The Best Kind of Goodbye

This year I have not been anxious to let go of autumn.

There have been wonderful, soul-soothing days of sunshine and 60-degree weather that I have clung to like a dog playing tug-of-war on the other end of a big, juicy bone. In spite of sub-freezing nights and two early snows, I have been determined to keep five pots of begonias alive and thriving for Thanksgiving weekend.

I did, and they did. As they hung off my deck yesterday in all their bright pink splendor, I made sure everyone noticed them one last time. They afforded us a splash of color amid the fallen leaves, now brown and drying and spread like a crunchy blanket over the yard.

This was the setting for our final Thanksgiving hurrah, an afternoon outside around the fire pit, roasting sticks in hand and a last, guilt-free chance to indulge in abundant, delightful food that has been absent from our South Beach Diet menu of the past six weeks.

Long about mid-afternoon, our cell phones began buzzing with warnings of near-blizzard conditions predicted for our area today, but I ignored them. It was fall, I insisted to myself and the others. And then my daughter-in-law took the picture.

It is one of those photos that short-circuits the eyes and lands right in the heart. In it, Beenie, Bootsie, Heero, and Zoomie are tossing up handfuls of leaves, which then rain down on them all in a shower of pure joy. You see this in their faces.

For me, the picture works as a metaphor. In it, I see that this is the way I need to release autumn--in a dramatic, exhilarating gesture of delight and gratitude. There is no reason why I shouldn't do that, considering all that autumn--and these past several days in particular--have given me.

On Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, we celebrated my mom's 94th birthday. Happy and well, she was able to go with us to the yearly gathering of our extended family, which now numbers five generations of the descendants of my grandparents. This year, there were seventy-something of us present. Then came two great days with our own kids and grandkids here at the lake. Humbly and gratefully, I acknowledge that autumn owes me nothing. It has given me everything, and I graciously let it go.

The snow and wind began mid-afternoon today. I let them have the begonias. I restocked my depleted fridge with healthy food. I put up the Christmas tree. This is the best kind of goodbye--one that brings, along in its wake, a kind of hello.

Hello, winter. Hello, Christmas season. I am ready to shop and decorate and play Christmas music. I am ready to turn over a new calendar page--and, I guess you might say, a new leaf. 

Changing Times

"Goog?"

It was the quietest little whisper tiptoeing across the darkness of the kids' bunk room at 4:30 this morning. Heero and his brother Beenie were spending the night, and our world had just "fallen back" from daylight savings time a couple hours earlier.

"What do you need?" I whispered back. It is Heero that often calls me "Goog."

"I lost my pillow."

I felt myself smile. Heero was sleeping on a trundle bed we had scooted out from under the daybed where Beenie was still asleep. I knew the pillow had to be on the floor only inches from his head, but I got up, went to him, and conducted a proper search anyway.

"Here it is," I said, straightening his blanket. "Can you sleep just a little more until it's time to get up?"

"Yeah."

Heero went right back to sleep, but I lay awake for just a bit, contemplating the significance of what had just happened. My youngest grandchild had gone to bed as a four-year-old and, only several hours later, shared his first conversation as a five-year-old with me. Before drifting back to sleep myself, I decided that was a pretty special thing.

Although Heero's birthday is officially today, Pa-pa and I enjoyed a big party his mama and daddy hosted for him and others of his extended family yesterday at lunch time. The Superhero party featured all the appropriate accoutrements--including the present of his dreams (a huge Hot Wheels garage from Mom and Dad), Superhero masks, balloons, and a big plate of cupcakes adorned with a "5" candle that he extinguished quite efficiently.

Happy birthday today, little Heero. It was great to celebrate with you yesterday and to have you at my house for a quick overnight. I will remember it as the night we did backwards somersaults, ate pizza and candy corn, played pirate, drew bedtime pictures, read Toot and Puddle books, and tried out your new "phlat ball."

And I will remember it as the night you "lost" your pillow. You have to watch those things, or they can get away from you.

Five years ago today, I became "Googie" (or in your case, "Goog") to my sixth grandchild in as many years. It is bittersweet to realize that, quite suddenly, I don't have any babies anymore.

That is what makes those 4:30 a.m. conversations so special.   

If You Build It . . . .

Ever since Pa-pa and I moved to a lake neighborhood nearly fifteen months ago, I have been hearing voices--the kind Kevin Costner heard nearly thirty years ago as the star of the classic movie Field of Dreams. There, Costner repeatedly hears a cryptic voice whisper, "If you build it, he will come." To summarize, Costner takes a leap of faith, builds a ball diamond in his corn field, and in so doing conjures up the Chicago White Sox team of 1919.

For a year now I have scrutinized my new back yard, trying to envision what I could build there that the grandkids could call their own--a place offering unlimited play potential and plenty of growing room. A one-of-a-kind place where siblings and cousins and friends could gather to role-play or read, to "camp out" or just dream. A sort of clubhouse for Googie's kids.

I didn't want a structure from a kit. I didn't want swings, slides, and other apparatuses that would make it sprawl across the yard. I scoured the internet for pictures and took vacation photos of play sets as far away as Minnesota and even Switzerland. Finally, I took my ideas to a talented builder who converted them to actual plans on paper. The building process spanned several weeks of October, and this past weekend the kids came together to initiate their new play space.

Here you see all six of them--Zoomie, Beenie, Pooh, Heero, Bootsie, and Sooby--lined up across the front of the second level, a 10-foot square with a banister railing. Both this and the first floor have five-foot ceilings. Following is a guided tour of the rest of the building.

This front view shows all three levels. The second and third stories are accessed by indoor ladders, with a rock-climbing wall also leading from first to second on the opposite wall. The top level, fully enclosed, features a window that opens inward and a floor large enough for several sleeping bags. The "front door" on the left opens inward and closes with a gate latch. The lap siding on the first floor is cedar, and all other wood is treated to withstand Missouri weather. The structure rests on concrete blocks at the corners, making it movable with a skid loader.

This photo shows the open front door and one of the two movable wooden boxes. This one on the first floor stores outdoor play equipment, while the one upstairs holds wood scraps of all shapes I salvaged from the construction for use as building blocks. When closed, both boxes double as seats that I will equip with cushions next spring.

This inside shot of the first floor shows the rock climbing wall at the back left and, in the foreground, a drop-down table for snacks, games, or whatever. The two wooden stools were donated from son Teebo, and I will have them cut down to better fit the height of the table.

This view of the second floor shows where the rock wall comes up from below and the ladder to the third floor, or loft.

This picture shows the loft as viewed from the top of the ladder coming up and looking toward the front of the clubhouse. I plan to put a square indoor-outdoor carpet remnant up there next spring to enhance the coziness of this neat spot. On the weekend just past, we put a "Halloween Party" CD on the player, opened the window, and let the likes of "Ghostbusters" and "Monster Mash" lend a spooky-fun atmosphere to our family wiener roast on a glorious fall day.

Back down two ladders and we are on the ground again, looking at the clubhouse from the back. And that completes your tour of the house that Googie built.

If I built it, will they come? I surely hope so. I look forward to many days when this little house of mine will be filled with laughter, imagination, and love. But what will I do if a baseball team shows up? I will just have to hope there is enough room along the other side to accommodate a dugout.