Memoirous

In mid-October my daughter and son-in-law celebrated their anniversary—5 years—and went away for the weekend, leaving me with 2 children who do not sleep well at night. Sooooo, I said to myself, I’m going to tire these kids out. Except for a dry autumn, it decided to rain. On Sunday morning we got up and because everything was so early we had a long breakfast and indoor play until the baby grew cranky and I knew the best way to get him to sleep was to push him in the stroller. There was a break in the rain and we left in milky light for the woods. Early Sunday morning and there was no traffic on busy Grand River Road. Our tires made sizzling sounds on the new blacktop path in the hushed woods. As the sun slowly broke through the clouds the sky between the tree canopy was a Capri blue. A flock of wild turkeys gobbled and ate their way back into a copse of trees. Glittering leaves lined the path, gems red, orange, and gold. After cresting a “hill,” Jack said his hands were cold. I ...

One of my earliest memories is my dad strapping blocks of wood onto the pedals of a tricycle so that my feet could reach and me pedaling up and down the sidewalk in front of our house. Flash forward. My 3-year-old   grandson Jack on his Strider balance bike pushing his way through the woods—5 miles! When I first got him the balance bike in the spring he was flush with excitement, but then the glow wore off. I realized he was tired of just going on our street; he needed to branch out. We rode around the “block”—he on his bike and me on mine. Next we rode to Playmakers, where I work, then through Indian Hills the residential track next to ours along the Red Cedar River. Then . . . I loaded his bike onto the trailer and we rode across busy Grand River Road and at a trailhead through the woods I’d stop and get Jack out and his bike and we’d ride. The path was recently paved as an extension of the Lansing River Trail. The trail winds up and down some sloughs and drainage ponds a...

 Colors of the Sky   early morning the sky is dishwater grey the sun is coming later and later in near darkness I start the kettle and set out my cup with one tea sachet Where does the time go, the end September, almost October   in one burst Jack pushes open the door Grandma! Grandma! Come look at the colors!   Together we stand on the deck and watch the sky change from bruise purple to mauve to butter clouds scatter revealing a tablecloth of blue   Wow! Where does the time go? photo by Lyda Jackson, Lake Michigan, Chicago lakefront, colors of the sky provided by Helene, the storm that ravaged the southeast US

When we ride bikes around the “block” we pass a house with a fairy garden by their mailbox. Fairy Garden can be a loose term either meaning lawn ornaments to those who go all in and indulge their fantasies. We’re still cultivating the imagination. Jack chose the spot—a crook at the base in between two trees growing together. He has positioned the little houses and knickknacks on a bark terrace and clustered together into a fairy “town” of which he is a kind of mayor. He’ll show it off, but hasn’t quite fallen into a state of belief that they are anything more than decorative. At this point, a real toy has wheels, moves, functions. On this rainy morning he is loving his marble run, pointing out to me how the marbles race along the spiraling track, through gates and various wheels into holes, vertical drops, into a basket at the bottom. We’ll do it over and over, until I make a break back to my Tiny House. A kind of Fairy Garden.

We sort of built up the idea. The box arrived and sat in a corner until time to assemble. New sheets and pillowcases were ordered. The crib was taken upstairs for the baby. Would this next level be accepted or rejected? Would he miss the security of what he was used to or would the new bed be received as a sign of being a big boy? With all the changes of a new baby would Jack feel he was being replaced or “losing” parts of himself? Not at all. He loves the new dino sheets and the independence that comes with being a big boy. At night he runs to settle into bed while we read stories. Before turning off the light we turn on a turtle light projector that splays stars on the ceiling and put a card in his Yoto player, with bedtime stories. Thankfully he falls right to sleep. Mainly because he is growing out of the afternoon nap. We’ll still put him down after lunch with high hopes. We’ll do the whole routine and close the shades and turn off the light. On the monitor we can see him ...

For the longest time Jack was in a “resting” period before active with language. We rarely employee baby talk—with the exceptions of owie for a cut or scrape and coldie, something I picked up from living in community in Chicago. We always said it was coldie, maybe to soften the winter blasts, the wind blowing off the lake that turned a summer day into parka weather. Coldie didn’t sound as bad. At library toddler storytime there were the children that sat in their caregiver’s laps, quietly listening, while Jack ran around in the background. Or the little girls with complete vocabularies interacting with the story. I doubted Jack recognized there was a story let alone that any of us existed. He was the center of his own orbit, interrupted by having to put on shoes, time to eat, etc. It was my Swiss friend Monica, a professional speech pathologist working with special needs non-verbal children, who used the word resting when I referred to Jack not really speaking. I knew he had a lex...

 Watching Jack Run I watch Jack run, headlong Head bobbing, a skip In his step, a slight hop Sometimes a canter, often a gallop He pretends he’s a horse Arms flaired, feet pounding Free, wild, unbound --and when he falls,           the world is so unfair

In the past two weeks I’ve had to explain to a librarian twice why I’m returning a ripped book. Jack just can’t get enough stories. He loves books to pieces. Literally, And it’s not just mischief or rampant vandalism—sometimes we’re right there in the room with him; he’s sitting on our lap—and that quick—he’s taken off the last page. He’s also to an age where he’s asking for us to read the same book over and over. Over and over. Again and again. It’s a board book, thus not a lot of pages. Even so, the idea of reading the same 10 pages for 15 minutes is hard to stomach. It’s like Ground Hog Day for toddlers; he loves it. Because mostly his reaction is also on repeat. At the end of the train book where it drives off the page: GONE! He responds bye bye. Each time. I come to anticipate not just the words but the feeling of loss, the end of the story. And his reaction. And gear up, to do it all over again. Freight Train by Donald Crews

That’s generally what we say, shorthand for the Shorty. We refer to him without name almost in the third person. How’s the baby? meaning: Did you get sleep last night? What’s the baby doing? Or, what I’m really asking: Is he being cute or destructive?—his two main modes. Yesterday the baby turned two. Born the end of December, his birthday and Christmas will always compete for prestige, excitement, for gift haul. We want both to win. Anyway, the baby got his first big-boy haircut and it immediately aged him, made him taller, made me reconsider the board book for maybe an iPhone. He looked like he needed a drink rather than a bottle, which is his secret vice. It didn’t help that he was wearing a Henley shirt and jeans like some MSU student down the street when I first saw him after the haircut. I wanted him to stay a baby while also at the same time I wanted to sit down and have a conversation with him, find out what he’s been thinking about these past couple of years. I was tor...

 In my last post I wrote about Baby Talk, or the limited but profound communication from my grandson. It made me again remember a talk given by Kathleen Norris at North Park Seminary a number of years ago— And how can I remember that talk? Because of words. She talked about a memory she had and in the midst of clarifying it said that perhaps she might have been below the age of 3, or non-verbal, and when she made this distinction it made me wonder: how do we remember without words. It is when we are able to “name” things that we can begin to remember. I guess before verbalization we can remember in images. I know one of my earliest memories is laying in my crib and looking up at a light fixture that reminded me of a honey bun, the glass sort of waxy yellow and swirled. But did I actually know it was a honey bun or did I simply want to eat the light fixture? Another early memory was hearing the milk man truck outside. It must have been early morning—when the milk man arrived w...

 Since Covid I’ve been in a bit of a funk. I mean really=I didn’t die! I should be grateful, but instead have focused on the time spent in isolation and the plans I had to give up. I had to cancel a bike trip that doesn’t seem to be able to be rescheduled. On the human front: What seems to interest me lately is watching the baby, my grandson, grow and change. It is dynamic. Everyday there is something new. This element alone keeps me engaged. I can’t wait to see what is new. What is new?! Baby talk. Communication. He is trying to tell us something. It’s in there, just trying to get out. I can tell he is storing up a lexicon of words that will one day burst forth. Right now he is mimicking or “approximating” as a child development expert friend I have said. Either way, he is meeting milestone of verbal development. However slowly, or so it seems. There are a few things he is successfully able to communicate. One is a sign language sign for more, which has also expanded to plea...

Began with warmer temperatures. I wasn’t the only one waiting for this to happen. There were days early in calendar spring when I wondered when it would actually feel like spring. This weekend at the bike shop proved that I wasn’t the only one—we were packed out. People suddenly needing bike repairs bringing in their steeds left out to pasture. Or needing to buy a bike because their old one was beyond repair. Suffice it to say I was happy for a day off. My daughter is also in a busy seasonal business. She is a design florist at one of the biggest flower shops in East Lansing. Mother’s Day and Prom caused a surge in orders. Friday and Saturday she probably worked a total of 22 hours trying to get bouquets done. We started the day with a brunch, then gardening and a bike ride, ending with a brat grill out. Nice family time. Jack discovered the joy of throwing sticks into water and we eventually had to distract him from Lake Lansing as he decided he wanted to climb in. Still too c...

In My post Baby Games http://memoirouswrite.blogspot.com/2022/05/baby-games.html I realized later after writing about playing with my grandson—how much this approach is similar to my writing process. 1)       Starting with a kind of structure or form, such as standard hide n’ seek 2)       A plot twist, baby changes games by putting on a hat 3)       Story spins off into make believe, pretends to hide in plain sight In fact upon rereading some notes I’d made a couple years ago about activist/artist nun Corita Kent I happened upon this: Learning By Heart. “Try looking the way the child looks—as if always for the first time—and you will, I promise, feel wider awake.” In her book Learning by Heart: teachings to free the creative spirit, was published in 1992, six years after her death. The first chapter is devoted—simply but significantly—to “LOOKING.” She starts by conjuring the lofty ghost of her f...

 I play the stupidest nonsensical games with my grandson, but these games in themselves show that he is meeting cognitive milestones. He’s a genius, y’all! One of these games—and by game I mean this loosely as the rules constantly change. Sometimes there are no rules—it’s all a game. He runs behind the couch that sits in the middle of the room and I creep up on him saying stuff like I’m gonna get you or Where’s Jack? He’ll stand next to the back of the couch with his face into the upholstered back and because he has his face hidden or eyes closed it means he’s invisible. Thus, when I grab and tickle him he’s all amazed and cracking up. He can’t stop giggling and we do it over and over. The “game” quickly morphs into him putting on a hat or curling up into a little ball on the floor or he will suddenly turn and chase after me. I have to be ready for these pivots. Everything is a game.

 My dear one, a year ago  you came into this  masked world --and here we are-- still masked. For you it will seem no different than folks wearing glasses,  some do, some don't. It is  necessary--the masks. Your world will be different than mine, but you have love all around you, a wonderful mommy and daddy, and from your grandpa lots and lots of books, and  from grandma determination,          keep going.

My daughter informs me that the local library has charged her for the damage of two books. Both eaten by Jack. Granted he shouldn’t be unsupervised or given unlimited access to books other than the indestructible board ones, but—and I have been guilty of this myself—he is so quick. In like a minute he has sucked a page corner into his mouth. Spines are his favorite, he gnaws on them like corn on a cob. The covers take a little more time; he masticates them with his two little teeth and gums, eventually softening a hole. All this to say he loves books. He crawls to a bookshelf beside his crib and pulls out a load. From what I can observe it isn’t all about destruction. Books with animals and faces particularly appeal to him. We hold him in our lap and point things out and make the noises and engage him in story—before he squirms onto the floor. The other day I checked out Blueberries for Sal and he immediately buried his head into the center. I kept him on the floor and the book up ...

  What She Heard                            for Jack   Is that the chimes outside my window, singing in the wind or   is it a squirrel chatting on a fence post, his orange-brown fur so soft   or   is it a raven on the high wires, his caw-caw heard loud and lonely   or   is it the garbage truck trawling the alley looking for whom it may devour, its mechanical arms reaching and shaking heavy barrels into hungry jaws   or   is it the wind in the tall-tall fir trees whooshing and swaying the boughs—             sounds I hear every morning                         before moving...