Grandma Duty

Oh, it's good to resume Grandma-Duty again now that I've returned to Dillon Beach. I was unprepared for how many unanswered questions the children have been storing up for me, or the adventures they have planned for the summer. In their eyes, I'm still a peer-aged playmate, not some doddy old woman looking at getting older. They're looking to me to help supply them with a Sun-Filled-Action-Packed-Summer-of-Fun! (Goodness, what a big order!)

Also, I need to apologize for taking so long to resume the Blog. I hadn't realized how integral good wireless connections were to the Blog and though I've supposedly 'reconnected' with the wireless company we used to have here in Dillon Beach, they tell me it will be another two to three weeks before I'm 'wired up', so that leaves a crackly phone line connection for the time being, and some days it just plain doesn't work!

Okay, so that's my excuse, now on with the Grandma Thing. Charlie, still, calls me Mackey. He probably always will. It was his special name for me when he was about eighteen or twenty months old and it doesn't matter if he'll turn nine in the fall, he'll probably still be calling me Mackey when he's thirty. Sage, though, well, he was loathe at some point to call me "Mackey" and this past year he is very pointedly calling me, "Grandma", every sound and syllable firmly intact. Sage has just completed a semester of speech training in kindergarten and delights in pronouncing some old 'hard' words, like "yellow" and "railroad" with exquisite clarity. The time was right for the training and the little guy's sweet little lisp and inability to pronouce "r's" are now a thing of the past. (Doggone it! It was pretty cute!) The speech training seemingly opened up worlds for Sage to talk about as well. There was a time when he was two and a half that I worried he'd ever be a talker. His brother interpreted most of his wants and I worried that he'd ever fully express himself. I needn't have. He is expressing himself wonderfully well.

I celebrated my birthday last week and for my present, I have invited my sons and their families out to a family fun center for an evening of raucous fun, particularly water bumper boats and Indie car rides, Laser tag and the multitudinous video arcade. Sage is wildly excited and hopes he has grown tall enough to partake in some of the activities that were closed to him last year.

I was resting on the couch, trying to read a book when he climbed up behind me and hung over the back of the couch. "I wonder if they still have the pinball game, Grandma. I hope they do! Do you think I'll be tall enough to play that pinball game this year?"

"I don't know, Sage. I hope you will be..."

"Well, I HOPE I'm tall enough to play that pinball game. I have grown this year. Last year, let's see.... it was about to here on me and I couldn't see to play it. But you know, I've grown a lot taller now so I hope I'm tall enough to play that pinball game."

"I hope so!" I agreed, (trying to find the place in my book again).

"Well, I might be tall enough. And if I'm not, do you think they'd have a stool I could stand on to play the game? Or a chair! I could just drag a chair over and stand on that. Then I could play that game!"

"I doubt they would let you stand on a chair, Sage," I warned, (my place in the book permanently lost again).

"Well, the pinball game I want to play is right against that wall and there were chairs right there! I bet I could stand on one of them."

"We'll see..."

"I sure hope I'm tall enough. I certainly would like to play that pinball game!"

Tonight's the night for the Big Event. I'll have to blog about the outcome in a few days. Stay tuned!