A Summer Party Needs a Summer Party Dress

Goodnight and I have been invited to a party. 

At the beginning of the summer, I bought her a dress so she’s all set for something to wear.  I, on the other hand, decided it was time to get something for myself.  I’m not talking about a major splurge, but just something that doesn’t look like I’m coming straight from work.  You know what I mean.  Work clothes can have that ‘work’ look about them.

So, I decided to see if I could go green and find something suitable for a summer party at my favorite thrift store.  Aside from the prices, I really support the idea of recycling of perfectly wonderful goods.  I always have good luck there, but I haven’t ever gone looking for a summer party dress.  Not a dressy dress, just something cool for this unrelenting heat, and yet looks . . . casual and fresh.

It took me less time that I thought it would – but come to think of it, I may have spotted the dress last week and didn’t give it a second thought because I couldn’t wear it for work.  I didn’t even bother to try it on.  I marched right over to the frivolous ornamentation* section with my dress to see if I could go green there, too.  It was my lucky day, I guess.

I think I’m set for the party.

The guest of honor won’t give a hoot about what we are wearing.  He is only three years old and will be more concerned about what’s hidden under the gift wrapped packages we’ll be taking with us.  That’s as it should be.  I’m glad he was born at this time of the summer so we have a reason to get together with people we know for good chats, good food, and lots of smiles.

*I once dated a fellow who referred to jewelry as frivolous ornamentation.  I dumped the guy, but kept the phrase.

“Coldness Bucket” – is getting a workout

Goodnight makes me smile with some of the things she comes up with.  I’m her grandmother, so it should be that way, I suppose.

I have a one-gallon thermal jug with a pour-spout that I keep filled with ice and water on these hot summer days.  It stays on the counter in the kitchen and makes for easy access to a cool drink of water without having to open the refrigerator or freezer.  I know . . . there are more modern/fancier appliances that reduce the constant door-opening by having ice and water on the outside of the door.  But the thermal jug works fine for us.

Goodnight calls it the ’coldness bucket.’  Her term is so much more refreshing! 

Refreshing is welcome this time of the summer:  high temps, high humidity, high dew points, and a silent, stubborn, uncooperative, old, dead central air unit that tripped the circuit breaker and will absolutely not allow it to be tripped back!  . . . . . . . and Gram with a lap full of wool to knit up!

Maybe I should sit on the coldness bucket while I’m knitting.

Kids Can Make a Difference!

I am very proud of Goodnight!

We belong to a church that has an annual fall festival.  She’s had fun attending most of the time, but as she’s gotten older, she’s found less and less that appeals to her.

After the festival last year, there were some evaluation forms available for people to fill out and express their likes, dislikes, etc, and to offer suggestions.  They were available in church and when GN saw them she whispered, “Gram!  We gotta fill these out.  There’s NOTHING for the teens to do. The games are for ’babies’ or adults and there’s too much drinking.  The teens want to come but just get into trouble because there’s nothing for them to do.”

(Furthermore, the teens put in a lot of volunteer time to work booth games or serve food, etc., and get overlooked when it comes to having fun for themselves.  GN is a GREAT face-painter and has done that for a few years already.)

So, I encouraged her to write down what she told me, but to write it in a constructive way.  I filled out a form as well. 

We went one step further more recently.  Sometime after the forms were made available, we had a change of pastors at the church.  After he had enough time to get settled into his new role, we asked to speak with him after a service.

I let GN do the talking.  She did a FABULOUS job of sticking up for her classmates and their older siblings.  I’m impressed.  She even brought up the drinking and the obvious danger we ran into last year.  Even in the afternoon, one mother was too drunk to drive her child home, and staggering adults were bumping into people.  GN laid it all out but with not so much criticism as concern for the welfare of minors and the inclusion of them in a parish event.

This past week, a notice about the upcoming festival was printed in our church bulletin.  There will be a teen concert and some actual rides, neither of which has happened in the years we’ve been there.  There have been booth games, like a fish pond and picking a number on a floating duck, but those appeal to the younger kids and not the ones GN’s age, really.  Some new family events were listed, as well.

We haven’t heard about the sale of wine and beer yet, but if they sell it, I hope the teen concert is chaperoned to the extent that no staggering adults can be allowed in.

Goodnight is excited about the changes and looking forward to the festival.  I told her to get her friends together for the teen concert and she said, “Oh, don’t worry, Gram.  They’ll be there!”

Way to go, kiddo!

“HOW CAN YOU BE SO CALM!!!!!!!????”

I won’t share the rest of Goodnight’s interrogative.  It isn’t important in the end.  She just named off some situations that should have ruffled my feathers permanently.

I have no idea where my answer came from, but apparently it was the right thing at the right time. (My sincere thanks to whatever aligned properly for it to come out of my mouth, BTW).

Gram:  Because the moment isn’t the goal.  The lifetime is the goal.  Too much can happen in a moment that affects the lifetime.

(“and because I’m older than you by a LOT more of those moments” – Gram whispers to herself.)

There was a time when I could spank, for that was all I knew.

There was a time when I could SCREAM ‘cuz that’s what adults do.’

There was a time, more bruised than now, I later learned, was RAGE. 

Coulda, woulda, . . . but did not,  ’cuz I tore up that page!

I took a clean and blank new sheet and put the past behind.

Upon the sheet, upon my life, I wrote this note, “Be kind.”

                                                                                   g.g.

Now I’m going to heave a great grey-green, greasy* Gram . . .  sigh and go shopping for the supplies for a hearty batch of cookies and have a baking session with . . . . the one who is less . . . calm. 

*sorry, but I love the alliteration in that line from The Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling. (and for you knitters out there, I just spelled his first name wrong and then caught my own error.  ‘Rudyarn’

“LOCKOUT’S OVER!!!” – Super Scarf # 37 (with an extra Yippeee from me)

The NFL Lockout is over!  The players voted to to approve the new CBA (collective bargaining agreement).  That means we are back to football . . . . . and none too soon for me.

But . . . . hey now!!!  Let’s celebrate the deal with a Super Scarf, why don’t we?  I had it ready and waiting the . . . . . I don’t know . . . locker room, maybe.  Since I had already designed the Lockout Super Scarf, per my Indy brother’s suggestion, I decided to have one ready on the off-chance we changed this much-too-long off-season to some serious gridiron business.

My scarf shows an unlocked padlock and with keys to the settlement that must look like bright rays of sunshine to the Indianapolis 2012 Super Bowl Host Committee.  So for them, it’s not only Game On!, but it’s Super Bowl On! as well!

I knit the keys that unlocked the padlock and arranged them like rays of light emitting from the official 2012 Super Bowl patch. :-)

I just checked the Super Scarf Project website and they show a total of 7,027 scarves collected.  Three cheers for those who kept making scarves through the lockout!

Letting Go . . . . . Again and Sobbing at the Cemetery

We’ve made it through another Balloon Day.  They always seem to get off to a tentative start, but they come to a peaceful conclusion in the end.

I wait and take my cues from Goodnight.  I can take care of myself, but she still needs a hitching post to keep her in the right place – or at least as close to the right place as possible.

Last year she told me that she wanted to send 13 balloons this year because it would be her first year as a teenager.  Today, though, she changed her mind and decided that one balloon was enough.  She wrote a large #13 with a black marker on her balloon, content that the message of her teenage years would not be lost.  I tied a small sprig of baby’s breath to my white balloon and we headed to the cemetery.

It was a perfectly cloudless sky – great for watching balloons make their journey skyward.

As we stood together, checking the wind and preparing to let the balloons go, a car pulled up in the vicinity.  It stopped, parked and the driver stayed inside the car.  It was slightly disconcerting, but we were there for our own reasons and carried on.

We took our photos: Goodnight by her mother’s resting place, and then, of course, the balloons.  The car remained still – with its occupant inside.

We stepped to the side a few feet, where a large stone wall could block our view from the person in the car.  I wondered if it was someone who was waiting for his/her own time with a loved one.

Goodnight let go of the balloons and we watched them float away.

                  S

               D

            R

         A

      W

   P

U

It must have been the longest we’ve ever been able to stand there and watch our balloons.  The breeze was gentle so they didn’t blow away too quickly and there were no clouds to hide them before we could ready our hearts to leave.

We walked back to our car and headed out of the cemetery.  As we pulled away, we had to pass the car that had been parked there the entire time.  Grief was painfully apparent on the gentleman’s face.  He was quite a bit younger than I am.  He was sobbing into his sandwich and not able to keep up with wiping his tears.

There was a part of me that wanted to stop and open the opportunity for him to speak, but I also know that sometimes that ‘gentle touch on one’s sleeve’ I spoke of in my previous post, is too painful and too distracting.  I drove quietly away.  Goodnight and I had a lunch date to keep and promises to make about moving forward on our journey.

Besides, I think the gentleman’s verbs are not as long past tense as mine.

I know you know what I mean.~

The Language of Grief – Verb Tenses

Do not touch me gently on the sleeve today.  The tender gesture would but distract me from my thoughts and kind tho’ it may be, the moment is not affordable to me.

I have pondering to do .  I’m pondering the language spoken by those who know loss and grief.

I have done my duty as a grieving mother and given in to all the proper verb tenses: had a child, raised a daughter, held her in my arms, lost a life, kissed her good-bye.  How helpless to give in to tenses when speaking of one’s child!

Given the choice, I would rather smile at her, call her on the phone, and eat my meals with her.  I would sew more dresses for her and attend more movies with her.  I would laugh with her and listen to her dreams.  Sadly, those verbs have taken on the past tense, too:  smiled, called, ate, sewn, attended, laughed, listened . . . .

I am pondering today, because my granddaughter slips into present tense from time to time when speaking of her mother.  I notice it, but never correct her.  On a very rare occasion, I slip, too.  I correct myself, but only because I find it so glaring after all these years.  It happened often early on.  The heart is not so willing to give up present tense verbs, I’ve found.  It is only my mind that finds it a glaring error.  My heart considers it normal.

One present tense verb remains for me, however, and for what days I still left have to count as mine, it will lift my heart above the sadness of the verbs lost to the past.  Love.  I can still love – her.  I can always love my Angel. 

For the rest of my days, as more verbs let go of their final grip from do to done, I still cling to ‘love’ in its present tense form and expect so much more because of it. 

Shadow Box – thrift store rescue.

In April, my mother gave me two hand-knit scarves: one knit for her by her mother (my grandmother), and one that Mom knit for my dad.  She wanted me to have them because I was the next generation to knit in the family line.  I was so deeply touched by the sentiment, that I knew I wanted to do something special to display the family scarves.

Along with the two from my mother, I have one that I knit for Officer Friendly and one that Angel knit for herself.

I recently found the perfect shadow box to display the scarves.  I knew I would find something if I just kept looking and waiting for the right thing to show itself.  I found it at a thrift shop and it was in perfect shape, from hinge to hangers.

The little red scarf at the top is the one my grandmother knit for my mother.  Mom remembers ‘catching’ my gram knitting it before Christmas.  The next one, the black one, is the one my mother knit for my dad.  I remember him wearing it around his neck and tucked into his overcoat.  The one with red, white, grey and black, is the scarf I knit for Officer Friendly.  I bought him a sweater one Christmas and knit a scarf and hat to match the sweater.  When he passed away, I gave away the sweater, but kept the hat and scarf.  The scarf on the bottom is one that Angel knit for herself.  Oh, how she loved the blues and purples! 

In the Garden with Goodnight and Advice from ‘Mr. Curly’.

NOTE:  I added a brief update to the bottom of this post.  We had to wait for the paint to dry to take a photo and tuck Mr. Pebble under GN’s pillow.  (Scroll down for the photo.)

Goodnight and I went out to check on the progress of our garden – the one that I got at half price because my knee injury delayed my planting.  She chose some interesting things this year – the eggplant in particular.  I didn’t think she liked them.  Tastes change, though.

I still have one columbine left.

My hydrangea bush survived the mid-summer pruning this year.  I was at home when the lawn service guys arrived and I went out to say hello.  The same guy who hacked my flowers to a pulp last year was there and he said he would leave them alone this year.  I thanked him and left him to his work.

The Asian lilies have just opened this week.  The smell of just these few flowers is noticeable in the air near the garden.

Goodnight checked on her cucumbers and noticed that they had been nibbled.  Deer probably.  And some of the hydrangea blooms were eaten, too.

When she peeked into her onion pot, she found a very small, round, flat stone.  I told her to pick it up, wash it, and put it under her pillow.  She wondered why she should do that.

I told her about the book I was reading:  The Curly Pyjama Letters by Michael Leunig and the letter in the book that I had read last night.  I don’t have the book with me, so cannot quote it exactly, but it was advice on how to get a good night’s sleep.  Mr. Curly told Vasco that to get a goodnight’s sleep, he should go outside and dig a hole deeper than his height.  Then he should jump into the hole and look for a very small stone.  Then he should climb out of the hole, fill it up with the dirt he dug, go back indoors to a hearty dinner, followed by two glasses of wine.  He should then take his small stone and tuck it under his pillow, lie down on the pillow and listen to that little stone with his eyes closed.

Goodnight got a kick out of the story.  She said, “Yah, Gram!  Fresh air, hard work, and a good dinner.  I get it!  I don’t need the wine.”

 . . . . . . but I think she stashed the little stone from her onion pot into her pocket for tucking under her pillow later tonight anyway. 

Thank you Mr. Curly.  I say she should listen to the stone with her eyes closed – whatever works, since we are approaching Balloon Day. 

As for me, I think watching things grow is a great pasttime.  It teaches patience.  Goodnight watches her garden grow and I watch her grow.  I have a feeling we will both be delighted at harvest time.

Little stone update: Goodnight painted the little stone before she tucked it under her pillow.  It’s a wee little thing, but so round and sweet.  I should have put a coin next to it, but it’s smaller than a dime.  I hope it gives her the good dreams she deserves.

Little Dandelion, BIG Dandelion and “Who can turn the world on with her smile?”

After watching the roof-raising at the Vikings’ football stadium and my visit with one of the Co-chairs of the Super Scarf Project for the Indianapolis Super Bowl, I took Goodnight for a bit of sight-seeing in Minneapolis and a bite to eat.  I don’t do rush-hour between the two Twin Cities and it was the perfect weather for hunting down some old favorites of mine and showing them to my ‘acorn’s acorn’.

Goodnight knows how to have a good time outdoors.  You know what I mean . . . pick the dandelions that have gone to seed, make a wish and then B-L-O-W!  Sure enough, she found one!  I hope her wish comes true.

Her timing was perfect, too because we were on our way to see the Dandelion Fountain in Loring Park.  It’s been years since I’ve walked through the park.  I don’t get to that end of the city very often.

I told her to make a wish on danedlion, too.

After our stroll through the park, I took her to the Nicollet Mall.  I wanted to introduce her to Mary Richards, who will forever be throwing her hat into the air at the corner of 7th and Nicollet.  Mary Richards was played by Mary Tyler Moore and the hat toss was part of the opening sequence of the Mary Tyler Moore Show while the theme song played . . . “Who can turn the world on with her smile?”

No hat-throwing for Goodnight.

It probably wouldn’t be fair to take a teenage girl to a shopping district just to look at a bronze statue of a television character and not let her at least peek in some of the shops.  So, the rest of out late afternoon together was spent going in and out of stores and negotiating which summer tops could come home with Goodnight.

We took a couple of breaks for something cool to drink or a bite to eat while I gave my armpit a break from the one crutch I used when I walk longer distances.  Goodnight is growing up before my eyes and I don’t want to miss it.  She ‘turns my world on with her smile.”