Can't we home-school him for a while?

It’s very quiet here today. We’re trying not to be sad. You see, it’s Augie’s first day of kindergarten; his mom took the day off work to escort him. It’s full-day kindergarten, not half-days like when we were kids. And that's the rub.

age 9 months, reading Moo Baa La-La-La

As grandparents who’ve had this child and his sister in our home five days a week, we always saw our role not as babysitting but as helping prepare these two terrific little people for life, and of course for school. We always knew today was coming, and we're happy for him. But the transition feels abrupt. No wonder moms cry with their little ones start school!

It could be worse. Augie’s going to be here for a little over an hour each morning before Grandpa drives him to school, and we’re thankful for that. But we’ll miss spending long, unstructured days with him.

The transition will be especially challenging for ViMae, who has one more year with us before she, too, starts school. Augie has been the center of her universe. Much of the time, the thing she most wants to be doing is whatever Augie is doing. We are looking forward to helping her discover her own interests and passions while she has our undivided attention. But just for the moment, we’re looking back.

age 2, pretend-baking

Last evening (Grandparent's Day at that) we went out to dinner and talked about how we’ve contributed to Augie’s development as the amazing little person he is. He has great parents—both teachers—who give the kids all kinds of attention and experiences. But it’s satisfying to know we’ve added a lot to the mix.

Our first priority was always to be sure the kids know they are loved—by their parents, by us, by their other grandparents and family members. When Augie was two, we were singing “Old MacDonald.” Augie sang, “And on the farm he had a Grandma.” I held my breath. What would Grandma say? “With an ‘I love you’ here, an ‘I love you’ there….”. I posted on Facebook, “My life is complete.”

age 3, with official umpire's cap

Peter introduced Augie to the alphabet early; before the child could talk he could point to any letter you asked for. And Augie always loved to be read to; you’d finish a book and he’d say “Again!” until you couldn’t do that one any more and he’d crawl over to get another. Today this boy walked into his first day at school able to read at a third- or fourth-grade level, if not higher. On Friday he fluidly read me this flyer: “Shockingly fast Internet…Connect any device anywhere in your home with wireless home networking options.” We all contributed, but we think basically Augie taught himself, using tools we provided.

When he was eight months old I handed him a baseball; by the end of the day he could roll it straight to me, every time. At two he batted buckets of balls off a tee every day and hit live pitching besides. At three he sat in the stands and called balls and strikes—accurately. At four he tried to learn to keep a scorebook. Last week at five he turned his back to the game and read a Star Wars book! You can provide opportunities; they decide what to love and when.

age 4, at drum set

Over the years we helped foster his passion for varied music—Peter and the Wolf, the Nutcracker, old-school drumming by Gene Krupa, rock classics by the Who and the Stones. He loves the dancing of Fred Astaire but emulates the dancing of Donald O’Connor in Singing in the Rain. He makes his own music on guitar, piano, harmonica, violin, and most of all drums. We showed him that music can be read but never pushed him. Last week he studied some sheet music and said aloud to himself, “This is going to be hard.” Then he placed both hands on the piano keys and played a lovely, gentle piece very different in style from anything he has tried before. The music is in him, and as he gets older I know he’ll find new ways to express it.

age 4, making salad with ViMae

If you’re still with me, pardon me for bragging. But I am astonished by the way a child’s mind can absorb and keep information. He knows the world’s major wild animals and keeps the carnivores away from the herbivores when setting up his Lego zoo. He can identify dozens of Minnesota birds, and knows the details of all 70 dragons in our Dragonvale game. He sets up fire scenarios with his massive Lego fire department, and plays them out with great attention to details that he has pulled together from many sources. He knows every character, battle, weapon, vehicle, planet, droid, and episode title in Star Wars, and in which order the episodes were made. He keeps several other fictional worlds spinning in his mind as well, including the Hobbit and the Bone graphic novels. With Star Wars and those other worlds, Augie is the one who teaches us, and he does it patiently, repeating information that Pa and I just can’t quite keep straight.

He’s a planner. He has talked for a year or more about having a smoothie shop, so I decided to help him develop a business plan. I thought it would be a cute thing to pull out some day after he’s forgotten all about it. Well, this kid dictated a plan that includes the layout, location, staffing, menu, target audience, and even the tools he’ll need to build the place. Pa sketched elevations and floor plans to Augie’s specifications, and I’ve made menus, both hand-written and typed. He’s frustrated that he hasn’t been able to get a contractor working on it yet. When a teacher assigns him a project, he’s likely to carry it out pretty thoroughly.

age 5, with new Lego fire plane

Friday was Augie’s last regular day here for daycare, and we celebrated with a new Lego fire plane and his favorite Chinese food for lunch. As he happily skipped out the back door at the end of the day, Abby said, “And so it begins.” As a teacher, she can envision for better or worse the process on which he is embarking. I didn’t tell her that I was thinking, “And so it ends.”

But it doesn’t end. We’ll still see him every morning, and other times as well, most likely. And we still have unfinished business.

On Friday, he told Peter, “You need to teach me all your life lessons before you die, so I can teach them to my grandson.”

Once in a blue moon…black helicopters and missing money

When I was growing up I thought the phrase “once in a blue moon” meant something very special and very rare. Now I understand that not only is the moon NOT blue, but that a blue moon occurs, on average, every 2.7 years. It can even happen twice in a single calendar year.

Still, the occasion of a blue moon seems an appropriate time to reflect on a couple of things that happened this past week, both of them surprising and rare.

First, I experienced black helicopters. Okay, not the silent stealth helicopters that figure in conspiracy theory. These were fairly loud, quite visible, and announced in advance: U.S. Special Operations Command would be carrying out urban training exercises all week in St. Paul and Minneapolis, using Black Hawk and Hughes 500 helicopters as part of the maneuvers.

Still, sitting outdoors at a minor league baseball game, it can be jarring when three military helicopters in perfect formation to come flying over the stadium from beyond the right field line before moving off toward downtown Minneapolis. Six more sets followed, alternating in groups of three and four. It was an odd sensation. They looked serious, loaded, ready for business. Some people seemed to react, as I did, with a little chill. It reminded me a bit of walking out my front door in Milwaukee in 1968 to see a National Guard tank rolling down the middle of the street. There had been rioting, the Guard was there to keep the peace, and I had not felt comforted. Seeing the Black Hawks overhead this week, I thought for just a second what could happen now, if society broke into open fighting or if an occupying force, foreign or domestic, moved in.

It was only a momentary chill, and quite clearly not everyone shared it. Many were simply surprised, and some smiled and waved as each helicopter went over. I could understand the impulse, because today in America we are very much into saluting and thanking our armed forces. But these special ops teams were not out for a sight-seeing tour. They were in serious training, and somehow it seemed wrong, or at least odd, to wave.

I learned from comments on a web site that the helicopters spent a lot of time in downtown Minneapolis and Saint Paul, buzzing the tall buildings and landing on rooftops. Reactions ranged from “Cool!” to “What’s happening—I’m scared!”

I think it’s fair to say this will happen only once in a blue moon.

My second rare and surprising experience: I got back some “unclaimed assets.” Have you seen the long lists of names in the newspapers, where the state says these people have money coming to them? I gave up checking them because I never saw my name there, and really, why would it be?

A few weeks ago my brother Allen, who works for the State of Minnesota, told me he saw my name, with an old address, on missingmoney.com, the website that Minnesota now uses in place of the names-in-a-newspaper system. Sure enough, it was my name and my address, and it said I was owed “More than $100.” The party owing me money was an insurance company with whom I’d had my first life insurance policy. When I saw that, something clicked. I’d seen a notice about policyholders being owed money in a distribution of assets, but I had dismissed it.

All I had to do now was enter some contact information plus, ahem, my Social Security number. That gave me pause. I began checking the authenticity of the site. I could find no complaints online, no mention of scams. In fact, reputable financial writers referred to this service as useful, and recommended checking one’s own name as well as older relatives who might have a forgotten old savings account or a distribution that couldn’t reach them because a company that owed them money only had an old address. Wait, that sounded familiar.

So I filled in the online form, which was submitted to the Minnesota Department of Commerce, and I said to my husband, “Wonder whether I’ll ever hear from them.”

This week I got a check from the state. For nearly $800.

That, too, will probably only happen once in a blue moon. But I am encouraged by the fact that blue moons aren't as scarce as I once thought.

One reason I am a blissed-out grandma

Each day when we're together, ViMae asks, "Do you want to play Mom and Kid?" "Of course," I say, and suddenly I am The Kid. I have no actual kid name, and my age varies from one to ten. It is often Kid's birthday, a good excuse for a play tea party.

In fact, we can play anything just the way we usually do, except periodically Vi says something in her Mom character and I respond in kind.

A couple of weeks ago we were playing with Play-Doh, feathers, and pipe cleaners, and she carried on a long conversation with her bird/Princess Leia creation. Seeing the nice light, I grabbed my camera and snapped away. She pretended not to notice.

When she was done playing and I stopped shooting, she asked innocently, "What were you doing, Kid?" I'm pretty sure she knew. And now I'm sharing.

Finding my voice: three years of blogging

Today marks the third anniversary of my blog--the "leather" anniversary, according to my friend Jayne, who celebrated hers last week.

This is a welcome time for an anniversary. I have been posting only every couple of weeks, and lately when I begin a draft it turns out to be about the weather. Granted, weather has been a worthy topic this summer, but my drafts weren't contributing to the discussion.

Checking my early posts, I found a bit of inspiration. Three years ago, I was writing without readers, hence without conversation. At least a few posts from back then are clamoring to be reintroduced, this time to a group of lovely people whose opinions and contributions I value greatly.

This blog has been an exercise in finding my own voice after a long career of writing in other people's voices. I wrote endlessly in the "institutional" voice on behalf of three colleges and universities. I wrote letters and speeches for college presidents, and a book in the voice of a long-time baseball player, and they all said I captured them well. But what about me?

Before I could start blogging, I had to persuade myself that I had something to share, and then I had to develop a writing style that conveyed what I wanted to say. I wanted to speak directly, from me to you, and before long I began to incorporate a bit of my casual conversational style. Briefly, I also tried out some of the sarcasm I enjoy when other folks do it, but I couldn't make it work for me. I learned to keep things short (sort of) and to write about more topics than just my grandchildren. I still work on my posts, but I no longer labor over them. Blogging feels much more comfortable now.

This summer, while recuperating from a broken leg, I was feeling that the best thing about blogging is reading others, not writing my own. But I think it's only fair to give back by writing and commenting, and I feel the energy returning. Thank you for everything that you share--ideas, comments, encouragement, wonderful bits of thought that make life richer.