My great-grandmother lives in an assisted living facility. She’ll be 98 years old next week. Me and the kids are going to see her tomorrow. The facility has an Easter egg hunt every year for the residents’ friends & relatives under the age of 12.
I rold my four-year-old daughter that we were going to visit her tomorrow, for the hunt, and also because it’s going to be Grandma Wilcox’s birthday. I asked my daughter if she would like to draw a picture, as a birthday present for Grandma. She did, of course–any excuse will do when it comes to coloring.
She took a gray crayon, and drew a happy face with short, curly gray hair. “A picture of Grandma Wilcox!” she said very proudly. Looks pretty darn like her, that’s for sure.
I asked her to put her name on it, because Grandma likes to know who her presents come from. So, my daughter wrote her name on it.
Okay, here’s the cool thing–my daughter wrote her name by herself, spelled right and everything, with no prompting from me. Now here’s the REALLY cool part–my daughter is left-handed, so…she wrote her name backwards. Right to left.
I left it that way, because my grandmother will LOVE it like that.
Hee! Smart girl, like her mom. Y’all have a great Easter weekend, with the appropriate nuevo huevo fertility ritual & ladies swingin’ on the moon & all, by Goddess!
I find that very charming. Kids are wonderful at that point in their lives.
There is a (sadly narrow) point in a child’s life where their art is pure --untainted by what they think the world expects a drawing of a person or flower or whatever to look like - so they draw it with pure perception, unfettered with constraints of style or logic. In their art Dad is bigger than the house, not because the house has receeded into the background (perspective is an unknown concept at that point) but rather becaues he’s that important. He towers over the house.
Her signiture is made all the more Her’s by writing it backwards. Screw convention!!
You know, I don’t think I even bothered to tell her that it was backwards. I just thought it was the neatest thing I’d ever seen. Ans she just did it so easily, like it was perfectly normal.
Oh and she’s also taken to flipping her guitar upside-down. My husband had wanted her to try and learn to play right-handed (for financial reasons, mostly–left-handed guitars are more expensive) but I’ve been fighting him on that one. But when he saw her do that, he asked her which way felt better. She flipped it back and forth a couple of times, then finally decided on upside-down. So now he’s resigned to it. Guess I’ll be saving my pennies for a left-handed guitar.
Well, my daughter did a really cool thing the other day, too–she went out on a date and didn’t come home pregnant.
Sometimes I envy you the simplicity of your life, Pers. Ah, for the days of Barney and Elmo, when the worst thing I had to worry about was losing crayons in the couch.
Gonna go off a bit here, and tell you about my great-grandma. As I said, she’ll be 98 next week. This woman gave birth to one child, my late grandmother. My grandmother married three times, having five children with her first husband, and one with her second. Her third marriage was to a widower with five children.
In giving birth to my grandmother, my great-grandmother singlehandely founded a dynasty. She somehow managed to imbue her one child with the skills to raise what amounts to a litter (hey, this is my family–I can say that about them). And they all turned out okay. I catch myself wondering how she did it as I chase my “spirited” children all over the place.
I think what I like best about my great-grandma is that nothing, but nothing, shocks her. Ever. She’s seen the entire century. She really did walk to school in hip-deep snow, uphill both ways, and she really was grateful for it. No kidding.
Last summer, my great-grandma’s kidneys failed. She was in the hospital for over a month. The doctors said she might need dialysis, but my great-grandma said “if it comes to that, no. I don’t want it. I’ve had a good, long life, and if it’s time, well, it’s time.” It was painful to hear her say that, but everyone in my family understood, and no one argued or questioned. She is still of sound mind. As it turns out, she didn’t need it–because she got better. This 97-year-old woman recovered from kidney failure. My whole family was astonished. Oh, it’s not that we wanted her to go–not at all. But we’ve been bracing ourselves for the death of our matriarch since my great-grandfather died–in 1988.
I hope I last as long as her. And I hope my family cares for me the way we care for her. No amount of fame or fortune could ever possibly top that.
What a cute kid, Persephone, and what a great great-grandma story, too!
If you want a really neat record, make a quick note of cute things your kids do when they do them, and save them on the computer, hardcopy, or however you want. I have a stack of cute kid stories that I’ve e-mailed out to friends from time to time, and I saved a print of almost every one. Heh heh heh… I’m saving them for when Ralf. Jr brings his prom date home…
And as a lefty myself, I struggled with the right-handed guitar. I finally flipped it over, reversed the strings, and pressed on. (Is that the right thing to do? I didn’t know I could get a left-handed guitar!) Any way, you’re doing the right thing, IMHO.
I’m not a guitar player myself-just married to one. But this is what I’ve learned:
You can do that, sort of. The bridge saddle where the strings rest is designed to fit each string, though, so if you just reverse the strings, they won’t quite sit properly, and at best, you might not be able to get it to tune right. I don’t know if any worse damage could be done, though–someone who actually plays could probably answer that. But getting a right-handed guitar all redone to play left-handed is pretty darn expensive, too. Getting a left-handed guitar is way easier, although more expensive.
