Author: momshieb

Disordered Language, or Disordered Thinking?

/ momshieb / 4 Comments

I’ve been writing about Donald Trump’s disordered language since the morning after his nomination. I listened to him speak extemporaneously on that morning after his big day, and I recognized the very same disorders of expressive language that I had seen for 30 years as a speech/language pathologist.

I wrote about my observations then, and my feelings have not changed at all in the past two years.

In fact, now I find myself ever more convinced that our leader has a significant expressive language disorder. But I am wondering now if that disorder is secondary to a cognitive disorder, like dementia, as has been posited by the group Duty to Warn.

I am not a neuropsychologist, so I am not qualified to speak on the question of Trump’s cognitive functioning. I’ll leave that to those who are so qualified.

But I think I need to go on the record in documenting what to me are clear and obvious symptoms of a language disorder.

So here I am.

Today I was in my car, listening to XM Radio. I happened to hear 10 minutes of comments by Donald Trump on the environment and his administration’s determination to keep it healthy and clean.

Here are my observations, as a retired speech/language pathologist.

  1. Overuse of a familiar word: In the space of ten minutes, Trump used the adjective “incredible” 6 times. His other adjectives included “big, beautiful, tremendous”. The word “incredible” carries very little meaning, obviously. It could mean a variety of things, including powerful, successful, unexpected, unbelievable, etc. When a speaker relies on one word, it can be an indication of a word finding issue.
  2. Trump was talking about the situation with Iran, and used this phrase “They threatened them dearly.” What does this mean? Huh? “Threatened them dearly”?
  3. This one goes back to Trump’s statements at the Lincoln Memorial. In that speech, Trump used the phrase “they rammed the ramparts.” As a former speech/language pathologist, this sounds to me like a situation where the speaker knew the phrase “man the ramparts”, but was unable to recall it on demand. Instead, he used an incorrect and laughable phrase. One cannot “ram the ramparts” as Trump stated.

All of this is of serious concern. I’m not writing because I dislike Trump. I’m writing it because it is increasingly clear to me that we are all under the control and guidance of someone who is demonstrating very serious issues with communication and possibly with cognition.

We need this President to undergo a serious and complete neuropsych eval as soon as possible.

And as a committed and confirmed Bernie supporter, I’d like to see the same eval happen on any future elected President.

Am I Proud to be American?

/ momshieb / 2 Comments

The other day I saw a poll question on the website Smerconish.com. The question was “How proud are you to be an American?”

Interesting question, I guess.

I really like Michael Smerconish, the owner of the website. He is also the host of a show on SiriusXM’s POTUS station and one on CNN. He is very smart, so I always learn something when I listen to him. He is very well informed, so I believe what he reports. And he is pretty non-partisan. He has been a Republican for most of his adult life, but is open minded and thoughtful.

I like him.

So I thought a lot about his poll question.

And here’s what I decided.

There are many things in my life that make me proud.

I’m very proud of my children. They are kind. They are altruistic. They all work in fields that let them help other people. They love each other. They are loyal friends. I am proud of them because I had something to do with how they turned out. I worked hard to be the best parent I could be.

I’m proud of my professional life. I’ve helped to teach hundreds of kids over the years. I’ve learned a lot, taken classes, listened to my smarter colleagues. I’m proud of having done my best to be a supportive and loving adult in the lives of my students. I did my best. I worked hard. I’m proud of my efforts.

My garden gives me a lot of pride, too. When I moved into this house almost three decades ago, there were no flowers. I have dug, weeded, thinned, composted, taken gardening classes, read books, transplanted, pulled up grass……You get it. I have worked very hard to make my yard look inviting in the warm months and cozy in the cold ones. And it’s all organic, too!

But when I think about the question on the website, I am confused.

Why should I feel pride in something for which I bear no responsibility? I was born an American citizen. I didn’t do a single thing to make that true. It’s true because of blind luck. And because of the courage and determination of my grandparents, who chose to leave the beauty and poverty of Italy in the hope of giving their children a better life.

I’m grateful that they did that. I’m happy about it. But proud?

I don’t deserve to feel pride.

How do I feel about the founding principals upon which this country was built?

Well. Given the fact that my ancestors were on another continent when all of that glory was unfolding, arriving on these shores only in the middle of the industrial revolution, I don’t see why I should feel pride in my country.

Do I like the principals and goals enumerated in our founding documents? Sure, for the most part I like them just fine. Sure. Freedom, liberty, pursuit of happiness? All good.

But am I proud of them? No. Because I didn’t think of them, fight for them, sacrifice to see them put into place. I didn’t write them down and sign the Declaration of Independence even though that signature might have cost me my life.

So. I guess I’m not actually proud to be an American.

But how do I feel about my personal role in the life of the United States? Am I proud of that?

To some extent, yes I am.

I’m proud that I follow our political discourse. I’m proud that I read multiple sources to shape my ideas. I’m proud that I have gotten involved and have marched for causes I support. I’m proud of the fact that I always vote.

These are actions I’ve taken. Efforts that I have made, on my own, to improve life in this country.

I’m proud of myself as an American. But I don’t understand the idea of being “proud to be an American.”

I am an American because, by the luck of the draw, I was born here. I am an American because other people made sacrifices to get me here.

I am proud to be a decent, kind, loving human. I am proud to be inclusive and welcoming. I’m proud to be nurturing.

I am be proud to have given something good and beautiful to the world.

And I will remember that I have no reason, and no right, to be proud of the things that were given to me simply by luck.

My How Time Flies

/ momshieb / 11 Comments

I know. You think I’m looking at pictures of my kids when they were little. Right?

Or pictures of the dogs I’ve loved and lost. Or the career I’ve left behind.

Yep.

I know.

You think this is one of those sweet, poignant, tender posts about watching the next generation come of age and take the places that ours once held.

Any of those would have made wonderful blog posts, I’m sure. But this one is much more mundane.

Because this morning I got up and showered. I had my lovely iced coffee and then headed off to see my 89 year old mom. But before I left the house, where the dogs were snoozing on the couch and the husband was snoozing in the bed, I did what needed to be done.

I made sure that I peed before embarking on the hour and a half trip. I made sure that I put in some eye drops so I’d be able to actually see the road before me.

And I took my meds.

I grabbed my weekly pill minder and flipped open the tab for “Saturday AM”. I plopped the blood pressure pill, the fish oil and the multivitamin into my palm and swallowed them with a nice glass of cold water.

Then I looked at the pill minder.

It was just about empty.

I’m healthy, No, I am! Seriously, I’m healthy. Shut up.

I was completely shocked. Now, I knew that I fill said pill minder every Sunday morning. And intellectually, I knew that Sunday would be tomorrow.

But.

Didn’t I JUST FILL THIS STUPID THING?!

Wasn’t last Sunday morning only 20 minutes ago?

What the hell.

How did a full week go by without me even noticing it???????

I grumbled to myself. I cursed a little (OK< you define “a little”). I went out to the car and off to visit Mom.

Cuz, ya know. She’s OLD. I’m in my prime.

I’m definitely in the prime of that time when you measure the passage of the weeks by the need to refill your stupid, damn pill minder.

Grrr.

This whole getting old thing? Yeah.

Not for me.

Gotta go. The blood pressure pills are calling and the fibromyalgia meds are singing my name.

It Is So Simple

/ momshieb / 7 Comments

I had a wonderful conversation today with two intelligent, thoughtful women. One is a college student. Incredibly bright, well read, an engineer in training, and a gifted singer. The other is her grandmother, born and raised in the Netherlands, but an American for many decades.

We were chatting about life at a family party, and the topic of motherhood came up. The young woman has her doubts about wanting to raise a child. As I teased her and prodded her about the joys of parenting, she said something that brought my words to a halt.

“I don’t know where this country will be in five or ten years. I don’t know that I want to bring a child into a place like this.”

That lead us to a discussion of national politics, and to the scary and bewildering place in which we find ourselves.

We talked about the current horde or Democratic candidates, and realized that all three of us are firmly behind the progressives who are running. We all shared our excitement about the fact that there seems to be a competition to shake out which one of them is the most liberal.

How refreshing, I said to them both, I’ve been calling myself a Socialist since the 1970s!

That’s when my new friend, the woman raised in the Netherlands, began to share her thoughts.

“I don’t understand this strange reaction to the word Socialist! It doesn’t mean that you don’t want any kind of capitalism! It means that capitalism must have a conscience!”

We talked about the fact that a healthy and thriving country is one that takes care of the very basic needs of it’s people. About the fact that our friends from Europe are unable to understand when we tell them that our daughter will only have six weeks of unpaid leave after giving birth to a child.

We talked about the fact that if a country is able to produce a healthy, well educated, financially secure next generation, it is likely to have a stronger economy than a country whose people live in poverty.

“It’s so simple!” said my friend. “Socialism means that the government takes care of the social needs of the people. Why don’t Americans look at the lives of Europeans and see what it could be like here? Why don’t they look at life in the Scandinavian countries? Or in the rest of Western Europe?”

I had no answer for her, obviously. But I agreed with her assessment.

It is so simple.

Taxes should be paid to the government so that the government can provide the basic needs that individuals can’t grant to themselves. Education, paved roads, healthcare, national defense, a secure retirement, a healthy environment.

“It is so simple.”

Yes. It really is.

I wonder if the United States can ever get itself to see that fact.

First Day of Summer

/ momshieb / 10 Comments

Well, happy Solstice, everyone! Yay! It’s finally summer, for real!

The days get shorter from here.

Sigh.

I guess you can see how ambivalent I am about the end of the school year. Now that I’m no longer a classroom teacher, the end of the year is less about having time off and more about feeling at loose ends.

My daughter has the summer off, which means I won’t have my grandkids here for a few weeks.

I mean, I am very, very happy to have some time to rest and recuperate. I love watching my grandkids every day. I really, really do!! Toddlers are magical!

Exhaustingly magical.

So I obviously need some time to catch up on sleep. I need time to organize all these art supplies, old toys, and dried out play doh. I want to garden and read and maybe finally submit some writing somewhere. Summer is a good thing!

On the other hand, it’s amazing how dull it can be when the only one to talk to around here is me. I’m somewhat less riveting than I thought.

So day one is coming to a close. I’ve watched the news, read a lot, argued and snarked at people on social media and done four loads of wash.

Yay, me.

Now what?

I need to figure out how to fill my hours without the kids here to say, “Nonni, watch!” and “Nonni, guess what?” I need to feel useful without serving food every hour on the hour to hungry kids.

At least I have the dogs for company.

But you know what?

Both Lennie and Bentley spent this entire first day of summer wandering from room to room looking for the kids. They both spent a ton of time sitting in front of me with their big, sad, hound-doggy eyes.

We took a walk. They liked that!

But then we came home and they both went from bedroom to bedroom to kitchen to the deck. They both sighed. They both turned in circles. They gazed out the window. They chewed on their nylabones, but you could tell their hearts weren’t in it.

It’s going to be a long summer, pups. No kids until September, at least not on a regular basis. No games. No laughing. No sweet snuggly little girls to wrap an arm around your furry necks. No giggly little boy for you to chase down the hall.

Most importantly, no dropped cheese for many long weeks.

What are we gonna do?

You mean….nobody will be dropping string cheese?
I kinda need a hug.

Cookbook History

/ momshieb / 25 Comments

My old standbys.

We’re the ones who don’t think in measuring cup increments. Instead we think in spice palette increments.

I’m one of those intuitive cooks. You know what I mean? We’re the ones who read a recipe in 30 seconds, then try to recreate it.

“mmmmmm, cumin with honey?” or “Oh, wow, rosemary and lime juice!”

We think of cooking as an art, not a science.

We toss in a bit of this, a smidge of that, stir it around and suddenly realize that it needs buttermilk.

Cooking is my creativity.

So it’s kind of funny that I have a cookbook collection. I have cookbooks from China, Russia, Germany, Italy. I have cookbooks about snacks, cookbooks about desserts, cookbooks that are for kids. And I have a whole shelf of amazing leather bound cookbooks from the past century that tell more about social expectations of women than they do about how to make a perfect squab. I often read them for fun.

Tonight, though, I found myself thumbing through my very favorite cookbook ever. My daughter Kate gave it to me for my birthday during her junior year of college.

Kate and I used to cook together, and often experimented on recipes that the men in the family consumed with pleasure.

When she’d moved from the dorm into her first campus apartment, I’d sent her with a cookbook full of my favorite recipes. She might not be at home in my kitchen anymore, but I needed to know that my girl had the family recipe for red sauce and meatballs at hand.

She’d loved the gift, and had added her own discoveries and creations during the school year.

So when my birthday rolled around, Kate gifted me with my very own cookbook of HER favorite recipes. It was fabulous! She included recipes for “Reverse Chicken Soup” (made with beef broth and ground chicken meatballs) and “Pasta e Fagioli Cucina Lavandino” ( kitchen sink pasta e fagioli).

It was hilarious! I loved it.

I put its pages into my own home made cookbook.

Every time I found a delicious recipe, or an enticing food idea, I included into this three hole punched cooking notebook.

Well.

Tonight I decided to add a new recipe, for the first time in years. I have started making more raw veggie dishes, and wanted to add in hand written recipes for two new favorites: Italian Cole Slaw and Carrot Cumin Salad.

I wrote them down, popped them into the cookbook, and then started to flip through the pages.

Yikes.

This is like the history of my marriage and motherhood years. It’s broken into sections (appetizers, main dishes, desserts) but each one is in chronological order. A stroll through these pages is a documentation of my evolution through the basics (meatballs, chicken piccatta, yellow cake) and into our early marriage years.

That was when we wanted quick, easy and cheap (The Sausage Casserole I invented in grad school when each dinner had to come in at under 3 dollars). Dessert was usually a couple of graham crackers.

The book moves on into the early parenting years, when I mastered “Mexican spiced chicken fingers” and a lovely dish called “Heavy Slop.” Filling, easy and healthier than Hamburger Helper.

It goes on through special events that gave us “Christmas Shrimp Cocktail” and even “Red Sox Noodle Dandy”. The latter was created during the playoffs of 2004, when the word “Yankee” was completely forbidden to be spoken anywhere in New England.

Now I find healthier, higher-end recipes being added to the book. Foods with less fat, less salt, more fiber. Dishes that cost three times what the first entries did. Now I see recipes for lamb, for shrimp, for exotic pastas and sauces.

I love them all.

But mostly I love the idea that my life has been recorded as a series of recipes.

I can’t think of anything that would be a better fit for me than this!

I Stand on the Bridge

/ momshieb / 15 Comments

I find myself standing on the bridge between the past and the future, and it is a tender and poignant place to be.

I stand between youth and old age.

At the age of 63, it is of course natural for me to find myself in the middle of life’s journey.

But for me, the juxtaposition of what has been and what is coming is feeling profound right now.

My mother is 89 years old. She is 26 years older than I am.

Mom still lives at home, in the house where she and our Dad raised six kids. She is still there, still in her kitchen, where I learned to make sauce and meatballs. Still sleeping in the bedroom where she and Dad slept from 1962 until 2008 when Dad died.

I go to see her once a week. My siblings go at least once a week, too. Some more often. We are Mom’s supports, her cooks, her money managers, her cheerleaders as she heads on down the path toward her next step.

As my very wise sister put it, “Mom is quietly folding her tent.” She is gently withdrawing from her life, seeing fewer and fewer friends as her memory and her body fade.

But she is happy. Perhaps happier and calmer than at any other time in my life. Mom, once a power woman in control of all around her, has learned to accept help with grace. She has been willing to wear her LifeAlert, to have a home health aide and to welcome one of us every day (although she doesn’t often remember whose turn it is on any given day to have dinner with her.)

Mom is showing me how to exit gracefully, just as Dad did when it was his turn.

I am watching her. I am learning. I am coming to terms with some thoughts of my own about my life going forward toward that “rainbow bridge.” I am so lucky to have a model of how to go with humor and humility.

And.

As I stand on this tender bridge, I look back toward my youngest child. My son Tim turned 27 yesterday. So you can see that I am almost the ‘median’ point between my mother and my son.

I look at him, my sweet, kind boy. I see that life is spread out before him like a banquet. He plans to marry his sweetheart next summer. They are thinking about children, about careers, about their hopes and dreams for a future family.

I see him, and I see his Dad at the same age. I see myself. I see our worries and our joys and I remember what it was like to be young, in love, ready to move into the future with courage and hope.

My Mother often talks to me about those years before she married my Dad. She talks about how happy they were to sit under the trees on Boston Common, planning how many children they’d have. She talks about what it was like to hold his hand as they walked through the city sharing their dreams of a beautiful future.

And I stand on the bridge. I hear her thoughts, and I hear Tim’s. I know that it was my Mom and Dad’s ability to dream and love that lead to my family, and lead to my marriage and then lead to my beautiful boy and his wonderful partner.

I know that Tim and Sweens will marry, have children, face challenges, encounter unexpected joys and find ways to keep recreating their hope. Just as Paul and I have done. Just as my Mom and Dad did for all those years.

And I know that one day it will be me who is facing that final chapter.

I just hope, and pray, that when that time comes my children will look to me as a model of how to move on. I hope that they will think about Grandma, and remark on how like her I am.

And I hope, and I pray, that when that day rolls by, there will be children of theirs who are busy falling in love and planning their next steps and thinking about babies of their own.

My heroes

/ momshieb / 10 Comments

The older you get, the harder it is to find heroes.

Know what I mean?

It gets harder and harder with each passing winter to find someone who is uplifting, empowering, inspiring.

But you know what? Hanging out with young people helps. A lot.

My kids are working to revitalize and reshape an entire small American city. They are hands-on, in the dirt, reinventing an old New England Mill town. They love the town, they love their work, they love each other.

That’s inspiring and uplifting and all that good stuff. Isn’t it?

And they also make music. Fun music. Music that people really enjoy.

My kids do it for fun and personal pride, rather than for profit. That makes it more fun and less pressure. For them, the making of the music is not a life or death scenario. But they know lots of people who make even more music, some of which is in fact professional. For some of those friends, life does seem to be dependent upon that music.

Music that pokes your soul and taps your brain and tells you that as long as your heart is beating, your hope is alive.

That is a truly inspiring, empowering and uplifting message. Those who can bring that kind of message to us should surely be our heroes!

Of course, if I want find even more heroes, I should look at the very young to find my answers. I should look at teenagers to find my inspiration.

I’m watching right now as dozens of kids I used to teach are graduating from High School and university. I am sending good luck messages to men and women who were once the shy, quiet kids in my fifth grade class. I’m sending way-to-go cards to kids who were once the swaggering, cool-jock, super-pretty kids in my elementary school room.

Those kids have grown from needing me to open their juice boxes to planning the next renewable fuel source. They took every bit of love and teaching that was offered and they ran with it. That’s pretty cool!

And I can find heroes just by smiling at the people I run into ever day. Just by seeing those people. By hearing them.

Yesterday my husband and I had breakfast at a real, true, classic New England diner. This place had a sign out front that was no longer legible. The steps were worn, cracked, and warped. Inside, the diner was run down and worn, but was obviously an antique.

“Ya want coffee?” was our introduction the ambiance. Not particularly welcoming.

But.

Within five minutes, we were chatting and laughing with the woman who was making the food. About my own middle age, she had a sturdy build and a working woman’s hands. She wore her gray hair in a ponytail, and had it clipped to the back of her hat.

As she flipped the eggs, poured pancake batter and buttered the toast, the woman engaged us in conversation. Her voice was rough. Her jokes were just what I’d have predicted: she lived so far out in the woods that she could sit outside in her underwear and it wouldn’t even scare off the moose. Her manner was strict and unsmiling, “Kids today would never have made it in my old neighborhood in New York.” She wanted to be gruff, strong, unsmiling.

But before my French Toast was flipped, I had learned that she was a widow, that her one child was an adult daughter who was soon to be married and who worked with troubled youth. I learned that the Mom was inspired by her daughter’s ongoing education, and that Mom knew how proud Dad would be of his girl.

That woman is my hero. She is strong, tall, unlovely. She takes care of orphaned cats and one dog. She grows flowers. She loves her daughter fiercely and misses her husband profoundly.

And every morning she wakes up, drives to the Diner, and starts to sling the hash for the neighbors and friends who come in.

That’s a hero.

We are actually surrounded by heroes, if we only take the time to look. The child who knows he doesn’t understand the social rules, but who heads off to school every day anyway. The teen who has music and poetry within their heart, but who is scared to share it. The moment when they share it anyway.

The musician who gets up in front of strangers for the first time and plays the song. The writer who hits “send”. The man who gets up every single weekday for 40 years just to turn on the lights in the municipal building. The woman who carefully adds a handful of blueberries to the pancakes on her griddle, a hundred and a hundred times every day.

We are each other’s heroes, really. We are all better together, stronger together, kinder together. We need to find our heroes in each other. We need to see each others’ heroes in ourselves.

Oh, Dear Lord, Who Am I?

/ momshieb / 20 Comments

I am a middle aged Italian woman. I know myself.

I make meatballs.

I serve chicken soup to kids with colds.

I have dark brown eyes, I used to have dark brown hair, and I have a big nose.

Yes. I do. I have grown up with the realization that I have a lovely, prominent Roman nose.

This is my identity. Italian woman, big nose, big heart, big piles of pasta. It all goes together.

Because this has been my image of myself for some 60 years, you can understand how upsetting it would be to be informed that this is not actually the real me. You can imagine my moment of disorientation when the very core of my personal belief was shaken.

Holy panic attack, Batman. It was terrifying.

This is what happened.

I went to have my CPap fitted this morning. I talked to the lovely, intelligent, articulate cPap using woman at the home care facility. She fitted me with just the right hose to force my throat open and thereby stop my snoring, snorting, gasping, death inducing nighttime routine.

I have been reading about the incidence of sleep apnea in women, and have come to feel pretty much at ease with the realization that a whole lot of us women suffer from this disorder.

I am OK with that. Sorta. I am accepting of the fact that the sleep issue does not mean that I am old and fat. I am accepting of the idea that I just need some help to keep myself breathing while I sleep. It’s just a little medical issue.

All of that is cool.

But.

While i was meeting with the lovely woman who introduced me to my machine, something happened that has shaken my entire belief in myself and who I am.

Part of the fitting today included taking a measurement of my nose.

My big old, honkin’ Roman Italian schnozzola. I needed to be measured so that the nasal mask would fit me.

I sat back for the measurement. I breathed out. I was sure that the measurement would come out as “big” or “huge” or “Italian” or “Holy shit”.

When the friendly woman held up the measurement and said, “You have a small nose”, my entire world came unglued.

What?????

WHAT??!

I mean. OK. I gasp and choke and have a fat neck and can’t sleep and I need a stupid giant machine…..but my NOSE IS SMALL???????

That was the moment when I realized that I no longer have any idea of who I am.

In all of my most fragile moments, it has never occurred to me that I might have a small nose.

Never. Ever.

Look at this picture.

Do you see a small nose????

Big. Big nose. Not small.
Not a little nose. Nuh, uh.

I don’t either.

So….who am I? What has become of my entire view of myself?

If in fact I am a woman with a small nose, might I not also be a woman with a boatload of patience? (Nope.) Or a woman who struggles to put a decent meal on the table? (Nopie, nope, nope).

I am my nose.

I am my internal view of myself.

OK, fine. I’ll give the stupid CPap a chance. But seriously?

A SMALL nose??????

These medical people have no idea what they’re doing.

Perfect?

/ momshieb / 4 Comments

My little Ellie has started to use the word “perfect” lately, and it makes me uncomfortable.

She says it when she has worked hard to make a picture that she thinks is realistic.

“Nonni!”, she will call, “Look at my perfect polar bear!”

Now, Ellie is not quite four years old. While her artistic instincts are wonderful, her artistic realism is still somewhat lacking.

And so I hesitate to embrace the concept of “perfect.”

“Wow!” I always say, “That is a very original polar bear!”

Or a very interesting puppy. Or a wicked cool camping trip.

Whatever.

I just try to back off the whole idea of “perfect.” I have seen too many little children striving for “perfect” to ever feel at ease with either the phrase or the concept.

Art is, above all else, NOT perfect. Art is perception. It is emotion. It is my truth offered up to all of you. It is not a perfectly rendered reproduction; that would be a photograph.

And ‘perfect’ has even less meaning when it comes to the literary arts. What is a “perfect” story? A “perfect” poem? As a classroom teacher, I steered away from that word every day. As a parent, I used every possible synonym before I ever went with “perfect”.

As a Nonni, I am even more committed to making sure that my grandkids understand that perfection is a pointless goal. It can never be reached, but it can become a lifetime obsession.

So I rarely think in terms of perfection. I shudder, in fact, when I find myself falling into the lure of it’s siren call.

But guess what?

At the ripe old age of 63, on a day when I was fighting off a cold, cranky from lack of sleep, looking forward to my summer respite, I think I accidentally stumbled upon perfection.

It happened like this.

I was tired, dealing with a sore throat and achy muscles. Today was very warm and pretty muggy. I took my two little grandkids outside to play. My thought was to let them ride bikes and throw balls and I would sit in the shade and read The Grapes of Wrath.

But the kids had other ideas. They rode bikes across the lawn. They pulled up dandelions, blowing the seeds across the yard and screaming with joy. They used binoculars to find my giant rhododendron.

“Nonni!”, they crowed, “Watch! Look! Come play!”

I was pulled in to the vortex of their energy. Every little tiny thing in this beautiful spring time world is a miracle to them! And they shared it with me, oblivious to my fatigue.

Isn’t that wonderful? I had no choice but to become a part of their play, to become completely present in their little miracles.

We turned on the hose, and they raced across the muddy lawn, following “the stream that goes to the sea!”. They twirled, and jumped and threw up their arms in pure pleasure.

For them, these few moments were everything. They were the world. The cold water, the hot sun, the squishy, joyous feeling of mud between the toes. The yard became the universe. They were it’s center.

When they screamed out, “Nonni!!!! Jump in the mud!” they pulled me in to that moment of perfection.

And as I danced on the driveway, feeling the slippery mud between my toes, following the cold stream from the hose as it made its way across the pavement, I was surprised to hear this one word spoken inside my head.

“Perfect.”