Dawn Byrne: fun

Showing posts with label fun. Show all posts

"Playing Cards" by Simone Bianchetti is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0

I was explaining to my grandson how to play the game WAR with playing cards. He understood Ace beats everything. He understood higher numbers beat lower numbers, and that Jack beats all the number cards. He understood King and Queen beat Jack and the faceless cards.

After that, King and Queen became a problem. How does one royalty beat another when ruling the same kingdom? Suit and color don’t matter in this simple children’s game. A young child would naturally see the face cards as representing family. So, how does a daddy beat a mommy? Does a mommy and daddy beat a child (Jack)?

The card family is a hierarchy. Am I teaching my grandson that Queen’s femaleness is why she’s of less value than King? Femaleness is her only difference. And King beats Queen expresses that royalty closest in value to Jack makes him of even lesser value.

I’m toying with the idea of taking turns with King, Queen, and Jack’s values. Sometimes Queen will beat King and sometimes King will beat Queen. Sometimes Jack will beat both.

Since Ace (as a child I saw Ace as God) beats every card, to add fun to the game, I suggest letting Ace decide what the hierarchal value is at the beginning of each game. By flipping the remaining cards alternately on top of the piles of king cards, queen cards, and jack cards, Ace decides who is of greatest, greater and least value. Re-shuffle the number and Ace cards when you run out of cards to flip. If the first series of flips shows Ace, that doesn’t count. In case of a tie, the players default to a pre-game WAR.

This alteration adds a little more complexity to the game. I call it my fun family version.

I won’t see my grandson for a while to try this out. If you have a child of elementary school age in your home, could you try it with them and let me know how it worked out?

Typically a man of quiet spirit, my husband morphs into Mr. Christmas after we take down our Thanksgiving decorations. It's like he's saved up all his playful fervor behind a mask of reserve all year. And then, bam! Passing neighborhood children stop to gawk at his obsession—oversized hollow figures that light up, including a complete nativity scene. The baby Jesus is his most challenging piece, requiring not only a stake of wood like the larger pieces, but also wire to strap him in.

I've seen dormant competitive streaks awaken during this time of year, and it peaks with my husband Joe. “Kathleen's got her manger scene out already,” he said coming home from a drive by his sister's lawn.

I played along, taking my husband's side of course. “Yours is always bigger and brighter.”

“She didn't strap down the baby Jesus. It might blow away.”

“You've told her before and she didn't listen. When she has to pay $50 for a new one like you did, then she'll learn.” I am jealous of his sister. They have a shared childhood history in a tight Philadelphia row home neighborhood cementing their relationship. It sometimes makes me feel like an outsider.

December is always a blur of happy busyness. But come early January, the excitement of retro childhood fantasy dissipates as the decorations come down.

We were leaving Kathleen's home on January 6^th one year, after a 50^th birthday celebration and reminiscing. Joe checked his sister's nativity scene as we passed it on our way down her porch steps. “She's lucky no one stole her baby Jesus. She didn't zip-tie him tight enough to the manger.”

I hated to see my husband's playful side go back into storage for another eleven months. His antics with his sister back inside the house was infectious, inspiring me to become an accomplice.

“Take it,” I goaded as we strolled along Kathleen's driveway to the sidewalk.

Joe laughed. “No.” He stole a glance to see if his sister had gone inside.

“Why not?” I pushed. “I dare you.”

He stopped and said, “She'll need it for next year.”

“Joe, you'll give it back.” I knew he was thinking she'd be as upset as he was when our original one was stolen. “And you can leave a note or call her in a disguised voice saying you're holding him for ransom.” I could tell he was interested. “Come on. She'll know it's you right away. And she'll love the fun you'll have with her.”

St. Joseph said no more and adopted his sister's plastic doll for a year. We hid it in our home and took it out for photo opportunities. The first photo I snapped was of Joe behind the wheel of his pick-up with the doll atop the truck above his head. He's smiling as if about to drive away unaware of it. He left the picture inside Kathleen's mailbox.

Joe works in a rail yard, so he brought the poor baby to work and put him on the tracks. Click. That photo arrived at his sister's with a playfully written suggestion.

We also used the doll to lighten up a serious family situation. Our daughter was admitted to the hospital and needed emergency surgery. We brought the doll to her hospital room. I saw a twinkle in her eye as she mustered a smile while posing with the abducted plastic. Her smile gave way to chuckles when her dad took another picture of the thing on the windowsill as a helicopter landed on its pad just outside. The note attached to this picture was most fun because our recovering daughter and her visitors helped write it.

There's a picture of the baby Jesus presented to the camera by Kathleen's own teenagers, taken at Easter time when they stopped by to visit our teens.

Kathleen responded to the fun by taping a poster of her missing decoration to a milk carton and passing it around to family who knew all about the prank.

The year of the missing nativity piece extended family playfulness in such a uniting way that surrendering the hostage was almost sad. But as preparations for the next Christmas began, Joe returned the decoration with gratitude for the love—and mischievous streak—of his family.

"Merry Christmas!" by Mr. Ducke is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Our grandson yelled “Pop’s here,” and ran toward us as we entered our oldest daughter’s home. Zack halted in front of me. I was in his way to get to Pop, who was coming through the door behind me. I slyly blocked Pop, who was in cahoots with me, hiding behind my back. I had gotten used to playing second-fiddle to my husband around the grandchildren and found ways to have fun with it.

Priscilla came up behind her son as I snorted. Familiar with the scene, she said, “Zack, say hi to Grandma.”

Zack's excitement to greet Pop had made me invisible. Only after Pop had lifted, flipped and put Zack back down, did our grandson focus on me. I materialized into a person in the space where he had only seen a barrier to Pop. Keeping an eye on Pop, Zack gave me a hug and allowed me to kiss his towhead. I love the unabashed sincerity of a three-year-old.

When Zack’s sister was three, she preferred visiting Pop at home. Priscilla dropped Mia off, and she bee-lined straight to Pop. I grinned as she whooshed past me and tipped back her head to his face towering over her yo-yoing curls, her miniature body wiggling with anticipation in front of Pop.

Pop and Mia began their play with a favorite drama. Mia magically put Pop to sleep. He stretched out on the couch, pulled his baseball cap over his eyes, and started snoring. Mia snuck up to sleeping Pop and cried, “Wake up, wake up,” shaking his arm.

Surprised Pop called, “Who woke me up?” Mia bounced, giggling. Pop squinted at her. “Did YOU wake me up?” That was her que to begin casting her sleep spell again.

When the game lost its novelty, Pop’s hat drew Mia’s attention. Instead of waking him, she grabbed the brim and whipped it off Pop’s bald head.

He sat up. “Give me back my hat, you monkey.” Pop shook his finger at Mia, like the salesman in the children’s book Caps for Sale did to monkeys who stole his caps. I had read the classic to Mia during another visit when Pop needed a rest.

Mia tossed Pop’s hat back onto his head. It landed with the brim to the side instead of facing forward. Pop didn’t fix it. I snickered at the new style along with Mia.

Wobbling his head, he announced, “I’m G-Pop.” He caught an imaginary microphone from the air and started raping. “G-Pop’s in the house. Yeah, yeah. It’s G-Pop.”

Mia got her invisible microphone and rapped along to the song, putting her name into the lyrics. Pop added a turntable to their air performance and scratched a pretend beat to their original composition. “It’s Mia and G-Pop comin’ at ya. Yeah, yeah.” As their audience, I laughed so hard I had to run to the bathroom.

Priscilla arrived to take Mia home. Still wound up, Mia said, “Mommy, I don’t wanna go home. I wanna play music with Pop.” She continued her pogo dance rap.

Pop pulled his baseball cap’s brim forward. “You have to get ready to go home now.”

Mia turned the brim to the side again and picked up where her performance had left off.

Pop swiveled the brim to its original position. “It’s time to go, Mia.” He stood up when she reached for the cap. Mia climbed onto the couch next to where Pop stood. Again, she tried to slide the brim and bring back G-Pop.

Priscilla lifted Mia from the couch onto the floor. She got down to Mia’s level and explained in a calm voice, “Mia, it’s time to go home. We’ll visit Grandma and Pop again soon.”

Mia stepped away from Priscilla and said, “But I don’t wanna go home. Me and Pop are playin’.”

“It’s getting late and you’re tired. Pop’s tired too.” Priscilla shouldered Mia’s bag of playthings that we hadn’t opened. She went to take Mia’s hand, but Mia pulled away.

“I don’t wanna go home.” Mia cried angry, tired little girl tears.

Priscilla wrangled her and said a quick good-bye to me and Pop. She carried Mia through the house as I followed with Pop hiding behind me. At the front door, we plopped quick kisses onto Priscilla and Mia’s perspiring foreheads.

Mia let out an insistent wail. “I wanna stay with G-Pop.”

All three of us adults tried masking our laughter. But we couldn’t do it. Our mirth made Mia’s volume rise. “I want G-Pop” echoed through our house and blew out the front door from our daughter’s arms.

Pop and I have another grandchild who’s a big fan of G-P.

Arriving at my pregnant daughter’s house to babysit, I anticipated Malcom’s usual greeting. As I came through the back door, he ran into the kitchen and stopped in front of me with rosy cheeks. “Hi, Malcom,” I said.

He scanned the kitchen, let out a breath and asked, “Where’s Pop?” Was he accusing me of purposefully leaving Pop at home? Malcom stepped closer and looked up at me suspiciously, “Pop’s working?”

“No, he’s busy today, honey.” I expected him to accept this and settle for playing a board game. Pop didn’t enjoy games that came in a box as much as Grandma. And Malcom loved them.

He looked me up and down, avoiding my face. Like he was frisking me with his eyes. Didn’t he believe that Pop wasn’t in the house? Or in Grandma’s pocket? Maybe he couldn’t understand Pop and I weren’t physically connected when Pop wasn’t at work.

His disappointment made me feel bad for the little guy. He really enjoyed being with his pop. “Mommy told me you got a new game. Topple,” I said. Malcom had a knack for balancing things. He astounded us standing a credit card on the slim, shallow lip of their fireplace guard, and stacking blocks higher than children his age usually had the ability to do.

Malcom turned away and walked into the living room explaining how to play the new game. That was my invitation to follow him. Our outbursts, when the pieces fell, weren’t as raucous as over Pop’s antics. But Pop’s fan seemed to enjoy our focused play as much as I did.

None of my grandchildren ever threw a tantrum when they had to leave me. But they come to Grandma to do home experiments, when they need juice, or want to go on an adventure walk. I must admit, I also fan over G-Pop. As his sidekick, I settle for basking in the glow of his popularity. After all, I get to play with him every day.

I don't remember Grandma moving in. She must've gotten as far as the living room and plopped down her recliner. She didn't have a bedroom, just a bureau (it appeared magically upstairs). Like the chair, we never touched this piece of furniture unless told to (she'd know if we did, it's part of the magic).

Puffy like her, the chair's crinkly material matched her skin in summertime. That's when she guarded us on our fenced-in cement slab out back. Grandma had a glow like the sheen of that fake leather. Its pores sweated out her essence even when she wasn't sitting.

The chair and its entourage of items piled behind and around it, hid one corner of our living room. Because of all the stuff, no way could the chair's head rest tip back to stretch out Grandma. It and Grandma were upright at all times.

No one got into our house without Grandma heralding them. She welcomed neighbors with witty greetings as they slipped through our vestibule: "Hey, Dick. How's

tricks?" or "Hey Joe, don'tcha know...?"

When not entertaining, and the house quieted, she let out roll call: “Where’s Donny? Where’s Allen?” If the one named didn’t answer, she'd send out the nearest scout.

My youngest brother may know what was at the bottom of the heap behind Grandma. She coaxed him to climb on the back of her recliner. Then she grabbed his chunky feet and hoisted him down, head first, behind her into the stuff. He came up with pinking shears on his first descent. "No, that's not it," she said, and let him down again.

Grandma took the fly swatter he came up with on his second upside down trip. "Try again." The rest of us had gathered around.

After the third dip, Benny came up with scraps of material and a centerpiece from the Boy Scout banquet, now a flattened blue and gold blob. My brother was a human crane, the kind you see in convenience stores that grabs prizes with a claw. Each time he emerged, his round face was redder, his blonde hair brighter. His smile strained, and the blue in his eyes drained.

A bit envious, I was mostly glad I wasn’t as compact as Benny. When he retrieved Grandma's plastic reach extender, we cheered and Grandma yelled, “Atta boy, Benny Boy!” On his feet, and no longer red, he staggered into the kitchen. The rest of us jumped up and down asking Grandma if she needed something else from behind her chair.

When Grandma needed something from her bureau, we scattered. Someone had painted this chest of drawers the exact steely silver that streaked from Grandma’s widow's point to the base of her head. Old Gray, with its crystal nobs, cramped the room my sister and I shared. One of us always wound up ascending the stairs to it on a treasure hunt that wasn't fun.

"Don't pull them drawers out too far. They're heavy and'll fall on ya," Grandma called over leadened feet trudging upwards.

The object was in drawer number One with its sharp smell of metal and 3-IN-1 OIL, or Two which puffed talc at me when I swished around the clothes in there, or Three with its grabbing odor of rubber and stockings that could be worn once more before the next washing.

Grandma never believed that the fourth and fifth drawer bottoms were gone. If she insisted something was in drawer number Four or Five, we’d start from Three and work our way up. The lower drawers must've been invisible. I saw the dusty floor beyond wooden strips that supported real drawers. The things we never found must have been (magically) in there.

At the end of the day, moonlight silhouetted this hulk housing Grandma’s personables. Its shadow crossed us as we slept on our cots. But even without this evening shade, the gray form held a presence in our bedroom.

We slept at ease, secure from above and below, resting in the fact that Grandma and her things were permanent.

As a young wife and new mother, I relished owning a home. Of course, it would take time for my husband to fix up the disabled house. So I cared for it and my daughter with patience. But, peering down through a basketball-size hole in our bathroom, through to the kitchen below and into our cellar, I wondered how long the repairs would take. When our baby began toddling, looking through floors lost its novelty.

After years of leading children tip toeing around and over projects in our second handyman's special, I stopped asking God to allow me to live in a home with no construction dust, and floors you didn't have to investigate before walking on. That's when the novelty returned, and with it grew humor.

***

My daughter drove me home after an autumn trip to the Pennsylvania Renaissance Fair. My son and his girlfriend were in the back seats. They all decided to come inside to say hello to Joe.

Joe was the fun parent, continuing to make all kinds of messes in the house that rivaled theirs when they were children. His projects didn't bother them as they grew up amongst the powdery layer of spackle dust and drywall residue. Sometimes it still unsettles their fastidious mother, though. To cope, I pretend I'm one of the Israelites on their forty year trek through dessert wilderness. After thirty-three years of marriage to Moses Joe, I only have seven more years to the promised dream home.

The four of us climbed the front steps to the house. We crowded in the doorway not going inside because of the familiar, heavy odor of fresh floor stain. A darker area of the floor where the welcome mat use to be was our second caution. We froze with the storm door half closed at our backs and the heavy wooden door swung open in front.

My daughter, the first in line, made a quick scan of the sun porch. Her attention stopped at a small area carpet on one side of the enclosed room. The rest of us followed her as she lunged into the dry section of porch. She steadied me as we all stood, huddled together, not knowing where else to step.

Joe yelled through the inside window, as he hugged a wall. "Would you mind going back outside and coming through the basement door?"

Our grown kids nodded with smiles of remembrance, along with my son's laughing girlfriend. As we vaulted back out the front door, I picked up on my children's nostalgia. They still didn't mind adjusting to inconveniences in their childhood home that changed with each new project. We trotted around to the side entrance of the house to greet Joe. He was taking a breather in the kitchen and asked about our day at the fair.

Access to the bathroom was cut off by drying stain, so our need for a restroom after the long ride encouraged us to perform another feat. We had become very good at balancing while taking care of functional necessities on the basement commode. It perched on a narrow, elevated slab like a true throne, three feet below the rafters. Joe installed this when he had worked on the floor in our upstairs, and only, bathroom.

At the fair, tightrope walkers and trapeze artists caused me to bite my nails as I had watched in horror, worried for their safety. Coming home to our private antics proved more entertaining because we weren't spectators.

As Joe prepares to ceramic tile the kitchen floor, I'm bracing myself to wash dishes in our bathtub. Rotation of rooms will include the kitchen moved into the dining room. The dining room will shift to the living room, among the few pieces of furniture we can own with the lengthy and constant changes to our living areas.

I'm trying to figure out how I'll cook in the dining room on a gas range that needs a hook up from the kitchen. Our last house had the gas stove in an attached shed that I accessed from outside. This is where I had cooked while the rest of the room aged into a finished space, just in time for us to pack up and move our growing family here.

That first house was where I experienced dish washing in a second floor bathtub. I was thinner then. Maybe Joe's present project plan will shed pounds from this middle-aged frame. With extra trips up and down stairs to wash dirty dishes and bring them back down clean, I should burn oodles of calories.

These discomforts have tripped fun creativity in my traditional thinking. The daily circus Joe involved our children and myself in united us as a family. We have become the Synchronized Flying Von Byrne Family that swings with difficulties and remain flexible when life throws us for a loop.

***

Our three-year-old granddaughter is quick to point to and comment on work "Pop" has done when she visits. She typically walks in, scouting rooms for changes. This is the child of my child whom I had feared falling through a multi-floor opening into the cellar of our first home. Hovering over my granddaughter as she travels from room to room, I try to prevent splinter, falls through flimsy window screens and fingers from exploring exposed outlets.

Then it hit me: not one of us were ever hurt living in our work-in-progress homes. I've heard that one eats a pound of dirt in a lifetime. With our family, it's probably powdered spackle mixed with saw dust. My daughter told me she doesn't remember much sickness in our large family while growing up. It's bizarre, but she's right. And we never had to made a trip to the emergency room.

Another generation traipses our dusty house of humor, learning to walk and where not to wander without falling through holes in our imperfect life.

Royal blue sculptured wall-to-wall carpet. This fantastic tint is better fit for play than décor, with surrounding golden walls our undying sun. The carpet's visible texture is little rippling waves. We sail along. Our vessel is Grandma’s Early American seaworthy sofa. When our baby brother climbs aboard, we spring a leak and all five of us abandon ship.

A fog rises outside our front door from our car that’s under the weather. Grandma teeters through the smoke that mixes with real rain. It’s slippery for Grandma to get up the slick front steps. But a dark cloud in our living room ceiling finally got too heavy from the bathtub leaking, so she had to go to the hardware store for an elbow pipe that doesn’t bend.

Grandma comes into the house limping over the carpet leaving damp footprints that don’t match; one print is wider than the other because her real foot got bigger but the artificial one didn’t.

My sister struts from side to side carrying the elbow, mimicking Grandma behind her wide back. I never tried crossing the ocean like that before. My sister walks a gait of faith; if Grandma sees her she’ll be damned. I’ll try my strut after Grandma swims upstairs along the continuous blue carpet that flows upstream.

My sister gives me the elbow and disappears. Grandma’s now swimming her special stroke, bobbing to catch a breath every few feet. Our grandma is like God. She’s huge and strong and old and alive. Dad’s not. He’s in a silk box with his head shaved, sleeping from cancer. I remember him lying there so still. I don’t remember him walking on the water much when he wasn’t sleeping.

I feel bad for Rosa. She’s my friend who sits next to me in class. Her dad didn’t get sick; he got mean. He doesn’t live with her anymore. He’s not in Heaven though. Rosa and her mom moved into her grandma’s house. If Rosa’s dad moves into her grandma’s house too, maybe he will be in Heaven.

Grandma just swam over the horizon. I’ll try to do it. Back up against the far wall, between the two front windows with my heels touching the baseboards. Take a deep breath. Maybe I’ll close my eyes.

Uh-oh, Grandma’s calling me. I’ll have to paddle upstream fast.

“Go downstairs and get the wrench from my pocketbook. It’s beside my chair,” Grandma calls from under the bathtub when I hand her the elbow. The front of her dress is wet and her artificial leg is standing beside the toilet. The leg’s metal like the pipe, but it does bend and if it gets wet, it’ll rust. I go downstairs and look for the wrench.

Back upstairs, I pant, “Grandma, it’s not in your pocketbook.”

“It has to be. Look again.”

I look again.

“Grandma, I looked real hard and it’s not there. Just the hammer.” Now I’m breathing hard.

“Well then it has to be in the tool box in the cellar.”

After swimming downstream again and hopping down rocks that are the cellar steps, I look for the wrench, praying it’s there. Yep!

“Here you go Grandma.” I beam, dripping like I really did go swimming.

She curses. “The spigot’s leaking back here too.” Grandma takes the wrench. “Go down in the cellar, on the shelf, under the stairs. There’s a small baby food jar with washers in it. Bring me up one.”

The ocean is now a football field. Furniture and toys crowd along one side of the living and dining room thoroughfare. The TV and more toys cheer us on along the opposite side. Our team runs from the kitchen's back door straight through the house to the front door and greets visiting players. The fifty-yard line is marked by a fraying hole. No one knows who made it. Or who dropped the gum that’s now a flat black circle on our thirty-yard line.

Many long, hard games are played here. Grandma referees in her striped dress that looks like the rest of her wardrobe; H-line (I don’t know why they call dresses A-line) with no sleeves. She made them all herself. She has the patience of a saint.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Stop running in the house. And close the god damn door. You weren’t born in a barn,” Grandma yells to my brother Dan. She stops him at the sixty-yard line.

“But Grandma there’s still more wood at the curb that Joe from the shop next-door said I can have,” says Dan.

Grandma fouls his hoarding. “There’s enough wood in that yard as it is. We’ll have a firetrap back there soon.”

“Please Grandma, the trash truck’s comin’?”

She shakes her head. Dan breaks away and makes it to the twenty-yard line as the truck roars up our block.

Grandma forgot the leg upstairs so she uses a crutch to penalize our offending player. In mid-air the yellow flag crutch becomes a harpoon and we are back on a calm ocean.

The stairs are a pier now. We dangle Grandma’s crocheting yarn from it. We have fun casting it from her crocheting hook and pretending to reel in a big catch.

We’re fine sports, but Grandma isn’t because the store doesn’t sell that color yarn anymore.

The pier disappears and we’re rowing upstream, dodging harpoons and One-legged Pete. Tonight we also sport tanned hides. Onto The Old West.

In the morning we’re herded from our corrals beyond the stairs’ horizon, through the blue grass carpet to where we’re fed. Grandma nips at our heels so we’ll hurry. She growls when my sister reaches for the TV. Those pastures are forbidden; it’s a school day. But Grandma has a date with John Wayne at 1pm. I watched him last week when I was home from school sick. He walks funny as he approaches his horse, like he used Grandma’s yarn for a lasso. He’ll just be riding into the sunset when we come home.

We learned in Sunday School that God has different names; Jehovah, Yahweh, Alpha and Omega. Grandma does too. She gave my mom a different last name than she has, and my uncle an even different one than those. Goodness knows how many others she has. Could Wayne be one? When I ask her about them, Grandma always needs me to do something for her, so I stopped asking.

I don’t know why Grandma gets upset when the neighbors ask questions about our family. I like our neighbors. They’re so friendly and concerned about us.

From our kitchen snack bar I see Mrs. Rudner looking at me. She’s peeping out her sun porch window which is across our street. I don’t wave to her because she may think I’m staring at her and that’s rude.

The other day she asked me if our dryer was broken because she saw Grandma hanging laundry in our back yard (I hope Grandma remembered not to wave). When I told her we didn’t have a dryer, she made that tsk-tsk sound with her tongue and mumbled, “...with five children in that house.”

I assured her that we had a washing machine, but that I’m not allowed to help with the laundry because my mom got her finger stuck in the rollers when she was my age. Mrs. Rudner just stared at me with her mouth open.

I heard our next-door neighbor say to her neighbor how awful it is when Ms. Gimpy says “gd” all the time right in front of her grandkids. From the way they whispered, that must be worse than a four-letter word. When I asked Grandma who Ms. Gimpy is, she says, “Those god damned gossips should mind their own business.”

“Grandma, can I play with this?” my brother asks.

“Where’d you get that from?” Grandma barks.

“He was rooting around behind your chair,” my sister tattles.

“What is it?” I ask.

“That’s my Bingo dabber,” Grandma says.

“Can I see it?” my sister dares.

“No, put it back in my Bingo bag right now.”

“Are you going to Bingo at OLPH, Grandma?” I ask.

“Yeah. Now get that from your brother before he gets it all over...Jesus Christ!”

We tease my brother about being the Blue Boy, like the picture hanging in our hallway upstairs. He snickers as we watch Grandma lug her Bingo bag and huge pocketbook into her friend’s car. Her blue eye shadow almost matches my brother’s hands.

Grandma has lots of friends at Bingo, including the priest. They’re glad to see her come, and even pick her up when our car isn’t running. I don’t know why she can’t take communion on Sunday mornings at OLPH. I guess because we’re Protestant. That means you go to a smaller church when your car is running and drink watery grape juice.

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph!.............Ass...Sh...” Grandma’s talking to the nativity again. As I walk into our house after school, I hear her voice coming from the open cellar door. Tip-toeing to the TV set, I turn on Speed Racer.

“Dawn Marie! Get your nose out of that TV and do your homework.” Grandma’s no longer talking to clay figures.

My stomach hurts and the back of my neck feels funny when I hear the muffled thud of Grandma’s artificial leg on the bottom step. My body jumps and I grab my school bag. I’m sure she’s coming because of more thuds. Time is running out. The thuds are louder, closer. I scramble to get out my loose leaf book and flip to spelling. The thuds stop. I hear breathing. I feel her standing there but can’t look up from my list of words. She coughs her familiar cigarette cough and says, “Hand me your spelling words.”

I hate spelling. I hate Thursdays because every Friday my teacher gives us a spelling test. Grandma makes me study right after school. She says to just do it and get it over with.

“Spell ‘receive’.”

“R-E-C-I-E-V-E.”

“Try it again.”

“R-E-C…E-I-V-E.”

“Spell ‘conquest’.”

“C-O-N-Q-U-I-S-T.”

“No.”

“I studied. Honest, but I can’t get ‘em right.”

“You got most of ‘em. Conquest.”

“I can’t get them last ones.”

“Yes you can. Medicine.”

“M-E-D-I-C-I-N.”

Grandma stares at the list. “Am I right?” I ask, but Grandma’s still quiet, leaning her ear at me. “E.”

“Good. Now listen, conqu..e...st.”

“C-O-N-Q-U-E-S-T.”

Grandma gives me back the list and says, “You got ‘em all.”

“Shouldn’t I try it one more time just to make sure? I don’t wanna get one of those hard ones wrong.”

“You’re done. Go play.”

We’re on vacation at the real ocean. Grandma teases us about sharks so we don’t go out too far: “Damn things swim faster'n a man. Can swallow ‘em whole too.”

We meet a kid who plays in our half of the beach house the whole week we’re here. We don't know his name. He just shows up, even when we don’t want him to. Grandma serves us Kool-Aide. She drinks iced tea with no sugar, and has to take off her artificial leg when it gets too hot for her to wear it.

The day we go home, we say good-bye to the kid we’re hoping came with the house we’re now leaving. He takes a good, long look at Grandma and says, “Hey! You ain’t got no teeth.” Grandma laughs her hardy laugh that comes from deep down in her big belly and struts into the bedroom to check for stuff we forgot. She has us each grab a bag or box to take to the car.

I feel bad for the kid because he isn’t one of us. He’s different, like one of those kids who have their own bedroom. I bet he’s scared at night all by himself.

I think he’s gonna cry standing in the corner of the living room watching us. You can tell he wants to come along because his body leans side-to-side as we come back for more stuff and go out again.

The car’s packed and Dan whispers, “Hey Grandma, that boy’s still here. Is he comin’ with us?”

The kid’s feet don’t move until Grandma says, “You’re gonna have to go home now.”

He looks at Grandma and the rest of us like our dog looks at my brother when he’s leaving to go to school in the morning. That’s how I’d look if I were him. He doesn’t say anything and runs away fast.

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