Thursday, October 29, 2015

Pinata!

A dizzy kid staggers blindfolded across the basement floor and slices the air repeatedly with a plastic boat paddle. It doesn't take long for the rest of us to figure out that this may not be the safest environment. So we artfully back away, dodge the swings, and cringe when the oar catches an unsuspecting laundry basket with a resounding "SWACK."

It seemed like such an innocent thing--a brand new pinata sitting there on a garage sale table with a price tag touting it as a $1 bargain. One dollar--really?

Pinatas like this go for $20 or more at Wal-Mart during holiday seasons. With Halloween fast approaching, I really had no choice but to scoop up this little prize, shaped like the head of a Mardi Gras clown clad in the most inviting greens, yellows, and lavenders. It was a no-brainer--this fall season my grandkids would experience a little cultural diversity along with their Halloween candy.

According to www.pinapinatas.com, we owe the joys of pinata smashing mostly to China, where paper was invented, and Mexico, where pinatas were prominent in religious celebrations. With the Mayans (those fun lovers) the blindfold was added, and the pinata achieved party game status.

The various cultures differ in the symbolism they attribute to the pinata. The Chinese filled theirs with seeds to represent abundance, while some of the Mexican peoples broke clay pots filled with small ornaments as offerings to their gods.

In some later incarnations the pinata stood for evil for those wielding sticks to demolish, while other times participants "looked up" to the hanging pinata as a symbol of hope. Today, people all over the world break pinatas just for the pure fun of it. These papier mache creations bring to parties and celebrations a suspenseful game allowing adults to take out their frustrations in a socially acceptable way and children to simply wait for candy to drop from the sky.

Anyway, here you see Sooby, Pooh, Bootsie, and me with our clown while he was still intact. If you squint, you can see that Pa-pa has already established himself at a safe distance, and little Zoomie, in a burst of premonition, had already hightailed it out of Dodge.


The fifteen or so minutes following the snapping of this photo were a blur of swinging weapons and flying tissue paper. No children or adults were harmed in the execution of this activity, though, for the life of me, I will never figure out why.

However, I am sad to report that the little boat oar standing there so proudly beside Pooh did not survive the second round, during which Pooh smashed it unceremoniously into the floor. When it was replaced by the only handy thing--a metal pole--our insurance rates all went up a bit.

But eventually, primarily through damage inflicted by Sooby and Pooh, our clown littered the floor with candy and little boxes of raisins and apple juice. (I figured that, as the kids were recovering from any injuries, they would at least have some healthy snacks to speed along their convalescence.) The kids launched into "grabbing" mode, and, surprisingly, the plunder came out pretty well divided among the pirates.

Our pinata experience is one we will not soon forget. It was a lot of fun, or at least I think it was. Since we have all lived to tell about it, this is another one of those stories I expect to attain mythic proportions as we re-tell it through the years.





 

Sunday, October 18, 2015

October Passages

Sometimes I fall into the habit of checking text messages early in the morning before I am even fully awake and out of bed. When I did that this morning, it was with this startling image that I opened my eyes to a new day:


That's nice, I thought sleepily. The kids have carved a jack-o'-lantern. No, wait a minute--that's Bootsie! She's lost her first tooth!

This came as somewhat of a surprise, considering that this pretty girl had her fifth birthday only two weeks ago today. If I remember correctly, this rite of passage came considerably later with the other kids. Sister Sooby lost her first tooth when she was a few months older, comparatively, and brother Pooh even later than that.

I have read that nothing makes a child feel more like a big kid than losing baby teeth. Even starting school and learning to read take a back seat. Today, Bootsie joins the ranks of the big kids, leaving only little brother Zoomie and cousins Beenie and Heero with full sets of baby teeth intact.

A couple weeks ago Pa-pa and I made an overnight road trip out to deliver our present (foam Sofia the First and Amber dolls with a full wardrobe of design-it-yourself princess fashions) and to wish Bootsie a happy birthday in person. Glorious autumn foliage greeted us all along the three-hour drive, and our visit, as so often happens, was a big two-day party full of games and hugs and pure revelry in the joy of being grandparents to four great little kids.

So, Bootsie, consider this your official fifth birthday blog post. The years are whizzing by, the seasons somersault one over another, and you are growing up so fast. You are one of the big kids now, and when you start kindergarten next fall, you just may be greeting your teacher with a whole mouthful of brand new teeth!