Judy Conlin
With company coming, I’ve been a busy little beaver. I cleaned out cupboards, pantries, and closets as if my company was going to come in and start inspecting the whole house. I hired my gardener, handyman and cleaning lady to get the outside and inside a bit more attractive. I had the trunk of my car emptied so I would have room for their luggage. I had my car detailed for the first time ever. I WAS ON A ROLL.
I already told you that I got my seven year old great granddaughter a dinosaur play tent and filled it with dinosaur books, games and toys. I added a child sized clothes pole outside it with a St. Patrick’s Day dress hanging on it. I was all set.
Then I began to worry. What if she had outgrown dinosaurs? What was a little girl going to do all day rather isolated out in the woods at my house? I stewed. I fretted. I worried about what else I could find for a little one to do. I decided to take an inventory of everything in my house.
As I began this task, I began to wonder who lived here. I knew it was one old woman and 2 cats, but this house certainly did not reflect that. For one thing there were dolls in every single room in the house. There was also a doll sleigh to push them around in and a tiny cradle.
Beside the roll top desk was an antique school desk with antique child books and toys on it and even old-fashioned roller skates with a key under it. Surely, she could find something of interest there. I could teach her to play jacks.
Isla (that’s my great granddaughter’s name) had copies of all my children’s books, but inside that same roll top desk were children’s magazines I had published stories in that she had never seen. I could read those children’s stories to her at bedtime.
Continuing to the sunroom, I found a big basket of cat toys. Those cats would be delighted to have someone play with them. There I also found stuffed animals, mostly bears. They were sitting everywhere. What child doesn’t like stuffed animals?
In the storage area under the TV in the great room, I spied the dollhouse my daughter made me when she was a teenager. It had furniture and dolls inside it as well as other stuff stored in its attic. My house was a child’s dream house, which doesn’t say much for my maturation over the years.
Then there were cats. Of course, there were two real ones but also shelves full of all manner of cats from tiny figurines to tall porcelain or China ones. There were stuffed cats dressed like pretty ladies. There were kittens and big old tom cats. Isla loved cats and dogs. Maybe these would entertain her.
There was a small antique child’s rocker, (a family heirloom) by the front door. Would Isla fit in it?
I was delighted with this inventory. This surely was a child’s paradise presided over by an old woman who had never frown up. I rushed off to tell Nurse Judy, my alter ego, who always bursts my balloons.”
With her hands on her hips, she gave me her baleful stare. You sure don’t know much about kids today, do you?”
“Why do you say that?’
”This is a new generation. Kids today use I phones and I pads all the time. They don’t play the same way you did.”
I am taken aback, I don’t know if she has these kinds of gadgets or not, Her parents are level-headed, If she does, however, my goose is cooked. I can’t even make my phone, TV or computer work correctly most of the time. I’m down in the dumps again.
Nurse Judy must always make me feel worse.
“Don’t be downhearted,” she says. “Maybe this 7 year old can teach you a thing or two.”
This wasn’t how I planned this reunion going. I was going to be a fun smart Yaya, but however it turns out, I am very excited and can’t wait for her to get here.
More later,
A ‘behind the times’ Yaya
