WordSisters

Category: Memories

  • Lessons Learned on a Sick Day

    She was up barfing at four. When I arrived hours later, she had pink cheeks, a kitty ears headband, and was play-ready. She assured me it wasn’t really being sick to barf, but pre-school wanted her to stay home. She was sad Mom wasn’t staying home, sad to miss her friends, but game for whatever Grandma brought to the day.

    Lemon-lime soda was no longer needed. Water was fine. Munching many plain saltines and a cup of dry cereal made up for a missed breakfast. Within minutes we were on the sofa deep in a Brain Quest card deck working through sequencing challenges, adding, matching letters and words, talking about calendars and telling time on old-fashioned round clocks.

    Those clocks sparked the first pronouncement of preschool wisdom. She thought I must have had a clock with numbers in a circle because I am old. I corrected that statement to older. She didn’t buy the change. A teenager had given me the same look when I asked if the general store in a small town carried watches.

    With interest in Brain Quest waning, I suggested we start an art project. She turned down the idea because she said she loved to learn things. There wasn’t anything better she could have said if she hadn’t finished with a sympathetic sigh before sharing that it was sad that old people couldn’t learn stuff. That’s not true I replied and told her about a friend who learned another language to work with immigrants, another friend attending university classes, my own tap-dancing studies. She frowned and said maybe I had special friends. That I do.

    Even at her age I couldn’t do backward summersaults, so she had me at that, but I didn’t expect to frighten her when I got down on the floor to do a plank next to her. Old people could get hurt doing planks she said. I replied anybody could get hurt doing planks, but we were both strong because we could hold a plank for almost a minute. Then I sat back to watch her attempt head stands and intricate twirls.

    We rounded out the day with dressing the cat, coloring paper dolls, and baking a chocolate cake. She looked tired, but happy. Her mother looked tired after an important work day. And grandma drove home, happily tired out after an unexpected play day.

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  • Three Keys . . . to What?

    Three Keys . . . to What?

    My key ring has a nice heft—it’s big enough that I can feel it in my down coat pocket even when I’m wearing puffy mittens.

    Part of the bulk comes from a beat-up green aluminum bottle opener my son gave me when I admired his. I used to keep a miniature red Swiss Army knife in my purse because it had a bottle opener, which was handy on picnics for opening pop, and occasionally, beer. After I’d thrown away several forgotten knives at airport security, I wanted a different solution.

    There’s my house key, of course. My car key is on a flimsier wire loop so I can easily give it to service managers at the dealer.

    But what are those other three keys?

    I think the small silvery rectangular key is for locking luggage. But what piece of luggage and why? I never lock my luggage. It’s fabric covered and would be easy to slit if someone wanted my stuff. A lock would be superfluous, a waste. Years ago, did one of my kids ask me to hang onto it? If so, why do I still have it? Maybe it’s a subconscious reminder of the joy of getting away. I love traveling, seeing new places and cultures, visiting my son in California, and seeing my siblings in Ohio.

    Then there’s a slightly grubby round brass key. The numbers 293 are etched on one side. Hmmm. Does it open a padlock? The kind I might have used on a gym locker? But where’s the lock? It really doesn’t matter, because although I exercise, I rarely work out at a gym where I’d need to lock up my belongings. So it’s a crazy artifact of past good intentions.

    The last key is to my parents’ house in Ohio, one they gave me so I could easily come and go when I visited. Or get in if something happened to them. So I’d always feel welcome. But now my parents are gone and the house belongs to my brother. He doesn’t mind that I have a key to use when I visit, but it isn’t really necessary. I’m only there when he’s there. But that key unlocks a place and time I wish I could still visit.

  • Barbie, Midge, Robin and Me

    The father of my best friend Robin owned a tool business franchise which provided two young girls with opportunities to fill bins in his wonderful red truck, to bake cookies he could share with customers, and access to dozens of interesting empty boxes.

    Robin attended 95thStreet School and I went to parochial school, but we had matching pencil boxes in our desks. Most kids found a source for cigar boxes, but we had decorated paper boxes not needed in his truck into unique containers with compartments for pencils, color pencils, scissors and such. We didn’t know each other’s school friends, but we shared something deeper: hours of playing with Barbie, Midge, Skipper and Ken in wonderful houses, stores, airplanes and schools constructed out of even more empty boxes.

    When the weather was cold, Robin’s basement became a town for an afternoon of play. Her Barbie had a flight attendant outfit, mine had a tailored suit. We shared a plastic pseudo-Barbie car that took one to the airport and the other to an imaginary office. Neither of us knew anyone who worked in an office or flew on planes so eventually the story turned back to all the dolls sitting at little box desks with one Barbie, attired in a skirt and sweater, called teacher.

    Robin had an older sister and we both had moms so we knew real women weren’t built like our Barbie crew, but we didn’t know flight attendants, nurses, doctors, brides, or girls who wore wonderful ballgowns. Our parents didn’t buy us Barbie’s plastic house or bedroom furniture, but Robin’s dad shared tape and scissors and boxes to build furniture and a variety of workshop towels to make blankets. We stood next to him in his wood working shop as he made small frames and blocks that could extend our Barbie furniture building. We learned how to sand.

    Our Barbie phase lasted less than a year, a simple time when we creatively explored, built and did what kids are supposed to do. Parents helped feed our play then stepped back. And we did okay. And I wish I could say thanks to Robin’s father and all the other parents who stepped out over the years with camping trips or garden planting or an evening at the opera to expand the world beyond the girl toys of Barbie and her crew. And those who do that today as  they parent another generation of kids.

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