Princess Imelda

Big Sur, California ~ Camping is everything I remember, which is a lot of work, kind of grubby, and not particularly comfortable. Other than my grandson having poison oak from stem to stern from his camping trip the week before and Princess Imelda having a meltdown because she had to wear her tennis shoes instead of her sandals on the hike, it was pretty easy… until she couldn’t find her socks. My teenage niece loaned her a pair.

Gordon (my brother) & Satchel, Big Sur

Knitting her brows together, my granddaughter wails, “I CAN’T wear these. They don’t match! One’s pink and one’s purple!”
“Dearheart, the bears don’t care if your socks don’t match. They’re SOCKS, we’re in the woods, NOBODY cares.”
“I CARE,” she shoots back with a high-pitched caterwaul, now sobbing, “I want to wear my sandals.”
After a few minutes of this, I tell her she has two choices: “Don’t go on the hike, or wear the tennis shoes and socks.”

Even more tearful, and now prostrate in the dirt, she counters, “I don’t like those two choices.” I considered a third, but her parents have this thing about me beating their children.

She picks herself up off the ground, yanks on the socks and her tennis shoes, stalks over to join the older kids for the boulder hike, harrumphs the first half-hour, does really well other than one slip and a scraped knee, and at the end of the day grudgingly admitted it was good she wore them. However, she peeled them off the minute they got back to camp, dumping the socks disdainfully in the dust outside our tent. To shift her from her grumpiness, her cousin Sarah parked her on the picnic bench and put her hair in a French braid.

grandchildren and cousins bird whistling

We left after dinner; between their schedule and mine, it was a one-night trip. On the drive home, the girl slept, the boy read, I chewed gum and listened to Lyle Lovett and Lee Oskar. When I realized my Map Quest directions were different from the nag in my dashboard, I surrendered and trusted the nag because it was dark out. We made it back to Sonoma in just under four hours, which was much better than the nearly six hours it took to get there (we got lost).

My grandkids had a great time and want to go back, begging to stay longer next time. Of course they do. They’re kids. They like sleeping on the ground. They think it’s rollicking fun tipping like the Titanic trying to get dressed in a tent. They like bugs and burnt marshmallows. They don’t care how bad they look in pictures, unless the socks aren’t a match made in heaven.
August 2014

White Socks ~ Not only are my plastic black Swatch and high-waisted skirts, like, so passé, apparently so are my socks. My grandson borrowed a pair two weeks ago for basketball practice as he had new shoes and forgot his and didn’t want to get blisters. When doing laundry, his mother asked him where the scrunchy 1980s cheerleading socks came from. Last night the girl child was over and barefoot on the cold tile floor, so I handed her a pair of the same.

With a look of disdain she says, “I’m SO not wearing those. They’re scrunchy socks from the 80s!” This, from the cranky one with the meltdown at the campground because her socks didn’t match.
I retort, “Oh you, who are SO wearing a tie-dyed shirt from the ’60s?”
She informs me, “Tie-dye is back in.”
December 2014

© 2014. Catherine Sevenau.
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