.  He lets me know what he does and doesn’t want.  He spent a month with me every day before he started school.  At first, it was all “Grandmother” for me.  We played with trucks and blocks and I sat in the little chairs.  (oof).  I served lunch on the Mickey Mouse plate and tried to get him to eat.  (ugh).  I tried to read books and play puzzles.  (aargh).  Then Daniel started school and “Gammy” kicked in.  I pick him up from school every afternoon in the red Mustang.  He knows me and the red car.  He climbs in the car seat himself now.  I sing “The Wheels on the Bus” and “Rawhide”  (rollin’, rollin’, keep them doggies rollin’).  We go home and watch Special Agent Oso and Little Einsteins. I watch him play with trucks and climb on the furniture.  He gives me “high five” for cookies, one for each hand.  He runs around the house and I chase him.  We have a ball.

I’m finding my own place now.  Part “Grandmother,” part “Gammy” and mostly me with a little dash of the comic strip "Lola."  Since I retired, “I have time.”  I spend a large part of it going from one grandchild to another.  Sometimes, I meet myself coming and going, but I’m trying to carry on the mission and keep the memories alive.

I’ve worn many hats in my life thus far.    This one fits the best!

A tale of two???

It really was déjà vu all over again.  Baseball legend and unwitting humorist Yogi Berra’s statement came true again last night.

Reference a previous post (scroll on down) to my big, black Lab-mix Manny’s bark marathon about a month ago.  He barked and barked.  I banged on the window.  He barked and barked.  I raised the window and yelled.  He barked and barked.  I brought him in.  It happened again last night, in the same three steps.  Add in, this time, I have a cold and needed all the sleep I could get.  Turns out that was nearly none. 

My grandson, Daniel, turns three this week.  He is bright, intelligent and smart too.  (nod to Yogi, here).  He does everything busy, inquisitive, truck-loving little boys do.  He just doesn’t talk.  He is autistic. 

By coincidence, Manny’s birthday is somewhere about this time too.  He is also three.  He should be more mature.  He digs holes.  He chews things…garden hoses, (déjà vu), dishtowels, my crochet projects.  And he barks. 

I expect you are thinking that I wish they’d trade.  That Daniel would talk, and Manny wouldn’t.  Not so.  The right combination of therapies will unlock Daniel, and he’ll let us know what’s on his mind.  I am absolutely certain he understands everything we say.  He just isn’t ready to comment.  And for Manny too.  He barks in the daytime at things he sees, and people don’t bother me much.  He barks in the nighttime at things he sees or thinks he sees.  And I feel safe.  Sleepy, yes, but safe.

Happy birthdays, boys.

I have a little garden…

Isak Dinsen had a farm in Africa.  I have a little garden on the side of my house.  Not a vegetable garden, not a flower garden, but a private little garden with an assortment of things I like.   Growing as best they can…hydrangeas in pots (my very, very favorite), ferns, elephant ears, begonia, ivy crawling up a trellis and a pitiful attempt at herbs.   There are stone cats and frogs and turtles peeping through the foliage. 

This garden is in that usually wasted space on the side of one’s house where no one ever goes.  It begins even with the front of the house and ends at the back with gates to the front and the backyard where the heathens play.  We enclosed the space as a private place for Clemmie, my elderly and blind dachshund, when we put the pool in.  Turns out she was the first one in the pool anyway.  But it’s Clemmie’s garden.  Clemmie is gone now and two pretenders to the throne occupy that space… and me.

Inspired by the Pier One commercials last summer for “Wonderland,” I have been diligent in trying to keep the garden going.  The drought hasn’t helped.  The herbs have died and been reborn more times than I ever expected.  But the garden is the one place I have faithfully watered.  The grass patch grows well there, the ivy that was down to one small sprig after last winter’s brutal cold is back and thriving, the fern’s tiny fragile frond screamed at me on the way to the trash can and showed me by reviving itself.  Encouraged by nature’s industry, I brought in a wicker loveseat, table, wrought iron trellis.  It’s a pretty place. 

I worked outside today.  My backyard is a series of gopher holes courtesy my large lab and his companions.  The cinch bugs have formed their crop circles.  My lackadaisical approach to watering shows.  It’s not Home and Garden.  But as I opened the gate to the garden, the sense of calm and serenity was physical.

There’s a lesson here.  We can be neglectful and lazy or just too busy.  We can be extreme in our tempers as Nature has been with us this year.   But there is in us, a tiny spark, like the sprig of ivy and the fern frond, that will endure.   We must be careful not to give up too soon or throw it away.  A little love, faith and water can work miracles. 

A little rain would help too.

While my heart tends to wander…

While my heart tends to wander, Jesus always finds me.

I’m a thief.  I’m also a Facebook freak.  I love to look at random people’s pages and see what they have written about themselves and look at their photos.  People I don’t know, but who know someone I do know.  Thereby, there’s a connection, of sorts.  That’s where I came across this statement.  It was this person’s religious view.  And it was so true, so to the point and so real, I had to steal it.  And, of course, since I don’t know the person, it didn’t seem appropriate to attribute.  So I’m a thief.  Hopefully, God understands why I had to do it and forgives.  I’m sure He does since it applies so forcefully.

My heart does tend to wander.  As does my attention.  (Yes, I’m the person who stopped emptying the dishwasher to go clean the mailbox.   The same one who pulled down the attic stairs on my head because I was watching something in the street.)  But back to the wandering.  I have all the good intentions in the world.  I come out of church every Sunday full of plans for the week, the month, my life.  They disappear like vapor after lunch.  Oh, I remember them and regret.  Sometimes I make lists because I like to cross things off.  All too often they just get transferred to other lists.

Lucky for me, Jesus does always find me.  And I try again.  And I get one thing, maybe two, done -- things that are for Him, things for someone’s benefit.  It keeps me going.

Thank you, Jesus.

There's a dog barking...

The twilight bark was a beautiful thing.  In the Disney movie 101 Dalmatians, the dogs used “the twilight bark” to send messages which at one point saved the puppies.  Around there, though, it’s more like the midnight bark, the full moon bay or the dark of night rumble.  And it’s happening tonight.  Thank goodness it’s not my dog – this time. 

It was my dog earlier this week.  The full moon was very bright and my neighbors have a spotlight one could land a plane by.  The result was a yard full of moving shadows as the breeze stirred the branches.  The further result was my 90-pound wussy dog becoming a bundle of nerves and barking at random things and at random times.  All night.   At various times, I opened the window and yelled and I went out and yelled.  Then he’d start up again.  At 4 o’clock, fearful of a visit by the police or worse, I took pity on my neighbors (and myself) and brought him in.  That innocuous statement is fraught with danger.  Bringing him in has inherent dangers of destruction.  This is the dog who, in his recent past, took my BlackBerry outside and made it into a mangled mess causing the folks at Verizon to shake their heads.  So the idea of my sleeping with the demolition derby inside was troubling. 

And he wasn’t tired.  Apparently the barking had energized him.  He came in hopping like he had consumed five cans of Red Bull.  But I was very tired from his marathon of barking.  I bundled up my valuables as best I could in my sleepy stupor and gave it up.  Fortunately the appeal of my bed interested him and I wound up with a giant, furry bedfellow.   For a small piece of the night, the neighborhood had peace.

Tonight, it’s not mine.  But the doggy telegraph is buzzing and I am awake.  I hope some puppies somewhere are being saved or someone’s house is being protected.  It’s not mine.  He’s snoring in the sunroom. 

What's in a word?

The new buzz word in education is “bell ringer.”  That is a euphemism for the activity at the beginning of class which engages the student and makes him eager to dive into the lesson.  That’s the denotation.

The connotation is quite different.  “Bell ringer” conjures the image of the Salvation Army Kettle Drive every holiday season.  The Salvation Army does amazing work with the Kettle Drive, employing workers and using the contributions in worthwhile ways.  They are to be applauded.  However, their work depends solely on donations from shoppers on their way somewhere else.

Education is not a matter of “donations.”  True, education is often augmented by the donations of teachers above their salaries, as any teacher who has opened his or her pocketbook knows.   There is also the donation of time, energy and ingenuity.  But that comes from love for the student and for the concept of teaching.  Donation does not come from the student.  Students must be challenged.  They need to see the reward of discovering something they didn’t know or hadn’t thought of in quite that way.   

This is not a matter of putting a nickel in the kettle of learning.  It is much more.  This phrase is demeaning to educators and students alike.

Find another term.  Please!