Stories for My Grandchildren

To Satchel and Temple,
with utmost love, Oma

August 2019
Sonoma, California

by Catherine (Clemens) Sevenau

First Grandchild ~ It was a difficult delivery, going from natural childbirth to emergency Cesarean over the course of a two-day labor, and everyone was tremendously relieved when both mother and infant safely made it through the ordeal.
Matt calls from the hospital the day after the baby is born. “Mom, Brooke and the baby were both so valiant. We’ve decided to name him Valiant Satchel or Satchel Valiant. Which do you think is better?
I pause, then ask, “Is this multiple-choice, and is there a “C” or “D” or “none of the above?”
“You don’t like them?”
“Matt, for some reason you and Jon named all your dogs guys’ names: Jake, Sam, Jack, Joe, and now you want to give your son the name Valiant? He’s not a German Shepherd. And what’s with Satchel? Sorry, but I think you’re setting that kid up to have the crap beat out of him at school.”
So they name him Satchel Valiant Sevenau. My friends and family had a field day with that one.

I get another call, and Matt is not happy. “Mom, I want you to quit making fun of Satchel’s name.”
We live in a small town and someone apparently threw me under the bus.
“I’m not. I haven’t said a word.”
“You don’t have to,” he said. “I can hear your eyes rolling.”
“Well, that’s true. But I can’t help it. C’mon Matt. Everyone’s reaction is the same as mine.”
“I’m serious,” he snaps.
“All right, all right, I’ll stop.” Or try to anyway…
March 2003

In October, seven months after Satchel was born, my middle sister, Liz, died. Matt drives with me to the family gathering at Liz and Tony’s place in Fallbrook, and on the way to Southern California we stop in Carmel and pick up my brother and his wife, Marian. Our cousins Dick and Pat Hauser join us at Liz’s. As we are catching up with one another under the shade of the macadamia tree, Pat asks Matt about the baby and what they named him. When Matt tells Pat, she responds with, “What’s his real name?”
I hate it when you snort cola out your nose. It’s so painful. I didn’t dare make eye contact with Marian. We both got up and took off in two different directions, clutching our ribs, dying inside.

An Ancient Being ~ It was the day after his birth that I held my grandson for the first time. I remember having this tiny creature cradled in my arm, peering into his dark eyes, thinking he looked nothing like a baby, but more like a wise and ancient being.

A week later I brought my stepmother, who lives in Santa Rosa, over to Matt and Brooke’s to meet him. As Marie is 85 and the matriarch and elder in the family, I offer to have her hold Satchel first. After twenty minutes, I’m itching to have him.
“Can I hold him now?”
“No,” she says, “I still want him.”
“I’d like to hold him.”
She again refuses my request.
“Marie, it’s my turn.”
“No.”
“You mean you’re not going to let me hold my grandson?”
“When I’m done,” she says coolly.
Something in me snaps and I lean forward, latch onto his little foot, and demand, “Give me that baby!”
“No!” she says, tightening her grip on him.
By now I’m tugging on his tiny leg. Marie won’t let go, and I’m trying to pry him from her. My son, watching this tug-of-war, snorts, “Oh my God, somebody get me a video camera.”
Realizing that I appear crazed, I let go. She reluctantly hands him over to me, knowing I’m coming after her next, the selfish witch.
March 2003

A White Angel ~ We are at the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art for the “Day of the Dead” exhibition. Satchel is still a baby and I have him on my hip, carrying him around to look at all the colorful exhibits. We stand entranced before a ten-foot angel dressed in white with beautiful wings and blonde hair. My grandson sucks in his breath and releases a soft, “Pretty!” I’m stunned that a nine-month-old understands the concept of pretty. It was his first spoken word with me. His father’s first word was “moon,” an easier concept, but just as magical. My other son’s first word was “no,” which is probably standard for the second born.
November 2004

Sam the Dog ~ On their way to the Sierras for a camping weekend, Matt’s dog was in a horrifying accident, having lunged out the back of the truck, half running and half dragged down the highway, trapped by her ties. The decision whether or not to put Sam down weighed on my son, and he decided to try and save her.

A month goes by before I see her in the hospital. I’d waited. I’m not big on dogs; a few I tolerate, the rest I avoid. But my aversion to dogs is not why I waited—I was afraid to see how bad Sam looked. A tiny thin blue plastic tube snakes up her left nostril, cotton blankets cushion her all around, a catheter retreats from her backside, and her disintegrated hind feet are in rubber casts. In a purple haze from pain medication, she cocks her head and thwaps her tail in happy recognition, smiles at me, and invites me into her cubicle. Lying with her on the floor, we talk and cry. Actually she talks and I cry. She says how nice I look in my dance clothes, that this has certainly put her old hip pain in perspective, and what a shock it was cart-wheeling over the tailgate—like bungee jumping and finding out the rope is not tied short enough but you don’t realize it until you hit land. She appreciates all the love and attention she’s getting, the visits from everyone, the red felt-tip hearts the staff draws on her casts, the green rubber frog her nurse gave her that holds sentry at her furry front feet, protecting her day and night. She says she’d prefer to lie on the flowers people bring her like she does in the backyard at home, but she doesn’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings. My head is touching hers so I can hear her. Stroking her soft ears and the part of her back that is still covered with her yellow fur, my hand avoids the rest of her body which is completely skinned from the pavement and grafting. She looks like half an uncooked Thanksgiving turkey. Wiping my nose to keep from making a mess all over her, she takes her top paw and moves my hand back in between hers so she can tenderly hold it and tells me not to worry. With a single last wag, she drifts back off into a peaceful pharmaceutical sleep. Breathing together, in and out, softly and evenly, I quietly talk to her while she sleeps. I tell her how beautiful she is—how much her family, her neighborhood friends, and everyone at Rugworks misses her. I also tell her how the Collins girls across the street are setting up a lemonade stand to help with the vet costs. I say small prayers for her and thank her for teaching me how to fall in love with a dog. I notice she’s lost a lot of weight and tell her she looks better than ever—well, her front half anyway. I remind her of all her other close calls with Matt when she was younger—tumbling end-over-end down treacherous ski slopes, sailing over rocky cliffs, paddling up rushing rivers—and as she made it through all that she can make it through this.

Lying on the floor next to her bed I whisper close to her ear, “There are a couple of things you might want to know. Matt and Brooke brought home a small gray kitten last week, and I know you don’t have much patience for kittens. They are also having a baby in a few months. You need to heal so it won’t hurt when the baby gets big enough to crawl all over you, and maybe the baby won’t irritate you nearly as much as the kitten will. You’ll get used to them, perhaps even fall in love with them.”

P.S. Sam has now been home from the hospital for a month. Most of her fur has grown back. Her rear legs are still bandaged and will never be the same, so she carefully, though very happily, slowly chases her soggy green tennis ball, lies in the flowerbeds (I put in a good word for her), and is making friends with the small gray kitten, Mahari.

P.P.S. Sam is twelve years old now. She still loves to camp, has outlived Mahari who was run over by a car, tolerates Shiva, the other cat, and is very patient with Satchel, now two-and-a-half years old. I think Sam feels about kids like I feel about dogs, so I tell her what a good girl she is every time I see her, and thank her for being so gentle and sweet to my grandson.
2005

Close Call ~ Satchel was two, and we were holding hands crossing Broadway, walking from my office to the park. I heard their eerie sound before I saw them. We were in front of the first car in the intersection and out of nowhere, not six feet away, also in the intersection and heading straight into us, was a huge swarm of honeybees.

I grabbed Satchel by his skinny little arm and backpedaled in what seemed like slow motion to get out of their path. Then everything sped up to warp speed as we made it under the corner bank’s overhang, squatting together, my body shielding his. My grandson had on a tank top, shorts, and sandals, and though I had less skin exposed, I’m allergic to bee stings.
“Oma, that was close! What WAS that?”
“Darling, that was our life passing before our eyes.”
As the swarm continued up the street, I explained it was a colony of bees, probably from one of the trees in the park, looking for a new home, and that we were lucky we got out of their way. He had no idea how lucky.
My first memory was being stung by a bee. It could have been my last.
Spring 2005

Meltdown ~ My grandson is three, and this is my second time to have him for an extended period in the evening. Brooke and Matt are in San Francisco, returning around 11:00.

We spend the afternoon and evening at my house doing all the things we love to do together: cooking, eating, and reading the books I read to his father and his Uncle Jon when they were his age. I taught Satchel to make scrambled eggs, which is now his specialty.

Getting him into his blue dragon pajamas, I tell him it’s time to go home.
“NOOOO! I want to stay here!”
“C’mon. I’m supposed to have you home and in bed in an hour.” Satch throws himself on the floor, kicking and screaming, apparently possessed. I’m taken by surprise as he’s such an even-keeled little guy. I scoop him up and head downstairs. Now a writhing demon and trying to escape from my arms, he nearly throws us both down the staircase.

When we get to the bottom, he hurls himself to the floor, completely out of control.
“Satchel, get up and stop it.”
His screaming escalates. I give fair warning. “If you don’t stop, I’m going to smack your bottom.” What I wanted to do was take a fire hose and blast him, but I didn’t have one handy.

“Okay, I warned you.” I lift him up by his skinny little arm and give him a swat on the butt. He’s so shocked, he stops his caterwaul. He then proceeds into a meltdown of uncontrollable tears, sobbing and shaking, well beyond the point of being able to get ahold of himself.

After some minutes of this, I bargain with him: “Look, if I take you to Busha’s (his maternal grandmother) will you quit crying?” He nods between convulsive gasps. Of course I don’t have her number and only vaguely know where she lives. He assures me he can find her house. We circle her neighborhood three times while he hiccoughs through sobs in his rear car seat.

He poses, “Mmmm. Turn here.” Then, “Mmmm, turn here.” He has no idea how to get there either. I realize this when he wants me to cross the highway to Boyes Boulevard. Why am I trusting the directions of a three-year-old? As I drive past my friend Rhonda’s house, I think maybe a third person can snap him out of this. Thank goodness she’s home.

We pick figs and pears and slice them up on her back porch. Then she brings out a box of magic toys and Satchel and I put on matching red noses. She takes our picture, noting we look quite a lot alike. He’s calmed down, though he is still not quite himself.

It’s well past sunset by the time I deliver him to his house, but as I try to put him to bed, the tears and wracking sobs return. For the next hour and a half I sit on the front porch steps in the dark, rocking him back and forth trying to comfort him, his sobs continuing through his drift toward sleep.

When Matt and Brooke return, I relay how the evening went. I silently hand him over, they tuck him in his crib, and I’m out of there, as exhausted as he is.

Matt calls the next day, not happy with me. “We don’t spank him you know.”
“I’ve noticed.”
“Did you spank us when we were kids?”
“Apparently not enough,” I respond.
“You did too. You spanked us with the wooden spoon!”

“I did not. I chased you with the wooden spoon—but you were both too fast. I never spanked you, not once, and Aunt Liz was the first one to spank Jon, an event he’s still not recovered from. I, however, did smack his bottom a couple of times after that.”

“Look Matt, I want to honor how you raise your child. But I’m telling you, if he ever pulls that with me again, you’re coming to get him; I don’t care where you are. And by the by, just what do you suggest I should have done?”
“Well, we put him in his bedroom and hold the doorknob so he can’t get out.”
“Yeah, right. That’s a great idea.”

I didn’t see Satchel for a couple of weeks. Supposedly he was still miffed, but I’m pretty sure kids don’t hang onto things for that long. The small kids, anyway. Two weeks later we’re at the park and I’m pushing him in the swing.

He asks tentatively, “Oma, can we go to your house?”
“Forget it. Last time we were at my house you got upset and I got in trouble. We’re staying right here on neutral ground.”
Looking up with the same brown eyes his father had when he was little, my grandson says in a soft voice, “Then maybe can we go next week?”
“We can go next week on one condition. When I ask you to do something, you don’t throw a hissy fit when you don’t get your way. Deal?”
“Deal!” he promises. We shake on it.
2006

Postscript, five years later, 2011 ~ “Oma, I remember when you spanked me.”
“Good. As far as I can tell it worked out great.”
“It hurt, you know.”
“Oh, for god sakes, it was one well-placed swat. And I wasn’t being mean; I was trying to snap you out of a meltdown. The only thing I hurt was your pride, and I think you’ve recovered by now.”

First Sleepover (age 3) ~ “Oma, do you wear jammies?
“Not always, but for you, I’ll wear jammies.”
As we tuck ourselves into bed, I give him a goodnight peck on the cheek. He side-eyes the leopard print pajamas my friend Kay Grether gave me and says, “Nice jammies!”
“Thank you, Satchel. I love you,” I whisper as I turn off the light.
“I love you too, Oma,” he whispers back. “And thanks for wearing them. Good night.”
“Good night, Satchel.”
2006

Out of the Mouths of Babes ~ “Well, this place is a f’king mess.” This from the mouth of my four-year-old grandson as he surveys the chaos on my kitchen counters, to which he is not yet even eye-level.
He notes my shocked neck-snap, as I wasn’t sure, nor could I believe, what he’d just mumbled under his breath.
Hanging his head, he apologizes. “I’m sorry, Oma,” confirming what I’d hoped I’d misheard.
“I’m going to tell you something, Buddy. If I’d said that at your age, I’d have had to peel myself off the wall from across the room. And if you’d said that at my age back then, you may have gotten a whipping, a mouthful of soap, or no dinner for a week. If you say that in front of an adult who doesn’t know you, they will think quite poorly of you, and if you say it in front of Uncle Gordon, you will be in major trouble. You’re too young to use words like that, and it’s not okay.”
“Yes, Oma.”
“Here’s the deal. You may not swear in front of me until you are taller than I. And even then, I don’t want to hear that word escape your lips. Got it?”
“Yes, Oma.”
2006

A Story from Busha ~ (his maternal grandmother): Found this old photo and remember this sweet moment. Satchel kneeling on my bathroom floor where he is deep in conversation with a spider on the wall. Speaking in a high, quiet voice he says, “Hiiii. Is your name Charlotte?”

Not long after, Satch and I saw Charlotte’s Web at the theater. As we’re in line to get tickets he informs me, “She dies at the end you know.”
I say, “No, I didn’t know that. Thanks for sharing.”
He notes the look on my face and tries to reel back his spoiler alert. I told him it was okay, I could take it. I still cried at the end.
2007

Time Wounds All Heels ~ Satchel doesn’t call him Grandpa; he calls him Bob. My ex has our grandson over for a swim and we are tag-teaming having him for the weekend. Bob lives a few blocks from me on Garland Avenue, and the two of them were playing cowboys and Indians—or maybe it was cops and robbers—while waiting for me in Bob’s front yard. As I pull up to the curb, I see Satch has proudly tied his grandfather to a tree, a large rope encircling his seated torso several times, securely pinning his arms to his sides. The grandboy isn’t old enough to tie a square knot or two half-hitches, but clearly, there’s enough rope wrapped around Bobalooie that he isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Satchel says, “Hi Oma!” grabs his little backpack, and chirps “Bye, Bob,” as he hops in the back into his car seat. I assess the opportunity, which is just too sweet to pass up, give Bob the Queen’s wave, and merrily press on the accelerator as Satchel signals farewell out the open window. I figure wife number four will eventually wonder where he is and set him free. Or not.
Summer 2007

Bat Wings ~ “Oma, why does the skin hang down on your arm like that?”
“What!”
“Why does the skin hang down on your arm like that?”
My grandson is commenting on my underarms from his car seat in the back as we’re driving down East Napa Street. I’m trying to fathom why a four-year-old boy would notice such a thing in the first place, much less comment on it.
“I heard you the first time,” I retorted. “I’m getting older and am not in shape like I once was.”
“Exercise would take care of that, you know,” he informs me.
“WHAT?!?”
The only time I’d ever been in a gym was to pick him up from daycare while his mother was at spin class. I laughed when I saw what a spin class was. I had visions of everyone sitting in colored snow tubs spinning around, which would only make me sick. I didn’t get the point. When I saw what it really was, I still didn’t get the point. Why not just ride a bicycle, for Pete’s sake?
A week later, on the same road, he asks me the same question.
“Tell me again why your arms hang down like that?”
I think, this kid must have a death wish.
“Look. We’ve had this conversation. Just for the record, I’ve no intention of going to a gym. Or exercising. Or lifting weights. I’ve watched people exercise every day of their lives, and they up and died anyway. Besides, I’ve figured out how to resolve this. From here on out, I’m wearing long-sleeved shirts. These arms will not see the light of day again.”
And they haven’t.
2007

Television ~ “Oma, you don’t have a television,” Satchel says to me in surprise.
“You’ve known me for four years, and you’ve just noticed?”
“Why don’t you like TV?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t like TV; I just don’t have one.”
“Did you ever?”
“Of course. I had one when your dad and Jon were growing up, but when they both moved away to college, I let your dad take it to school.”
“Didn’t he get in trouble with his teacher?”
“No, he wasn’t going to a Waldorf college,” I say, trying not to laugh. “He didn’t take it to his classroom. He was twenty years old and brought it to the house where he and his roommates lived.”
I can see his little wheels spinning. “So, Oma. IF you had a TV, where would you put it?”
He takes my hand and leads me to face the logical spot over the fireplace. “You could put it there!”
“That will never do. First of all, it will wreck my decor, and second, why do I want a television set?”
My grandson looks up at me with his soft brown eyes and says dreamily, “For me.”
“Darling, I’m not getting a TV, not even for you. Now go pick out a book and I’ll read you a story.”
2007

Instructions for Satchel ~ Email correspondence regarding my grandson at age four; Brooke is my daughter-in-law, his mother:
(from me) Hi Brooke, I’m leaving today for Carmel and then Southern California and returning this weekend, so I won’t be here to keep my usual date with Satchel on Thursday. Here’s the schedule for whoever covers:

1. Pick him up at pre-school. Sign him out, and don’t forget his coat, shoes, socks, pants, shirt, lunchbox, and any art he did that day.
2. Ask if he has any good ideas for the afternoon.
3. He likes to go to the ice cream store by the park. He’ll want a rainbow sherbet, but get it in a big cone so it doesn’t make a mess or fall out. Not the huge scoop, he can’t eat it all.
4. His next good idea will be the park. First the swings, and he likes to be pushed high. Whoever is pushing him might whisper a secret to him, like, “You make my heart happy, and that’s just between the two of us.” He’ll whisper back: “Okay, I won’t tell anyone, except Poppy, and Mama, and Busha, and Gumpy, and Ikie, and Bob, and Uncle Jon.” He’s not so good with secrets.
5. Satchel likes the slides, and my fill-in has to hide and scare him as he comes down. If there’s a lot of electricity in the air, they can shock each other and scream.
6. Then he likes to lie face up in the sand and make sand angels.
7. After the park he’ll want to go to your house and make rivers in the backyard and read books. He likes the same book read three times.
8. He gets hungry, so it’s good to feed him before returning him to his house by 6:00. Satchel makes the best eggs (they have to stand close to him when he’s at the stove) and likes the chicken sausages from Sonoma Market. Sometimes he likes to go for pizza: Mary’s or the Red Grape are his personal favorites. (I like a four-year-old who has a personal favorite in restaurants.) Both have children’s menus with crayons and tic-tac-toe. He plays very well and wins almost every time. If they win, he won’t play anymore and will keep his head down and color in the other games on the menu. He’ll also ask for a Sprite but is only allowed one treat a day (too much sugar for his teeth, you know), and if he’s already had ice cream, he’ll understand that he can’t and be okay with water.
9. On the way home he’ll want to listen to the CD with all the kids singing. Oh, and he fixes his own seat belt in the car.

That’s the drill. Occasionally we do other things, but this is pretty much how he likes the day to go.

P.S. Sometimes he wants to visit the toy store. He’ll offer to go in and just look around, but I have the great idea that we buy one small thing in the plastic dinosaur or farm animal section. He has lots of toys at home but he says they’re getting rather old, so he could use a new one on occasion.
Love, and I’ll see him next week, Oma

Response from his mother: “When I told Satchel that you would be away, he wasn’t very happy. When I promised that I would take him for rainbow sherbet in your stead, he was slightly happier. Then he got pushy and asked for the park and the toy store and pizza. I’m screwed. Travel safe. We’ll talk when you get home. Love, Brooke”
June 4, 2007

Dead People ~ “Oma, there’s dead people under those rocks, you know.”
I glance over my shoulder to see what Satchel is talking about. My four-year-old grandson is commenting from his car seat about the small cemetery to our left on East Napa.
“I know. That’s where they put our bodies when we die.”
“What do they do with the heads?” he asks.
“Well, when we die we don’t need our bodies anymore,” elaborating with a spiritual conversation about bodies and souls and death.
When I finish, he says, “Yeah, but what do they do with the heads?”
As I attempt to expound further, he interrupts and announces, “Oma! The car is filled with sparkle fairies!”
I’m wearing a Brazilian rhinestone bracelet that my sister Liz gave me, and the sun is bouncing off the facets, casting the car’s interior with hundreds of tiny brilliant refractions.
He asks in wonder, “Can you see them?”
“I can, darling, that I can.”
Then he tilts his head forward, “Oma, can you see the Apple Fairy on the top of my head?”
I peer in the rearview mirror, slip into his world of magic, and tell him, “Of course. How long has she been there?”
“About a week!”
“A week! That’s amazing. You are a lucky boy.”

Days later, when I told my friend Elaina the cemetery story, I didn’t understand his question until she laughed and said, “Well, you told him what they did with the bodies. He wanted to know what they did with the heads.”
I haven’t gotten back to him on that one.
2007

Hitler ~ My son Matt took Satchel to Mountain Cemetery on Veterans Day to honor Satchel’s great-grandfather, Calvin Frost, and dropped him off afterward to spend the day with me.

In great excitement, Satchel bursts through the front door. “Oma! Oma! Did you know that Grandpa Cal fought in the war and won all the battles and at the end of the war he killed Hitler?”
“Do tell. I think you got most of the story right.”
“What?” he asks, stopping short.
“Well, Grandpa Cal was in the war, and he may have won all the battles, but at the end of the war he didn’t kill Hitler.”
“Who did?”

“Hitler was the leader of Germany and a very bad man. When the Allied Forces invaded his country, he knew he’d lost the war and would be taken prisoner, so he killed himself.”
“Oh.” He lets this sink in, then asks, “Do you have any pictures of Hitler?”
“Not hanging on my walls, but I suppose we could find what he looks like on the computer.”
After some time on the Internet, he’s satisfied and says, “Oma, you were right. Hitler was a very bad man.”

He thinks a bit, then asks, “Do we have any bad men in the family?”
“No, but we have someone in the family who was killed by a bad man.”
“Who?”
“Harry Tracy was an outlaw in the Wild West, and he shot Valentine Hoy, my great-grandmother’s brother.”
“Do you have any pictures of him?”
“Well, as a matter of fact, I do.”

I pull out my Hoy history and show Satchel the pictures of Harry and Valentine.
He asks, leafing through it, “Oma, what is this?”
“It’s a book Uncle Gordon and I put together. This one is on my mother’s side of the family, and it’s about her, her parents, and their parents, and all of their families in our Hoy line from when they left Germany to come to this country.”
“Is my mom’s family in here?”
“No,” I say, “it’s your dad’s side of the family.”

He turns the pages, interested in everything.
“Would you like a copy of it when you grow up?” I ask.
“I would,” he says, oh so very earnestly.
“I knew I liked you,” and I kiss the top of his head.

The next day I get a call from his father. “Is there any particular reason you’re having a conversation with my son about Hitler?”
To that, I respond, “Hey, you’re the one who opened it up. I didn’t bring him to the cemetery; you did. I was simply answering his questions.”
November 2007

It’s Just a Saying ~ As I’m getting lunch together, Satchel is on my kitchen floor with both legs encircling my ankle, his arms around my calf. When I try to walk away, he hangs on, hoping for a ride. I’m wearing black cowboy boots.
I lose my balance and bark, “Watch out! If I come down on you with my heel, you won’t be having any children.”
“What do you mean I won’t be having any children?”
“If I crush your cojones, you won’t be able to have kids.”
“What do you mean, I won’t be able to have kids?”
Ohmygod. I’ve had the death conversation. I’ve had the Hitler conversation. And now I’m heading into a sex conversation with a four-year-old.
I stutter and stammer. “It’s just, well, it’s just, it’s just, it’s just a…” grasping for words.
He saves me: “Oh, you mean, it’s just a saying?”
“Exactly. It’s just a saying.” I exhale with relief.
It’s not as if I haven’t already been in enough trouble this month answering this kid’s questions.
2007

My Granddaughter ~ In April of 2008, Brooke and Matt have their second child, a girl. Satchel, who’d turned five the month before, spends the day with me, and we talk a lot about the new baby. When Matt arrives to pick him up, he asks if Satch has told me what they decided to name her. My grandson can be hard to understand as he speaks with a mush mouth just like his father, so I hadn’t quite made out what he was mumbling as it made no sense.
“I’m not sure,” I answer.
Setting me up without missing a beat, my son says, “Temple Lova Tiger-Lily Sevenau.”
I stare at him, thinking he looks normal. Then I look down, my mind ratcheting like a pinball machine: he’s got to be kidding; don’t make eye contact; don’t let your mouth twitch; relax your jaw; breathe, just breathe.
I can’t help it. Somewhere from the recess of my throat, I croak, “Did… did you put that on her birth certificate?” My mind has gone berserk. This is my fault. I never should have dropped acid before he was born. Or is it Brooke’s mother’s fault for letting her child drink Kool-Aid? My God, our children are both brain-damaged.

Brooke later asks me if I want to know where they got the name Tiger-Lily.
“I’m dying to know,” I breathe, trying to keep any trace of sarcasm out of my tone. “Do tell.”
“Well, I had a dream that Matt was planting tiger lilies, filling the whole yard with them!”
“Ah, that explains everything.” When I told my friend, Elaina, all she could say was, “Well thank God he wasn’t planting rutabaga”
The Lova part came from Satchel. Ever since he could talk he said he would have a brother named Cozzie and a sister named Lova, and I think it’s a fine idea to let a five-year-old name a child.

P.S. Thankfully, their names have grown on me. Well, their first and last names, anyway. The kids like their monikers, and if they’re happy, I’m happy. Fortunately, they go to a Waldorf school where kindness and manners are instilled in the children. Besides, their school is populated with a new generation of children who nearly all have “special” names, so they fit right in.

P.P.S. Life comes full circle. In the ’70s most of the kids at Moon Valley School had “special” names. Perusha lived with his as long as he could, but then later changed it to Tom. At that time my kids (Matt and Jon) were among the handful of conventionally named outliers in that hippie-filled alternative school that for five years was such a wonderful part of our lives. So who am I to say anything?
April 2008

The Grandkids ~ Brooke and the kids are visiting in Sonoma for a month. My son and his family moved to Vancouver, Canada, last year—they had the nerve to not only move there, but to take my grandchildren with them—and this is their first time back. Satchel is six but tall enough to look like eight. We do our favorite things: cook eggs (he scrambles), play dominoes (he wins), draw dragon pictures (he makes good castles, I make good trees), bake chocolate chip cookies (he does it all, “let me, let me,” other than cracking open the eggs as eggshells in batter are a drag), and eat at his favorite restaurant, The Red Grape.

Last week we had lunch there. Pemba greets us at the door. He remembers Satchel and is pleased to see him again. They make small talk, he seats us, and then comes back to take our order. “What would she like?” Pemba asks. I stick my head behind the menu, lean in, and whisper, “He.” Flustered, Pemba apologizes to Satchel and says he’d gotten confused and had thought he was a boy, and…

Satchel says “That’s okay,” and as Pemba walks away, my grandson mutters, “That is sooo irritating.”
“Well, you can see how people get confused. Why do you think that is?”
“My hair,” he says, which is now down to the middle of his skinny little back.
“Well, what could you do about it?”
“I could cut it.”
“And when do you think that might be?”
He pauses, considering the question. “When I’m ten.”
“So then here’s the deal: upon occasion for the next four years, you get to be irritated.”
We play tic-tac-toe (he wins) until our order comes.
July 2009

Sparkles ~ My granddaughter is a year and three months, all tutus and sparkles. She waves frantically hello as if she’s truly happy to see you, and kisses you sweetly goodbye as if she truly loves you. I think both are true. New at walking, she careens like a drunken sailor and every fifteen minutes like a clock pinging the quarter-hour, cracks her head on something, howls for nine seconds, and is up and staggering again, exploring her two-and-a-half-foot-high world on the run.

She adores her brother and is as cute as cute can be, but is no shrinking violet. He gets in her face and when she’s had enough, she lets out a banshee wail and latches onto his cheek or arm like a five-clawed lobster, digging her adorable little painted fingernails right in. She did it to me once, and I see why he stopped bugging her. It’s brutal, and no, I wasn’t teasing her. I think she was just letting me know for future reference who might be in charge if the question were to arise.

Between head nodding, signing (quickly tapping her fingers together for “more”), and a vocabulary sufficient to get one through any domestic area or foreign country, she communicates succinctly and clearly.

She finally has hair, soft tufts of blonde. Her mother cut it so you could see her little neck. Wrong head. I now have one grandchild who is constantly mistaken for a girl and the other who could be taken for a boy.

They are returning to Canada in a few days. Their poppa misses them terribly. I know exactly how he feels.
2009

Picasso ~ This is my favorite of my grandson’s drawings, which he did for my birthday in 2010. He was seven. I’m the one with good hair and one set of eyelashes. Both of us are missing eyebrows, but you know, I hadn’t noticed mine had disappeared until my granddaughter pointed it out. I should pay more attention.
August 2010

Looking Good ~ During a birthday party for Brooke, I sat in the corner of the family room hanging out with the little kids. They were each piping up with how old they were when Satchel reached up, patted me on the head, and beamed, “My Oma is 62, but she looks really good for her age. She could pass for 60!”
November 2010

The Hedonist and the Refugee ~ Satchel was all fun, fun, fun. “Can we go to the movies and to the toy store and bake cookies and play dominoes and can you read me a book and can we draw dragons together and then can we go to the park, can we huh? huh?
I ask, “All in the next three hours?
He says, “Sure!” He takes after his father.
He now has a sister. Temple, who dresses herself, is all girl. She either looks like a Hungarian refugee or else she’s in pink with netting, tights, leopard print, and all the necessary accessories. She takes after her mother.
I have them once or twice a week, and it takes me only a day or two to recover. Mostly we cook, but not all at the same time. I tried that and there was a meltdown in the kitchen, not to mention the flour and sugar that got tracked from here to kingdom come. They are nearly always even-tempered, sweet, easy to be with, and great conversationalists, though for some odd reason Temple has a Boston accent, so I sometimes miss what she says. Cooking is our favorite thing to do. She told me I was the best cooker. I love that child.
November 2010

Fickle Four-year-old ~ On Fridays I pick up my granddaughter at pre-school. Yesterday, when she saw me, she broke into a wail. “I don’t want to go with you! I don’t wike you!”
“What happened? You liked me last week.”
“I don’t care,” she sobs. “I don’t wike you now and I don’t want to go with you.”
Hiking her writhing body up over my shoulder, I bundle her out to the car and strap her in her car seat. She’s still howling as I turn the car around to head to my house. I let her go on for another minute, then stop the engine, pivot, and level a look at her.
“Temple, knock it off. NOW.”
She surveys me, stops, and says, “Okay,” as if nothing ever happened.
I’ve never seen a quicker turnaround in my life, not even on the stage.
2012

Fine China ~ I pick her up again the next week and as I was securing her into her car seat (which cost more than my first car), I lift her skirt so I can lock in the side straps. She looks at me in shock.
“You touched my china. Don’t touch my china!”
“Oh for criminy sake, relax, I didn’t do it on purpose, and where, may I ask, are your underpants?”
“They got wet during playtime.”
“Well then, strap yourself in. And don’t go around town telling everyone I touched your china cuz they’ll toss my bootie in the pokey.”
2012

Casper ~ We’re on the couch watching Casper cartoons on my iPad, and Temple, who’s four, says, “Have you noticed that I haven’t pulled on your old skin today?” Little Miss Blue Eyes has this thing about tweaking the flesh on the back of my hand and watching it remain in a wrinkled peak.
I said, “Yes, I have noticed, and I appreciate that, thank you.”
June 2012

Time-out ~ Marching irately through my front door Satchel says, “Oma, you’ve got to do something about Temple. She gets away with everything; she hits me, she’s completely out of control, and all they do is give her time-outs and she doesn’t even care!”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re the only one in the family who can do anything about her!”
“So what do you have in mind?” I ask, knowing exactly where this is heading.
“Well, could you spank her?”
“Oh, sure. I smacked your bottom once and your parents didn’t talk to me for a month. I’m not laying a hand on that child. Sorry, you’re on your own on this one, Chickadee.”
June 2012

Different Strokes ~ Temple is here most Friday nights, and she usually sleeps with me. She wants a Taser for her birthday.
Here’s the difference between her and her brother: He was three (she was not yet born) and I heard him whisper next to me in the dark, “Oma, there’s a noise in the room.”
I say, “I’m sorry, am I snoring?”
He says softly, “I think so.”
I say, “You have to fall asleep before me.”
He says, “Okay. I’ll try.”

The first time she slept with me at that same age, I got a karate chop to the back of the head.
“What?!?” I say sitting bolt upright, now wide awake.
She barks, “I can’t sleep! You’re snoring!”
Cheesus. She’ll love the Taser.
2012

Char Girl ~ I had my four-year-old granddaughter for the weekend. We’re making chocolate chip cookies, and she begs to take over mixing the butter and flour.
“I do it, I do it! Let me, let me!”
After getting the cookies in the oven and cleaning up, as there was now batter everywhere, we put a load of towels in the washer.
She stops me again with, “I do it. I do it! Let me, let me!”
Then I pull out the vacuum to clean the floor dusted in flour.
Again, “I do it, I do it! Let me, let me!”
While the cookies are cooling, she melodramatically looks up at me with her baby blues, puts the back of her hand on her sweet forehead, rolls her eyes skyward, and moans, “Work, work, work! All I did today was work! I had to cook, I had to do laundry, I had to vacuum, I had to do everything! I’m exhausted!”
“Poor little char girl,” I say in sympathy. “Here, have a warm cookie; it’ll revive you.”
2012

Flip of a Switch ~ Temple and I are making a mango smoothie. With the shiny red blender nearly full, I say, “You have to remember not to flip this switch up unless the lid is on.”
She reaches over and flips it. In shock, we look at the walls and each other, now dripping in mango, banana, and yogurt.
“Like that?” she says.
“Like that,” I say.
“Sorry, Oma,” she says.
“I know,” I say.
2013

Food Fans ~ Temple and I cook together, then we eat, and while we eat, we name all the ingredients in the dish. We usually make one-pot meals or salads with a variety of food, so a lot is going on in them.
During dinner, she inquires, “Oma, what are you a fan of?”
I say, “What?” having no idea what she means.
She says, “You know, food. What foods are you a fan of.”
I say, “Oh. Well, I’m a fan of shrimp, asparagus, sushi, and dark chocolate.”
She then asks, “What are you not a fan of?”
I answer, “Black licorice, coffee, and wine.”
So of course I ask her, “What are you a fan of?”
She says, “Broccoli and kale.”
I say, “You are the oddest five-year-old I’ve ever met.”
She laughs.
2013

Kids ~ I’m lucky to have grandchildren who’ll eat anything, or at least taste it before they turn up their noses. Even if it’s not to their liking, they’ll still try a small amount, which gives me one less thing to worry about with all those starving kids in China. For lunch one day I fixed Temple a plate of quesadillas, her favorite go-to meal when she’s over. I was out of cheddar and jack, so I used what I had.
On her first bite, she exclaims, “Oma, this goat cheese is delicious!”
“How do you know that’s goat cheese?”
“Silly, because it smells like goats!”
Now how in the world does this five-year-old know what goats smell like? It’s not as if she lives on a farm or has a goat in her backyard.
2013

Hatfields and McCoys ~ My ten-year-old grandson calls and says, Hi Oma, it’s me, Satchel, and I say, Hi Satchel, it’s me, Oma. Excitedly, he asks if we’re related to the Hatfields and McCoys. I say no, we’re related to the Chatfields and Hoys. He says WHAT?!? I say I can tell by your voice you’re disappointed. Our family isn’t nearly as interesting and I’m sorry, but the only connection is that they rhyme. They’re from the South, we’re from the North. He says, quite sadly, oh, right, okay, bye Oma. I say okay, bye Satchel.

I’m curious as to why he’s watching that show on TV, on a school night, at that hour, not to mention that he attends a Waldorf school that frowns on television. I’ll bet you dollars to donuts his mother is not home.
May 2013

Wiggly Skin ~ When I read to her, or we watch movies, she sits close to me, slightly pinching the skin on the back of my hand or jiggling my underarm. I give her an evil look from slanted eyes and inquire, “What are you doing?” She knows it drives me crazy.
“I can’t help it,” she sighs. “Your skin is so wiggly. I just like it.”
She used to pull the neck crepe under my chin, which REALLY drove me nuts. She doesn’t do that anymore, which is one of the reasons she’s made it to the age of five.
June 2013

A Day in the City ~ Thinking it would be fun, Satchel and I took a day trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown, Ghirardelli Square, and Pier 39, and made it there and back, though barely.

Going, we missed the Larkspur Ferry by ten minutes, so we had to wait for the next one. Finally boarding, we sat on the windy upper outside deck so we could see the view. San Quentin and Alcatraz are fascinating to a ten-year-old boy who wants to know if you know anyone who got murdered and how it happened, and whether you actually know any real murderers, and whom had they killed. Luckily my Italian brother-in-law’s brother was at one time in San Quentin for murder. We also have an ancestor, Valentine Hoy, who in 1898 was shot in cold blood by Harry Tracy, the most infamous criminal of that day. My grandson was thrilled to hear the stories.

We made it to the City and were dropped off at the Ferry building. So far, so good. Then after asking several random strangers where to find the cable car, we made our way to Chinatown. We grabbed an outside seat and hung on tight, hugging our legs close to prevent amputation from the passing cars, and then actually got off on the right corner. I knew because all the signs were in Chinese and the cable car driver winked at me, delivering on his promise to tell us where to disembark.

The two of us wandered around Chinatown, poking our heads into all the stores, eating dim sum at the Great Eastern Restaurant on Jackson, and then buying a sack of dried mushrooms, some wonderfully weird fruit, and a bag of fortune cookies. A shiatsu teacher friend suggested that while we were there, I see his Chinese doctor about my not-quite-healed kidney stone pain. We found the pharmacy, as it was just up the street. In the back room, the doctor tested my pulse, looked at my tongue, and wrote a prescription in Chinese characters for five bags of tea to the tune of $37. It was only $12 for the tongue and pulse advice; the translator told me the doctor said my back still hurts because there’s sand in there from the stone, and the tea would cure me. Our arms loaded with weird fruit, dried mushrooms, fortune cookies, and five bags of tea, we’re talking five lunch bags, not tea bags, we head to Ghirardelli Square where the day starts to head downhill. We caught the bus going in the opposite direction. We got off twenty minutes later when we finally figured it out and then waited a half hour for the right bus to come along. As we boarded, we realized it was the same damn bus we’d gotten off a half hour earlier, with the same driver that I now wanted to seriously whack upside the head. We asked him the first time around if his bus would take us to the Square and he said yes, but failed to tell us not until he’d completed the route in the opposite direction. I put Satchel in charge of making the bus driver tell us exactly when and where to disembark. The driver does, but I don’t trust him. He knew that’s where we wanted to go in the first place and didn’t bother to point out to us that we couldn’t get there from here.

He tells us where to get off, which is so what I wanted to do to him; we thought we were lost again as we were looking for a large brick building that was the entrance to Ghirardelli Square, which we happened to be standing right in front of. By this time, we are fading, so to sustain us, we head for the Western cures of lemon sorbet and a chocolate sundae. As I wasn’t about to get on another wrong bus, we walked to Pier 39 where we finally found the magic store, and then we walked back to the Ferry Building, hauling our substantial evidence of a Chinatown visit. We made the ferry by the hair of our chinny-chin chins. We found places to sit on the lower inside deck: not only was it packed, it was now freezing out, so I sat with my head down and eyes closed for the half-hour ride. (I get seasick.) Then we walked the mile to the car. The parking lot was full in the morning when we got there, which is why we missed the ferry in the first place. In case you’re not clear, Satchel and I are not what you’d refer to as “walkers.”

Spent, we made it home to Sonoma at 7:30 to have dinner at Brooke’s sister’s house, which of course I couldn’t find. I called Matt to confirm that we were in front of the right place, set my phone on the trunk of someone’s car in the driveway to put on my coat, then joined the party. Matt left the party at 9:00, got home, and called Brooke to tell her my phone was stuck on the trunk of his car. I got this sticky rectangle thing at a real estate conference; you peel off one side and attach it to the back of your phone, and the other side is also sticky so when you leave it on the trunk of someone’s car like some special kind of stupid, it holds it there and doesn’t fall off and get run over by fifty cars while traveling a couple of miles away at 40 miles per hour. Fortunately, it was my son’s car I’d unknowingly set it on.

By ten I dropped into bed, happy. I got my phone back. The dim sum was everything we hoped it would be. Chinatown was exotic, the fortune cookie factory was fascinating though not terribly sanitary, and Satchel was fine that we never made it to the arcade. I’m not sure about the Chinese doctor; if in five days I’m still alive and the pain in my back is gone, I’ll be overjoyed. And it’ll be a while before we take another trip. I have to tell you, five-year-old girls and the local park are much easier on me; I can bring snacks, find my way around the slides and swing sets—and it’s closer.
August 2013

Tupperware! ~ My dilemma is solved: Tupperware! I saw a cartoon with two older women paying their respects to their friend lying in an open Tupperware casket, with the caption, “Edna would be so pleased… look — Tupperware!”

My grandson asked if I wanted to be buried or cremated. I told him cremated because it’s less expensive and makes a smaller footprint on the earth. Then I told him the REAL reason I don’t want to be buried is because I don’t want the bugs to eat me. He decided he’d be cremated too. I said he was a little premature in his planning, and I prefer that he go after me, but that I didn’t imagine either one of us was proposing leaving anytime soon.
And now you’re wondering why I’m having this conversation with a ten-year-old. Well… he asked.
October 2013

A Three-Pointer ~ “Oma, I don’t think my coach likes me.”
“Why?”
“He’s not very nice to me, he hollers, and I don’t get to play much.”
“Listen, I’m going to give you some advice. First off, quit taking it personally. He’s your coach and that’s what coaches do. He’s not there to be your friend. And, maybe he is a mean guy. So? There are lots of mean guys out there. Someday you’re going to have a boss that’s not very nice to you. Buck up; not everyone’s going to treat you as the golden boy. Maybe he’s preparing you for the real world. Some coaches are better with kids than others, and you only have him for this season. If he gets really mean, let me know. I’ll march out there on that court and take care of him.”
“No, Oma, no, it’s okay. Please, I don’t want you to talk to him.”
“I thought that might be the case.”
2013

Righteous Indignation ~ I pick up my granddaughter from school on her third day of kindergarten.
“So, how was it?”
“Well,” she says, arms akimbo, “they have a lot of rules here.”
“Like what?
“You can’t throw rocks, you can’t throw the bark, you can’t tear the leaves off the bushes, you can’t climb the trees, and you can’t jump off the merry-go-round when it’s moving. You can’t do anything here!” she snorts indignantly.
“Could you do all that when you were in pre-school?”
“Sure, you could do whatever you wanted in pre-school!”
“Ahh, I see. So how many kids are in your class?”
“Nine.”
“That’s a small class. How many boys and how many girls?”
“Seven boys and eight girls,”
 she says.
I note she’s inherited my math skills.
If the remainder of the school year goes this way, I imagine she’ll be spending a good part of her education in time-out. She can use the quiet time to work on her numbers.
September 2013

Anger Issues ~ Satchel (age 11) asks, “Oma, do you know anyone with anger issues?”
I snort, “Do you mean other than just about nearly every single person in our family?”
The conversation moves on to Greek mythology and he tests me on all the gods and goddesses and thank Zeus, I remember. I can’t remember where I left my keys, my glasses, or my purse, but I’m pretty darn good at recalling the underworld, Hermes, and Aphrodite.
January 2014

Fairy Princesses ~ My granddaughter had a sleepover this weekend. It was 100 degrees outside and even hotter inside, so I put on purple shorts, a green V-neck Sonoma tee shirt, tucked my hair behind my ears, and joined her for a game of Go Fish. She’s never seen me in shorts. It’s been quite some time since anyone has seen me in a pair of shorts, including the light of day; my legs are so white you could read a book off their reflection.
She glances up and gushes, “Oma! You look REALLY cute!”
That’s the nicest thing I could have heard, white legs and all, especially since Temple is quite the fashion plate, blessed with a sense of style from the get-go. She runs the gamut from glitter to glam and back again.
A couple of years ago I was dressed up for a dance; my blouse shimmered and my shiny silk skirt billowed as it caught the air when I happened down the stairs. Her eyes widened and she gasped, “Oma! You look like a fairy princess! We could be fairy princesses together!”
Now how can you not adore someone that sweet, even if she has this thing about jiggling your wiggly skin?
July 2014

The Birds and the Bees ~ “Oma, you have to have a man and a woman to make a baby, right?”
I think, Why me, and why now? My ten-year-old grandson can’t ask me questions like this when we’re alone? He wants to have a sex conversation with Miss Five-Year-Old Big-Ears sitting next to him in the back seat?
I sidestep, “Well, that was true at one time, but science has changed that some.”
“How?”
“You need a sperm and an egg, but they no longer have to show up at the same time.”
“How does that work?”
Thank goodness there’s no time to answer as we’ve pulled into their driveway. I go in with the kids, and as they take off to put away their backpacks, I meet up with their mother in the kitchen.
“How much does Satchel know about sex? He’s asking questions.”
She responds, “Matt’s discussed it with him.”
I wander down the hall and ask Matt if he’s talked to Satchel.
My son looks at me in horror and says, “Eewwwww, no.” He lives to get a rise out of me.
“Oh my God.” I don’t take the bait, and with a facepalm, slowly shake my bowed head and leave.
2014

Big Sur, California ~ Camping is everything I remember, which is a lot of work, 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.

Knitting her brows together, my granddaughter wails, “I CAN’T wear these. They don’t match! One’s pink and one’s purple!”
“Dear heart, 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 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.

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 MapQuest 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 the pictures—unless the socks aren’t a match made in heaven.
August 2014

The Hand That’s Dealt You ~ We’re playing Go Fish on my living room floor.
Satchel (age 11) has dealt.
Temple (age 6) is waiting for instructions.
Satchel tells her, “Pick up your hand.”
In dead seriousness, she lifts her right hand and hovers it at arm’s length and palm down over the cards on the floor in front of her, as if we’re at a seance.
He rolls his eyes, slaps himself on the forehead, and falls over backward in disbelief. “Ohmygod! Why do I have to have her for a sister?”
I’m doing my best not to snort my brains out my nose because she does NOT like to be laughed at. I pick up her cards, fan them, and tuck them into her hand for her.
We don’t explain. It’s better that way.
November 2014

Fashion Police ~ I wore a skirt on Friday.
Girl fashionista: “Is that a dress or a skirt?”
Me: “It’s a skirt,” as I lift my top to show her.
Girl fashionista in disbelief: “Your skirt is clear up to your WAIST?”
Brother to girl: “Oma can’t help it. She’s from Kentucky.”
I’ll bet those brats don’t even know where Kentucky is.
November 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

Kitchen Wisdom ~ While fixing breakfast together, Temple says, “Oma, we should open a restaurant.”
I tell her, “Sure, I’ll be the prep cook because I’m the one who knows how to measure, and you can be the one who pours and stirs and flips.”
“I can only work two days a week during the summer though,” she says, “because I have swim lessons.”
December 2014

Stand by Me ~ Three weeks ago, Satchel (age 11), stood by my side at my book-signing event at Readers’ Books and read aloud a portion from my first published book, Passages from Behind These Doors. Temple (age 6), asked me beforehand if she could read some of it there too.
I said, “Sure, just one problem.”
She said, “What?”
“You don’t know how to read.”
She laughed and said, “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

That changed last night. Side by side in my bed, propped up on pillows, she read her first words to me. Some words that make no sense to a brand new reader, like when and this, and big ones too, like remember. I helped some when she was stumped.
After ten minutes she lays her head back and says, “Whew, I’m sweating.”
“I understand,” I said. “It’s hard work reading a whole book out loud for the first time.”
When she finished the last page, she had a huge smile.
When she closed the cover and carefully laid both her hands on it, I cried.
December 2014

Talk to the Hand ~ It’s Saturday morning. As Temple unloads the silverware from the dishwasher, she announces that the drawer is a bit of a mess. I offer to let her straighten it. She wants to know why I have five pairs of reading glasses in there. I tell her that’s where they hide, which is why I often have to buy new ones. She rolls her eyes. When she’s done, I offer to have her straighten two more. She’s appalled that they are also in such a jumble. After ten minutes she has them in great order. I had things in there that not only had I never used, but I wasn’t even sure what they were for. She proudly shows me her work, faces me, and spreads her arms like guardian angel wings to protect the drawers, admonishing me that I’m no longer allowed to go in them, and if I do, they’d better look like this next time she’s here. I tell her to talk to the hand. Sheesh.
May 24, 2015

Popcorn and Dibs ~ The grandgirl was here for a sleepover and we saw Inside Out at our local theatre.
It was $9.00 for me. I ask how much for a seven-year-old and Roger says, “Also $9.00.”
As we enter the lobby, she tosses her blonde head and harrumphs, “Nine dollars for a seven-year-old? That’s just plain mean.”
I explain the movie is 3D and we need special glasses to watch it.
“Fine,” she snips, “but we have to hurry because I want to sit in the front row.”
We get our popcorn and Dibs and rush in to find one other person in the whole theatre. I tell her I can’t do the front row because I get motion sick, so we share our snacks and then she scoots down to front and center when the movie starts. She doesn’t like sitting next to me because I jump or grab her when a scary part comes on. I scream the same way whether I’m about to be attacked by a great white shark or a piece of seaweed touches my leg, so no one who knows me sits next to me in a scary movie. And those who don’t know me, soon move. She’s been wise to that for years, so we usually sit separately.
After the movie, I ask her what her favorite part was, and she says it was Joy dragging around Sadness by her foot. I tell her my favorite part was when Sadness realized how important she was in Riley’s life.
Then she says, “I suppose you cried. You always do.”
I did. As I had no Kleenex, I had to use the tiny crumpled napkin left over from our popcorn and Dibs.
We meander over to the Tuesday night Farmer’s Market for dinner and an hour at the playground, and then end the evening with a cherry shaved ice and stroll home under the nearly full moon.
She’s a first-rate date.
July 2015

Goody Gumdrops ~ Early morning conversation with Temple while she casually observes me putting on my makeup:
her: “Oma, you don’t have any eyebrows.”
me: “I know.”
her: “What happened to them?”
me: “They’re in my makeup bag and on my chin.”
her: “Why don’t you have them anymore?”
me: “As we get older, they thin out and turn gray.”
her: “Nannie had eyebrows and she was in her 80s!”
me: “Well goody gumdrops for Nannie…”
October 2015

Fox Trot ~ Satchel had his first ballroom dance lesson this week.
I said, “Okay, show me what you’ve got.”
Facing one another in dance position, I put my left hand on his shoulder, his right arm around my waist, and my right hand in his left at face level.
“He looks at me in shock, and as he backs away says, “You’re my grandmother!”
“Relax, Fred, we’re not dating. We’re in my kitchen, not at the prom. It’s all good, and I know how to follow.”
October 2015

Simple as ABC ~ “What’s gay?” Temple asks, sitting at my blue-tiled kitchen counter. As I’m considering how to answer that, her brother, who’s five years older than she, glances at me and takes over. “Gay is when a man loves a man and a woman loves a woman.
Temple says, “Oh, okay.”
I’m thinking how much simpler his answer was than what mine would have been.
I did add, “I do have one caveat however: there are lots of women in my life who I love, and I’m not gay.”
2015

Working Girl ~ A year later, at that same counter, she’s playing the soundtrack from Grease (she was in the chorus for a local play) and in “Beauty School Dropout” the word hooker comes up in the lyrics.
She asks me, “What’s a hooker.”
Not thinking this through, I answer, “A prostitute.”
“What’s a prostitute?”
Grabbing a shovel, I answer, “A whore.”
“What’s a whore?”
Digging myself into a deeper rabbit hole, I answer, “Someone who gets paid for having sex.”
“What’s sex?”
And now, as we’re about six feet under, her brother steps in, faces me in alarm, holds up his hand like a traffic cop, and says, “Oma, STOP RIGHT THERE. She needs to hear this with the ears of an eight-year-old.”
He takes over: “Temple, sex is like when a man and a woman neck. Like when they close their eyes and like kiss each other’s necks.”
She asks in consternation, “Do Mom and Dad do that?”
He says, “Yes.”
She screws up her face and on an in-breath says, “That’s, like, disgusting.”
He responds, “I know, and when they tell you for the first time what sex is, just pretend like you don’t know; that’s what I did.”
God, I love that boy.
2016

Looking good ~ Temple is once again studying my eyebrows (or lack thereof). Out of concern, she says, “So Oma, your eyebrows are gone and now you’re losing your eyesight, your hearing, and your sense of smell. Are you losing your mind too?”
“No, I haven’t lost my mind, but I am losing some of my memory. However, my hair still looks good, and it’s all about the hair.”
If you ever want to keep from getting too uppity, have an eight-year-old granddaughter. Or feel free to borrow mine.
2016

March Forth ~ Whoo boy… birthday ice cream, a book, and a check from me… then off to testing at Taekwondo. He has on his backpack, a new 13-year-old birthday tee, and a slight, very slight, mustache.
I say, “Hey, come here! Is that hair on your upper lip?”
He answers proudly, “Yeah, and I have it under my arms and other places too, as he shows me his armpit and then grabs his waistband. Want to see?”
“Acckkk! No! You want me to see me in jail, don’t you!”
He kills me… marching forth on the fourth.
March 2016

The Half-Blood Prince ~ My grandkids are now 8 and 13, one tall, the other now taller than me. I pick them up after school most Fridays for a sleepover and we either cook here or eat out and go to the show or watch Harry Potter movies on my computer. We’ve been doing this since Temple was five. I probably only have a couple more years of this as they are getting older. Maybe by then, we’ll tire of Harry Potter, but I hope not. I won’t at least.
October 2016

Potter Post-script ~ We watched Harry Potter on my computer nearly every time the kids spent the night. There are eight movies in the boxed set. Eight movies divided into 240 nights (or somewhere thereabouts) over six years (not including summers and vacations) is about 30 times each movie. In the beginning, Temple hid her head in my lap during the scary parts, and Satchel averted his eyes at the kissing scenes; then they became inured. Satchel grew to become intensely interested in the kissing parts, studying technique, I suppose, hoping someday he’d be lucky like that. Satchel of course wanted to be Harry, Temple yearned to be Hermione, and I vacillated between Professor McGonagall or Dumbledore, though I have a lot more of Professor Snape in me.

Darwin Award Material ~ Satchel, age 13, halfway up a giant eucalyptus during a family hike: “Should I jump?”
Me: “Sure, go ahead if you want to be out for the rest of the basketball season with two broken legs.”
He may be spreading his wings, but I’m fairly certain he hasn’t learned how to fly.
November 2016

Ivory Soap ~ Satchel has grown by leaps and bounds; every Friday we stand face to face in my kitchen to measure his growth. For a short time we are nose to nose. When the day finally comes that he surpasses me, but just barely, he steps back two feet, rests his hands on my shoulders, and happily grins, “You know what this means, don’t you?”
I laugh and shake my head, both of us recalling that moment when he was four and got busted for swearing, “My, oh my, you do have a good memory.”
I suppose at thirteen a boy can swear, but not often in front of his grandmother. And rest assured, he knows if he uses the F word again in my presence, he may be having a bar of Ivory for dinner.
2016

Surf’s Up ~ “Oma, are these flippers yours?” Temple (age 9) asks, checking out the box of Neofins in my garage.
“Yes, as a matter of fact they are,” I answer, trying not to sound defensive.
With an askance side-eye, she says, “You don’t seem like the type.”
“I wore them swimming when I went with Elaina to the Aquatic Club a couple of days ago.”
“You actually SWAM with these?”
“Well, not actually. It was more like a dog paddle.”
Oh she who knows me so well, snipes, “I figured as much.”

My nephew, John Duchi, sent the fins to me a few years ago; I’d come across them cleaning my garage and thought they were an idea whose time had come. I gotta tell ya, they triple the speed of a dog paddle but aren’t much use in the bathtub.
Summer 2017

Cold Hard Cash ~ A couple of weeks ago my son Jon and I took Temple and her cousin Fiona, both age nine, to the Farmers Market in Marin. They brought money to buy their lunches for school the next day, so they were ready to shop. Each time they picked out something they’d empty their pockets, take their wad of bills and coins and dump it all in front of the vendor, letting the vendor figure out how much to take. They looked like I do in a foreign country, having no idea of the value of the currency in hand. When the girls ran out of funds, Uncle Jon laid a five-spot on each of them and they went into ecstatic dance, twirling and whirling like dervishes: “We’re rich! We’re rich!” They now had enough to buy half a rotisserie chicken and a good-sized pot of potatoes to split.

When Temple stayed over this last Friday night, we practiced. I pulled out my coin jar, emptied my wallet of bills, and she organized it all on a large oval plastic board. Within an hour she could tell me what each coin and bill was worth, how many coins made what, and who and what was on each one. She could make change and could re-budget when she tried to buy $7 worth of imaginary food with only $5. She had to eliminate some cookies and an apple from her list. I explained how cash, credit cards, debit cards, and checking and savings accounts worked. Then we rolled a pile of coins and took them to the bank the next morning.

On the way, she asked if I could show her how to pump gas.

Next week she’ll be opening her own business. She already has a savings account that will bankroll her. I could invest… and I imagine her Uncle Jon would too.
October 2017

Dim Sum and a Monopoly Card ~ It took a while but we finally made it to Yank Sing in San Francisco. We drove and didn’t get lost. We parked in the underground garage. We ate. And ate. And ate. I told the waitress it was my grandson’s 15th birthday and that this was my favorite restaurant and his first time there. After 12 baskets of dim sum, she brought him a dessert with a candle. This is what a happy fifteen-year-old looks like. Now stuffed, we moseyed on over to the Ferry Building, I bought fresh mushrooms and he flirted with the salesgirl. All in all, it was a perfect day. He wants to go back. I told him I had to sell a house first to pay for it. It’s stunning how much a teenage boy can eat.

This was also my gift to him: “You and your sister have spent nearly every Friday night with me for the past six years, and you for five years before that. As you are now fifteen, I don’t imagine you’ll be hanging out with me much anymore. High school, basketball, buddies, and girls are replacing family. It’s okay. I get it. So here: I’m giving you a Get Out of Jail Free card with no need to feel obligated or guilty. I love you and I’m grateful for all the time we’ve spent together. I hereby set you free.”

And you know what happened? I haven’t seen him since, or his sister; she was sucked into his tailwind. As she now rides her bike to and from grammar school, I’m no longer needed to pick her up, and they are old enough to stay home on their parents’ date night. I thought I’d have her for a while, but she too has flown my coop. Ah, my little chickadees, I’m doing my best not to be brokenhearted, but my shell is more than a little cracked.
March 2018

Coming and Going ~ my grandson and son. We were in Carmel for a grief-filled memorial for my brother’s 18-year-old granddaughter, who’d taken her life just before Christmas.

Written by my daughter-in-law, Brooke: “We stepped out of the church into the rain. My heart, so blown open by the memorial service for Natalie, and I saw my boys walking away on a rainy Saturday in January. Love, the only thing that mattered at that moment. That and how time slips through our fingers whether we like it or not. I called Satchel’s name and snapped a photo. And I think I captured a moment in time, this moment in our life — how it feels to love and let go at the same time.”

Matt added: “This picture really captures so much with him wearing my sports coat and me walking the other way in the crosswalk. He’s slowly leaving us as a boy and I’m learning to let him go. Bittersweet.”
January 2019

Wild Blue Yonder ~ I’m glad I’ve penned these stories over the years; it’s kept these two close to me. My grandson is nearly a young adult: driving, girlfriends, considering college. My granddaughter, though only 11, is also moving away into her own older being. Both are engaging kids, and I’m fortunate that we’ve lived in the same town so I could participate in their growing up. They know right from wrong and are happy, healthy, and intelligent. They have a keen sense of humor (they get that from me), are physically brave (they don’t get that from me), and are generous, thoughtful, and authentic. They care about animals and have a love of family (they get that from their mother), and are athletic and are intimate with nature (which they’ve gleaned from their father). And I so appreciate that they do not have helicopter parents who constantly hover over them; it lets them find their own way in the world and allows me to keep my tongue in check.

Nonetheless, I do miss them. I miss my little broke friends who thought I had a money tree in the backyard, miss finding Legos in the crevices of my couch, miss getting new artwork for the side of my refrigerator. I miss her gently tweaking my old skin while we watched Harry Potter on my computer. I miss making her cheese quesadillas and him chicken tacos, baking chocolate chip cookies with them, making omelets and soup and smoothies together. I feel the loss when I spy their toothbrushes in the bathroom drawer alongside mine. Yes, I see them at family gatherings and we text and email, and yes, I could watch a Harry Potter movie by myself, but it’s not the same. But, there would be something weird about one’s 15-now-16-year-old grandson spending Friday nights with his grandmother. I trust that all is as it should be, crank up the sound, and tap my foot in time to the music…

“It’s time to move on, time to get going
What lies ahead, I have no way of knowing
But under my feet, baby, grass is growing
It’s time to move on, it’s time to get going.”
                             —Tom Petty

August 2019

My grandson’s (age 8) first poem, November 2001. I too am filled with thankfulness:
Latest pictures:

 

© 2019. Catherine Sevenau.
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