Grandparenting, or "Be the Helicopter..."

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    Grandparenting, or "Be the Helicopter" and Other Personae Dramatis!

In late summer, some 11 years ago, we first assumed the roles of grandparents, my wife and I.  It has been a truly remarkable and loving experience, but not without its challenges.  We now have four beautiful grandchildren, each with his or her own astonishing personality and behavioral characteristics.  

Coen (foreground) and Seany
(wearing glasses)  examine gifts during
Coey's 11th birthday celebration!

The first of them, Coen -- I call him Coey -- adopted an expression that we find irresistible, and use ourselves, constantly:  "Not Doin' It."  A laconic expression -- sometimes but not always effective -- relating to something that merits one's reluctance or disaffection.  Coen has been fascinated, variously, with volcanoes, planets, caves, electronic game creations and their odd beeping and pulsing...  He has become an accomplished juggler, a self-taught diversion learned recently at a camping-concert event in West Virginia!  

His sister, Lucy -- often we call her LuLu -- now almost 7 years old, invented her own delightful remonstrance:  "It's good, but it's not the best!"  On trips in the automobile, Lucy offers us three choices:  "...Play 'I Spy', or you may sing a song, or you can tell a story."  She challenges us to flex our creativity, all the time!  Coey and Lucy are the extraordinary and brilliant issue of our own first-born.  They are bright and funny, at times disarming, surprising, always delightful companions.

Lucy and Papa in an
inflatable tube.  Earlier
we played in Lake Erie!

Lucy (left) and Coey at Sea!
(Uh...  maybe Lake Michigan?!)

Our second-born produced two equally accomplished and beautiful children, ages 7 and 4 (the latter nearly 5).  Sean -- I call him Seany -- is the older of the pair.  In his pre-school era, my wife and I would report to his home in the middle of the night (about 6:30 or 7:00 AM) and perform childcare and play activities prior to school drop-off time, enabling his educator parents to get to their respective classrooms at an hour their contracts demanded.  On many of those occasions, Seany would stand on my feet, facing frontwards, instruct me to position my hands in a certain fashion, and then announce that I was to be his helicopter.  "Up, helicopter," he'd command...  

I would then ambulate for the two of us, following the path in which my hands and fingers -- the craft's "controls" -- were wrenched, um...  that is, directed.  We'd climb several stairs to his bedroom and I'd then be placed in his closet, the hanger.  If I chanced to inquire, "How long must I remain in the 'hanger'?"  The answer arrived quickly:  "Shush, Papa...  Quiet! Helicopters don't talk."  And he'd shut the "hanger's" louvered doors until the helicopter was next required.

Phia (Sophia) is older now, but
this picture of her is a favorite!

For granddaughter, Sophia -- she prefers Phia or Phi Phi...  Angel Face is also acceptable -- both my wife and I are frequently engaged in play pageants.  We become water tigers, water squirrels, parental mice, doggies, kitty cats, dolphins and other creatures.  We're instructed as to the rules and progression of play, often asked to comment on the hatching of a little water squirrel's egg.  Apparently all creatures begin as eggs, usually quite shiny, purple and pink ones!

For Coey and Lucy, we've enjoyed soccer and baseball games for the former, dance recitals for the latter, in addition to swim lessons, coaster-wagon-pulling walks to the coffee house for cinnamon rolls (the children), coffee ("Baba and Papa").  There have been some most enjoyable travel holidays as well, including trips to sunny beaches, islands, a windmill house, a giraffe, bison and goat sanctuary...  

The July 3rd Fireworks Family
Picnic is a fine opportunity to
 sit on Papa and choke him!

Seany is an accomplished soccer player, a star among his peers.  He currently plays in a much vaunted club league.  We attend lots of matches, and have done so through the years.  Phia is just beginning to discover her interests, and has participated in "itty bitty" soccer; whether she'll continue or gravitate to other sporting or artistic pursuits remains to be determined.

And, oh yes, we have a sweet cousin who owns a condo in Florida that she generously allows us to use in the off-season at most attractive "family" rate.  When we're there, I become a kind of elevator for the grandchildren, conveying them to the bottom of the pool and up again.  Sometimes I'm a submarine...  Sometimes I'm gasping for air! 

Don't know what those things are in
my ears, but apparently we bought
them for two of the grandkids!
(But no help with noise abatement!)

In all of its eclectic roles and incarnations, grandparentlng is an exhilarating, exhausting, perplexing, delightful, even sort of mystical labor of great joy and loving wonder.  

Seany (left) and Phi Phi become
cows at the Wisconsin State Fair!

We're reliably told a child's fascination, even adoration of a grandparent is an ephemeral experience, as age 12 or so marks the end of the magic, when grandchildren's peers begin to dominate both time and energy.  But, we're also reliably told that when the "age of the amusement park" ends for a grandparent, another, a more cerebral interrelationship era, begins.  Ah, well...  However these things play out, we look forward to the next chapter in the book of grandparenting.  "What's that?"  Sorry, have to dash...  Lucy's calling; she wants to count to 1,000 for us before we hear her read a chapter from Beezus and Ramona!                      

    

A Strange New Language?! Translators Wanted!

Memoirs of a Geezer!

Reflections and Observations -- A Bright Passage from the Fantasies of Youth 

to Illuminations of Advanced Maturity!

This Episode:    A Strange New Language?!  Translators Wanted!

"Dude...  Why you gotta bring your Xbox?"  As I entered my preferred coffee house recently, that's the first utterance that assaulted my ears.  (Is everyone named "Dude" today??!)  

"What the hell is an Xbox?" I asked, but not quite loud enough for the young questioner to hear.  I promised myself, however to "Giggle" the thing as soon as I was once again seated in front of my computer.  It's an iMac!  I'm a product of the 21st Century!  I mean, I wanna be hip; I'm a "now" kind of geezer.  (I mean, what if someone brings it up at book club?!)   

The Xbox statement spawned a deeply contemplative moment in my often porous brain, and like an obsessed salmon struggling up a roiling river cataract, the quest began.  I furrowed my brow and mused.  I think I even stroked my chin.  I began to think and wonder how the generations that preceded my own might have reacted to the newly fabricated words so common in today's "Techno-Age."

"Sancho, my Translator!!"  (I hope readers will forgive this paraphrased and possibly obtuse literary reference.)  I mean, let's begin, for example, with Giggle, I mean, Google, perhaps the world's most famous E-Commerce MegaSite.  Now, of course, the noun that has morphed into a verb.  My father would have pulled a quizzical face if I suggested he Google something.  Hell, I believe he would have tossed me out of the house.  Having been an intrepid and decorated FBI Agent, he was highly suspicious of almost everything new-fangled.  I recall he insisted the "Commies" had infiltrated CyberSpace as "dot-commies"!

And then there's "hashtag."  What a ridiculous word.  I asked a lucid 80-something-year-old man what he thought the word means.  "When I was a kid working the coal docks," he said, "Me and Mugwump used to grab lunch at Rosie Sluga's saloon and diner.  If we both ordered a bowl of Rosie's hash, she'd put a name tag on mine to tell it from Mugsy's."  

(I mean, what the hell's wrong with "number sign," or, better yet, because it has only one syllable, "Pound"!)

"Texting," "Sending a Text."  My mother would have said it meant mailing a book to an out-of-town relative.  "Blue Tooth."  Uncle George would have reacted in shock:  "See a dentist, quick!"  Then there's "iPod," "LOL," OMG," "IDK," "TBH," SIM Card," not to mention, "URL," Wi-Fi" and who knows how many other strange new and abbreviated words and phrases.  "Hey," remarks a good friend's 92-year-old father, "I've seen those letters floating in soup!"  

[ "You want a what?  A 'smartphone'?  Are you nuts?!  Telephones aren't smart or dumb...  They're emergency instruments!  When you get a job and your own place, go buy a telephone.  Until then, holler across the alley..."  (Excerpt from an imagined monologue, parent to child!) ]  

What would a past generation or two have made of bookface...  Or is it facebook?  Twitter?  Tweeting?  My foundry pals would have smacked me in the head if I suggested they "Tweet" their chums!  "How many MegaBytes you want?" would have sent many in our parents' and grandparents' generations running for the police.  Imagine trying to explain to our forebears and antecedents the new meanings of "cookies," "back button" and "surfing."  The brain spins freely in the cranium pondering the extraordinary changes in today's electronics-generated "tech-talk," the now frighteningly ordinary vocabulary of our modern age.  I can almost hear my long-dead grandfather:  "What the hell's E-mail?  A letter from Europe?"

So what do we do now, we geezers who love the English language and the elegantly refined speech patterns acquired in our own superbly educated youth?  Do we take up figurative arms in a quixotic (returning, for a moment, to the literary reference cited above!) gesture of defiance?  Ach!  Windmills!  It's of no use.  We must adapt or be wound up in a great web (not the World Wide one!) of anachronism.  Archaic relics, forgotten and ridiculed, an extinct species.  

As for me, I'm hiring a geeky 20-year-old kid with a few pimples on her (or his) chin.  A translator.  I'll do it!  I'll drag my tired brain into the Electronics Age.  I'll become a novelty, a geezer who knows how to sit for hours with friends and relatives, never once looking up, thumbs dashing over an illuminated keypad, OMG'ing and LOL'ing like a crazed "mute-babble" lunatic, inserting the word, "like" at every conceivable juncture! 

   Humbly Submitted, 05-21-14 -- Joel K.