Category Archives: family

Grandma Stories

children's books, family, , ,

IMG_2399Today I read the early reader Mouse Soup to the grandchildren. In the first pages a mouse is caught by a badger who is planning to make soup out of him. But the mouse thinks fast and tells the badger, “This soup will not taste good. It has no stories in it. Mouse soup must be mixed with stories to make it taste really good.”

Stories do make life tasty. I wish I had the skill to share the many humorous and heartwarming stories that have filled my days this week while I am at Pippin’s in the northern reaches of our fair state. Many people who haven’t been to California have the impression that there is not much northward beyond the San Francisco Bay Area, but I live beyond that, and I still have to drive six hours to get to Oregon. It’s about five hours to Pippin’s.

The weather has been a constant source of interest and conversation, of course, being the thing we live in, assaulting or caressing or charming my senses by turn. There was the melting day of my arrival when it was 105°, all the way to refreshing thundershowers that started a cooling trend, so that this week the highs have been in the 80’s and 90’s.

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The cats are draped all over the house because it’s a bit cooler indoors. Duncan considers Jamie his special responsibility and often sleeps on the changing table. If Jamie were comfortable lying on such a lump, the cat would be content to stay in place while I change the baby. But Jamie complained, so I shoved Duncan to the side.

When I step outdoors at night I start to imagine that it is 30 years ago and our family is camping in the mountains, because in the warmth the trees are expressing their individual and familiar flavors, taking me back. The stars are just as bright, too — and I don’t even have to sleep in a tent.

sprinkler 6-16It was Sunday upon returning from Oregon and Pathfinders’ family that the thunder and lightning foretold the dumping of rain. It splashed down just after we got the sleepy children in the door. That gave Pippin some help in keeping the zinnia seedlings watered.

I might yet do that job, but for several days I’ve been barely keeping up with my main reason for being here, to mind the children ages 6, 3, and 1. Today was my last day of being the only adult on duty for twelve hours at a time.

The six-year-old is the sort of person A.A. Milne was writing about in the poem in Now We Are Six: “Now that I’m six, I’m as clever as clever. I think I’ll be six now for ever and ever.” I could see that if I didn’t want to be constantly on the receiving end of his management, carrying out his ideas, I had to have a plan of my own.

So I told Scout we were going to have Grandma Camp for three days. He insisted on changing the name of the program, to something like Grandma Half-Camp, and I conceded that it was not what one normally thinks  of as camp, given that activities have to accommodate the shifting needs and schedule of a toddler.

I stayed up late the night before Day 1 planning our activities: periods of quiet, such as me reading to the children, or them playing with play dough, alternating with dancing or jumping on the trampoline. We would take walks, maybe two a day, for Grandma’s sake mostly.

jamie pyle
Jamie peruses Bearskin.

Scout does not enjoy Alone Time, though his home here in the forest and his liberty to explore would be any boy’s dream. Even jumping on the trampoline is only fun if someone is throwing balls at you or providing a listening ear to the expounding of your thoughts. It’s a challenge to meet the needs of other members of the family when someone like that is sucking all the attention and airspace.

One of my favorite things to do with children is to read aloud, so I made sure to schedule in lots of time for that. This week we have read dozens of books, including many fairy tales, some of which were not very familiar to me, like a lovely version of The Snow Queen by Susan Jeffers, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Bearskin by Howard Pyle.

Ivy loves the book of nursery rhymes Pocketful of Posies, illustrated by the amazing Sally Mavor, and we like to examine the details of the pictures, like the flower petals and leaves that make up skirts of many of the ladies, especially Mary, Mary’s “pretty maids all in a row.” It was the selection for our Poetry Time one morning, which followed Prayer and Bible and me trying to teach them the simple song, “Isaiah Heard the Voice of the Lord.”

A Far-Fetched Story by Karin Cates is a favorite of mine since I gave it to this family four years ago. It’s actually more appropriate to read in the fall, because the story revolves around the gathering of firewood in preparation for winter. But it’s a lot of fun, and if my husband had read it he’d have said I am like the woman of whom we hear in the first paragraph:

“Early one autumn, long ago and far away, the woodpile was higher than the windowsills. But even so, there was not enough firewood to suit Grandmother.”  When one after another of her family sent to get a few more pieces for the wood box come back with nothing more than a tall tale, she says, “Well, that’s a far-fetched story!” Now Ivy has taken to trying out this comment in various conversations.

We only took one walk — so far. It was too hot much of the time, and at other times it seemed that either Ivy or Jamie was napping. But on that walk Scout found lots of lichens that he laid in a row on the back of the stroller along with a branch that Ivy said looked like a seahorse.

ivy bob 16-6

I danced most days with the children to some rousing instrumental music from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s, as is their routine. Their style is quite untaught and hyperkinetic, involving lots of running around the perimeter of a rug in the living room.

But this evening they were dancing without me, and after a while Scout came proudly into the kitchen where I was making dinner, wanting to show me the results of his efforts. “Grandma, feel the back of my head!” I felt his damp hair. “Does it feel wet? That’s just my sweat, from dancing! It’s Swinging Man Sweat!” And off he went to swing some more.

My pace of life of late, combined with my inability to understand my various mobile devices, have frustrated my documentarian desires, and I had to stay up till midnight, after both parents returned, to get this post done.  I may have some more “stories” to tell before I go home, and I hope they will be good food for our souls.

I soak up homey and farmy vibes.

agriculture, family, nature, other gardens, , , , ,

gl3 NL hat weddingMy travels over a long weekend were for the purpose of attending my nephew’s wedding, held very near my old high school and home in the agricultural middle of California, the Central Valley. If the event had begun any earlier than 4:00 in the afternoon, much sunburning would have occurred; as it was, the two sunhats I retrieved from my car were traded around for a few hours among several of our family group, of both sexes.

At the reception, descendants of my parents, with their spouses, were seated all together at one of the long tables on the grass, and my own clan took up two-thirds of those chairs. No seat assignments had been made beyond assigning us a table, and as I was the oldest — the matriarch? — I sat at one end, what might have been the head of the table. But truly I didn’t sit there very much. The three-year-olds Liam and Ivy kept me busy, fetching drinks or wedding cake, or taking them up front to dance in a circle with me. Do the books on how introverts can survive parties ever talk about the strategy of hanging out with the preschoolers?

It was fun to introduce those two to the aunts and uncles and cousins they hadn’t met since they were old enough to be introduced. “Ivy, this is your Aunt Cairenn. She is my sister; we used to be little girls like you….”  The children were all happy to shake hands and be cordial, though reserved. And my heart filled and was satisfied to see all the love shared among the younger generationsgl3 wedding trees and across generations, even though many of them rarely see each other.

Over the two layover days I spent time at three houses, each situated in the middle of a different citrus grove. Two belonged to my siblings and one was the home of a man I grew up with in a bygone era that seems a short while ago; we used to ride our bicycles between the rows of orange trees and slide down the golden hills on pieces of cardboard. While I wasn’t paying attention, my brother and sister and my friend Dick were learning the art of farming, so that now they can carry on in their parents’  tradition and even in some of their groves.

I had the chance to play among the trees again, this time with Liam and Ivy and Scout, who in the absence of store-bought toys were making do with old oranges that had fallen off the trees, with snails among the dead leaves, and with a trowel in the dirt. The smell of the trees and of the Bermuda grass lawn, and of the soil, and the air that stayed warm into the evening when we watched the Black Phoebes swooping and scooping up insects… All of these sensations and moments added up to create in me a dreamily contented mood.

2016 wedding Soldier corn hole DL

mt view-by K crp

My nephew the groom partly grew up in the same house that I mostly grew up in, that his grandfather built. I stayed three nights with my sister who is another of his aunts; she and her husband farm mandarins and oranges for his mother and for themselves, and live in a house they designed to have a view of the Sierra Nevada much like this one from her neighborhood (taken by someone else).

It was fun to be with country people who are daily involved with plants and animals different from my usual. In addition to the snails and phoebes mentioned above, I learned about or interacted with:

—A frog that I met in the bathroom. It was at midnight and I didn’t want to frog in bucket at nancy's cropbother with him right then, so I went back to bed and he disappeared for two days, during which time everyone teased me about my tall tale. Then he was found in a different bathroom, and I was judged to be sane after all. Here he is in a bucket.

—A house finch who flew down the chimney into the ashes; I helped Nancy use an old towel to surround and collect the tiny bird and carry him outdoors.

—Gophers come down from the foothills in droves to feast on the roots of all the watered orange trees and vegetables, etc. that my friend Dick grows on 50 acres, and their tunnels contribute to the erosion of the sloping orchard land. His son explained all this to me and showed me the traps they put into the tunnels, trying to keep the population of pillagers at bay. It’s a constant and fairly hopeless battle that must be fought nonetheless.

—More snails: Did you know that some snails are carnivorous and eat other species of snails? Yep. The brown snail is a pest in the orange groves, but the Decollate snail ignores the trees and goes after the brown snails. My brother is in the field of citrus research and one nephew is a farm advisor on such matters. I lured them into the grove with my questions and we scratched around under the trees trying to find some Decollate snails so I could remember how they look different. Later I did find an empty shell at my sister’s. You can see one on Wikipedia’s page about them.cara cara vs blood

—Pink oranges. Have you heard of Cara Cara oranges? I hadn’t; I must not have been spending enough time with all the citrus growers, because already Sunkist is selling lots of Cara Caras — they are mainstream. Friend Dick is growing them, as well as…

—Berries: I had brought with me boxes of blueberries from Costco for a family breakfast, fruit that seems to have been grown in Salinas, California, not far from the coast. But even in the hot Central Valley they are growing blueberries now, more of them than are produced in any other area of the U.S. I learned about this from Dick as we stood on a patio overlooking his garden, and I could well imagine how the earlier spring might sweeten up the fruit. His son ran down and brought back some blackberries bigger than my thumb and mm-mm….yes. The flavor lingered on my tongue as I drove away.

Another nephew is marrying in October, so I will have a good reason to visit again and soak up the vibes of my childhood stomping grounds, and chat with farmers about their crops and the weather and the birds. I know that time will be here before I know it; I should read this post again about a week before my departure, to remind me of the joy I am likely to have once again.

Peace is not a project, but a gift.

books, family, my garden,

P is so easy. First off, there are the plans I have starting Sunday, to see all of my children over the course of only one week!! (I see that I have nicknamed three of my children with P names, too.) Kate is flying out from DC to see all the family before she starts her new job, and we will make a grand zigzagging tour to see the families of Soldier, Pathfinder, Pippin and Pearl, in that order. p- garden with olive pots pre-plant

So I need to get my place in order here, which mostly means planting. This week I bought a couple dozen pots of ornamentals, because I don’t have the patience to do the seed thing right now, and also I wouldn’t be here to water them next week when they would need constant moisture. I bought pincushion flowers and penstemons, just to mention the plants with “P” names.

My recent method of filling in the spaces in my landscape works like this: I go to p pincushion flowers pre-plant crthe nurseries and see if they have anything that looks familiar to me, that I know from experience or from my research last summer that is both unthirsty and pleases me. I bring the plants home, and wander around for a while studying my 3-D horticultural canvas that has already been extensively “painted.” Each plant has color and shape, and I try to guess if it might, in a year or two, complement and fit in with what is already here. If I tried to do this process more systematically, it would not happen.

For five months I’ve been looking at pots to buy, in which to plant my two mismatched olive trees, and this week I finally made the big decision and brought them home. I’ve been using my little cart quite a bit to haul these pots, bags of planting mix, and pavers to put under the potted olives.

p seeds poppy culinary

I’m still not sure that grey-white is a good color for the space, but it seems prudent to wait on that judgment until after the garden has grown up more around them. Twice in one week I heard the adage about what to expect from a newly installed landscape: The first year it sleeps, the second year it creeps, the third year it leaps. If after the leap, I decide I don’t like the color of these pots, I could paint them. They are made of fiberglass and have a matte and somewhat rough finish that would take paint well.

I did spy a packet of appealing poppy seeds when I was in the nursery — it’s risky going to those places! — and they can be planted in the fall, so that’s good.

After all my labors in the afternoon yesterday I  slept well, to a point. Then I was awake for several pre-dawn hours. At first my mind fretted about all those projects that loom in my life, most of which never even get started, everything from cleaning the garage and pruning the rosemary, re-landscaping the front yard and remodeling the great room, to what I suspect are more important things like writing letters and visiting distant friends. But I couldn’t do much about any of that at 4:00 a.m., so I stayed where I was and continued my reading in the novel Laurus.

It is a philosophical book in the way that The Brothers Karamazov is, and a book that reveals the depths of the human spirit across the ages the way that Kristin Lavransdatter does. (Thanks to my reader Beth for reminding me of that.) It makes me think about the essential goal of my own life, far beyond “projects,” to acquire the Holy Spirit.

Both of my housemates were gone overnight, and though I’m sure the house was no quieter for the lack of them breathing in other rooms, I became aware of the silence, and was surprised by it. No traffic sounds intruded, no clocks ticked, and I felt the quietness like a tonic to my body, soul, and spirit, calming even my thoughts. Maybe the Lord woke me so that He could give me that gift, because the silence had presence, and it was the presence of Peace.