Wonders

In "Barter," poet Sara Teasdale writes of "children's faces looking up/Holding wonder like a cup." Last Friday, as a new seven-year-old, Beenie reminded me just how accurate Teasdale's simile is.

I watched as he looked up onto Sheep Mountain and into the African savannah. Best of all, I watched as he gazed into the 1.5-million-gallon aquarium that is home to some 35,000 live fish and other aquatic creatures displayed at the Wonders of Wildlife National Museum & Aquarium in Springfield, Mo.

Pa-pa and I marveled as well at the sights and sounds of this 350,000-square-foot all-indoor attraction with its 1.5 miles of trails through land and sea habitats and their inhabitants. We saw zebra sharks and penguins, and touched the smooth, velvety backs of stingrays.

Now in its third year of operation, the museum/aquarium is the brainchild of conservationist and Bass Pro Shops founder Johnny Morris, and it sits next door to the original Bass Pro Shops Outdoor World at the intersection of Sunshine and Campbell Streets. On Friday, Pa-pa and I took advantage of a special half-price promotion in an attempt to make Beenie's seventh birthday especially memorable, since he has developed a love for all things aquatic.

After our trip we continued the birthday party on the dock near our home, where we tried to coax a few reluctant crappie onto the hook, but to no avail. They got a reprieve this time, but Pa-pa's brand-spanking new fishing boat portends a summer of grandkid fishing trips and family fish fries.

Although our adventures took place on March 22, two days after Beenie's actual birthday (and, coincidentally, our 38th wedding anniversary), we did celebrate the big day itself at Beenie's house with the traditional cake, ice cream, and candle. Looking back, I see that I had been writing "Googie's Attic" a little over a year when Beenie was born, and that I announced his birth in a blog post titled "The Trifecta." Now, as he did then, he fills our lives with joy and--yes--with wonder.

Happy birthday, Beenie-boy. You have a special lock on your spot as Grandkid #4. You are our intelligent, quirky, sweet, fun kid with a from-the-belly laugh that we can't get enough of. Like your great-grandma Florence, whom you never got to meet, you have definitely inherited the fishing DNA. When another seven years have gone by, you will be a teenager--but I hope that will be many, many fish from now.

Farewell to Frosty

It is with a bittersweet mix of emotions that we gather today to pay our respects to one who has brought great winter joy to three little boys. Yes, on this, the next-to-last day of February--and the end of a three-month period of cold, snowy, icy weather here in the northern Ozarks--we bid adieu (we hope) to Frosty the Snowman.

Beenie, Heero, Zoomie, and I wish him nothing but the best as we watch him go thumpity-thump-thumping his way over the hills of snow and out of our lives, at least for a while. It is time for him to move on to a place where he can be more--well--appreciated. Our spirit of hospitality for substances cold and white is waning a bit. Around here, we are ready for spring.

Don't get me wrong--we loved having Frosty around at first. He was a great playmate for Heero, Beenie, and their neighbor friend as he joined them for some front-yard games. He never started a fight or broke a rule, and remained cool under all circumstances.

Then, he certainly proved inspirational as he came to life on Zoomie's breakfast plate on New Year's morning, complete with bacon arms and strawberry buttons. Frosty, it turns out, is nothing if not versatile.

Finally, Beenie captured Frosty's jolly, happy soul in this mixed-media piece displayed on the bulletin board outside his first-grade classroom.

Accompanying this realistic likeness were directions for building a snowman, which, in Beenie's own handwriting and vocabulary, went like this:

1. Make three ball's out of snow.
2. Add tow eye's made out of coal.
3. Add a carit for the nose.
4. Add a hat.
5. Add coal for the mowth.

Certainly, Frosty, your magical presence brightened our winter with a blast of fun and a spark of creativity. We know that you are not merely a fairy tale, as rumored, and that you came to life for many kids just as you did for these boys.

But Frosty, you should probably head for the streets of some town very far north of here and do some dancing around up there. March is just a day away, and, with our greatest blessing, it is time for you to go.

Double Digits

On Saturday morning Pooh came into the guest bedroom where I had been sleeping. It was unusually early for a boy who, more often than not, is the last one up. Neither of us had been awake very long.

"Good morning," I said to him, and "Happy birthday!" Groundhog Day had rolled around again, and with it another birthday for Pooh. Quite unbelievably, he has now reached double digits.

"How does it feel to be 10?" I asked, whereupon he informed me that he wouldn't officially clock in as a year older until 1:57 that afternoon. That was fine with me. He and all the kids, for that matter, are growing up way too fast to suit me.

Pa-pa and I make it a priority to spend birthdays with all the grandkids if possible, and so far our record is pretty impressive. True to form, we had made the 3+-hour car trip the previous day.

We also like to make sure that even the siblings of the birthday kid get a small present. Since Pooh's birthday falls less than two weeks before Valentine's Day, our February trip always includes valentines as well. As fast as these kids are growing up, we figure we can't afford to squander any good opportunity to spoil them further. We consider it our duty as grandparents, and we take our calling seriously.

So in spite of the fact that all four kids were battling a benign little winter fever-bug, we had celebrated Pooh's imminent tenth birthday on the night before the actual event. We started off after dinner with a red velvet cake,

which served as appropriate precursor to the unveiling of the presents.

Here, Pooh is opening his package of nine Star Wars miniature figures, to be followed by a Nerf gun (which required Pa-pa, me, and You Tube to assemble), and a pair of night-vision spy goggles. Then, disguised as SpongeBob, Pooh and his siblings lined up for a photo shoot in the silly character heads I got for a pittance at our local Walmart's Halloween clearance sale.

At this point I fast-forward back to our morning in the guest bedroom, where we had been joined by the other three kids. As you might imagine, that is pretty much a bed full. But it is always a favorite thing that we do, whether at my house or theirs--our pre-breakfast powwow where they want me to tell all the old stories again or take turns making up funny jokes, games, or songs.

Finally, about the time the close quarters become not so congenial, we wander into the kitchen for breakfast, and this time, at the birthday boy's decree, it consisted of bacon, scrambled eggs, and monkey bread.

Shortly after the clock chimed 1:57, Pa-pa and I were on the road home, recalling the events of the weekend and talking, Pooh, about how glad we are to have you. In you, we have an effusive fountain of wit and charm. You are musical, theatrical, and a quick-as-lightning soccer player. This summer, Pa-pa and I want to teach you how to catch fish and to water ski.

I'm betting that double digits are going to be a lot of fun for all of us.

How To Handle Grinches

This Christmas past wasn't the easiest ever, but I flat refused to let its uncertain, unexpected circumstances dampen my spirit. The biggest game-changer was that the nasty green Grinch of sickness invaded Whoville and delayed our big family dinner and present-opening extravaganza until New Year's Eve--which meant we were singing "Here Comes Santa Claus" one minute and "Auld Lang Syne" the next.

But it wasn't all bad either, affording a little breather between the flurry of all the pre-Christmas madness and the actual celebration. I didn't have to come right home from playing a Christmas Eve church service to thawing out chickens and breaking up bread for dressing. I got to cover the tree with candy canes that I bought at 75% off.

No, as I relegate Christmas 2018 to the family history books, I do so with thoughts of its uniqueness among all the others and of those things that make me smile. Not the least of those is this great shot of the six kids posing in front of the tree with me snapping the shutter just before Zoomie let loose the sneeze that surely shook the entire Midwest.

 
And, I certainly can't forget 2018 as the Christmas I got to attend my first-ever official Grinch Party, a first-grade celebration of sweetness, slime, sparkles, and general green delight. It was an event I loved being able to share with Beenie, although it turned out to be quite different from what I expected.

What do you expect, anyway, when invited to a Grinch Party? Well, I thought there might be games, a snack to share, a little program maybe, some stories. But no--not quite. As soon as I arrived at the Grinch Party, it became clear that I had come to work.

The classroom, I quickly saw, was divided into five Grinch-themed activity stations for 20 or so first-graders to visit, four at once, for 15-minute increments of time. Upon arriving, I was thanked profusely for "volunteering" and invited to man the table where Grinch ornaments would be mass-produced.

Other stations enabled children to smear green icing and stick candy on an upside-down waffle cone (and eat it), construct a Grinch mask, make green "slime," mix (and, again, eat) Who pudding, and design a Grinch face mask. Let your imagination go a minute to fathom the effect of 20 excited six-year-olds on sugar highs rotating through these activities for 75 minutes. It was chaotic. It was intense. It was loud!

And it was wonderful. The grand finale consisted of the whole class returning to their seats to whip up individual baggies of Grinch dust (ingredients: sugar, green glitter, and green food coloring).

Here, at center, you can see Beenie with his hand up, worried that he had poked enough of a tiny hole in his baggie for some Grinch dust to escape before its assigned duty on Christmas Eve. (He and I were able to repair it with a piece of tape before anyone else found out about it. To this day, it remains our secret.)

There are two lessons I take to heart as I close the book on Christmas 2018. One is to stay flexible in case the Grinch of sickness tries to foil your family celebration. And, if you unexpectedly find yourself at the helm of a Grinch Party activity, just do what I did: roll up your sleeves, tuck your hair behind your ears, breathe deeply and often--and pretend you are a six-year-old in a storybook world during the year's most blessed season.

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.