My granddaughter is out of school for the summer. She is enjoying her first couple of days without a schedule. She is exhausted from the rush of activity and homework that seemed to get piled on at the bitter end. She is sleeping in, chilling out, and generally beginning to unwind.
It won’t last. She will become bored, but the rule in my house is that if boredom is expressed verbally, the bored person gets handed the broom!
She’s a teenager. She’s a pretty good kid, but she often tiptoes near the precipice of negativity. I have a project in mind to help her with that.
Beginning next week, she must take one photo per day during her summer break. It must be a photo of something happy, funny, beautiful, or in some way uplifting and positive.
Each day, she will put that photo into a PowerPoint slide show and then have something happy to show herself at the end of summer.
Last night, I told her about her assignment. She doesn’t sit on my knee anymore. She sits on the floor in front of my rocking chair when we have serious conversations. She looks up at me with intensity, but I find the arrangement endearing and intimate. She began to laugh instantly when she heard my directions.
I read her mind and then added: “Even if you take a photo of your smiling face everyday, it will meet my requirements.”
GN continued to laugh. “Gram! That would be so awesome to have a PowerPoint slide show of my laughing face!”
She has begun her paradigm shift already . . . even without clicking the shutter.
We’ll see how she feels about the geometry project she will begin the same day as the photo project . . . 
Grammy Summer School will soon be in session.
