A Wonderful Family Reunion

Here’s hoping that all my readers had a happy, safe and brightly-lit Independence Day this year! Ours was particularly great, with Grandson #2 (two months younger than #1), his Mom and soon-to-be official Stepdad and 15-year old sister we’ve only met once before. Other guests were at a minimum, which allowed us to just hang out together, tell stories and talk about ’stuff’, hike on the Mount Mitchell Trail a bit, and break in my brand new deck.

We hadn’t seen grandson Michael for four years, which is way too long! Last time he was here - for the 4th of July - he got bitten by a copperhead on day-1 and had to spend the next three days in the hospital. Not much of a birthday vacation! Luckily, copperheads have thus far been absent this year (knock on wood), so Mike and I were able to spend good time together picking blackberries and making cobbler, accumulating lots of thorn pricks and scratches in the process. We only looked slightly war-weary by the time the cobbler was done, badges of honor around here!

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Summer Challenge: Feeding the Grandkids

…what they mostly won’t eat at home

I don’t know about all grandmas, but I know from my own experience with other people’s kids that they often come to spend a week or two expecting to be fed precisely what they usually get fed at home, and can be positively horrified to find that Grandma doesn’t stock chocolate cereals or big bags of candy or white bread and baloney for sandwiches, and there’s not a McDonald’s or Wendy’s in sight.

Now, it’s not that I don’t make some concessions to the basic kid-diet. My non-vegetarian grands and nieces/nephews and such do have the option of a can of beef-a-roni or a frozen pepperoni pizza here and there. I’ve even been known to purchase some turkey-dogs to roast over the campfire. But the grilled burgers are black bean, there will be no “Happy Meals,” and no bacon bits for the baked potatoes.

I also stock lots of fruit, whatever’s available when they’re here. I grow strawberries in the garden, those usually get eaten as soon as they’re picked, and they only last so long into the season. I have some cherry tomatoes that went wild one year, show up in unexpected places all over the garden. Those get eaten as soon as they’re picked as well, one granddaughter swears they’re sweeter than cherries! None of the kids seem to like cooked greens very much, but they’ll eat as many peas raw from the pod as I can possibly pick on any given day.

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Blackberry Winter and Baby Sunshine

We’re all suffering Blackberry Winter here in the mountains. And I do mean suffering. Grandson, daughter and I have all contracted our ‘usual’ spring colds due to radical temperature and weather shifts, and it’s simply way too cold and nasty outside for me to finish tilling a tier of the garden for tomatoes and peppers. We haven’t seen the sun in days. It’s not quite cold enough for heat, not warm enough to get out of our winter sweatshirts and sweaters. Yuck!

I found out about Blackberry Winter the first spring we spent here, in 1993. That was the year of the Great Blizzard on March 13 that buried us under 3-4 feet of wet snow and cut the electricity off for two full weeks. It was also the year of our first forest fire on April 13, exactly a month later and pretty scary (I’m used to them by now). Then, right around May 13, the lovely seasonably warm weather turned suddenly dark, damp and relatively cold (low 60s during the day, 40s at night). It lasted for nearly two weeks, and I was hard pressed to figure out what’s wrong with May around here. I’d seen May be the hottest month of the year in several states we’d lived previously!

That’s when my new friend Margaret informed me rather dismissively that it’s just Blackberry Winter. Happens every year during the first half of May, she said, and in the 15 years since I’ve found that to be true and entirely predictable every single year. See, the blackberries bloom during that time, and the cold weather always coincides with the appearance of their white blooms. Not with the crocus and jonquils, not with the dogwoods and redbuds, not with the apples, pears or cherry blooms. Always with the blackberries. As soon as you see the buds starting to open you know for a fact the weather will turn within a day or two, and stay dismal for as long as it takes for them to be pollinated and drop off.

Thus it was with joy and gladness that I received the news in my head-stuffed, achy spring illness that our daughter and son-in-law will be visiting Granny, Grandpa and an Aunt Granny nearby next weekend with baby Sunshine! Of course that means I have to scramble to finish that darned quilt, but I can’t wait to hold that baby and kiss her soft cheeks! The weather should be great by then, the blackberries are almost done doing their thing. Our colds should be well over with by then too, and we’ll disinfect the house thoroughly for the occasion.

I’ll take lots of pictures! So stay tuned all you Moms and Grandmas out there, this Grandma is ready to show off big time!

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A Good New Fangled Irish Wake

Well, we made it home in one piece from the funeral of our dear old friend Rick, but only because Grandma did the driving (everyone had been up all night at the wake, I was the only one in any shape to drive 8 hours home!). The funeral crowd overspilled the ample sanctuary of Rick’s Mom’s Catholic church, SRO inside (including the entire foyer) and others standing outside. The priest was a bit taken aback, and rightly suspected a lot of these people had probably never darkened a church door in their lives. But he did fine anyway, and all our hearts were broken - we were there for Mom, no one was going to cause any trouble.

In the immediate family circle are O’Sheas and Coins and O’Cains and O’Rourkes and other names so blatantly Irish nobody could confuse the issue by the number of Rastas and Buddhists and Presbyterians and atheists (and God-Knows-Whats) in the crowd. Even though we did outnumber them. After the mass there was a photo collage presented in the fellowship hall, probably 600 people stayed to see it.

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Managing The Weaponry

…and Laying Down the Law

It was an action-packed weekend. A total of 4 daughters (one by birth, three by stray whose kids call me “Aunt Granny”) one stray son and five semi-grands plus #1 grandson. Here for the youngest semi-grandson’s eighth birthday on Sunday. To make matters worse, the weather was absolutely dismal so there could be no friendly campfire for Peep-roasting, the ins and outs of having all those people coming and going from the cold and wet into the house completely trashed the place so that it’s taken two days just to reclaim the living area.

There were some issues that arose, particularly in regards to the younger boys (8 and 10) and 17-year old #1 grandson’s ample collection of serious weaponry that he just can’t seem to keep put safely away because he practices with them so often. I had to collect ninja knives and Samurai swords, one rapier and several heavy fantasy swords from them at various times, which they’d managed to fish out of some gawd-awful corner of grandson’s outrageously messy room when nobody was looking. The girls (4 and 14) were, as usual, perfect angels - ratted out those boys every time…

#1 Grandson lives here, graduates high school this year, and is an only child. This place is far out in the country with no immediate neighbors, surrounded by National Forest. When he was younger (about 8), we began allowing him to collect wooden practice swords and staffs, gave him form lessons to keep him busy. Our son (who died when grandson was just 2) had a double black belt in a weapons form of Kung-Fu (was also an amazing juggler and seasoned performer who once toured demonstrating his weapons skills on stage with his master). Grandson had inherited a lot of practice and show weapons, bought more once we allowed that beginning when he was 12. He makes spectacularly detailed Samurai armor by hand too, as well as fantasy chess sets from Sculpy - he’s extremely talented, we’ve always encouraged it.

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A Happy Family Holiday

…from the lake cabin!

One daughter, her annoying (and very loud) boyfriend, one niece and her not-annoying boyfriend, two semi-sons and their wives, one grandson and three old Navy buddies (plus 2 wives). It’s been a busy week here at the lake house for Mama and Papa Elf, who always stretch out Christmas over the entire length of the holidays. That’s a perk we give ourselves after a grueling season at the mall contributing to the Pagan trappings of the consumerist frenzy.

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When Christmas Isn’t Home

Back in our younger days when we lived in Florida and had to entertain crowds of friends and relatives at Christmas, we used to rent an oceanfront condo for the week. We’d decorate the condo instead of the house, and have our Christmas there. Not being a big fan of doing a lot of actual decorating myself (if I had my d’ruthers all I’d have are pegs on the wall and bare furniture), and given the fact that as clown-elves we were usually working exhausting mall shifts right through Christmas Eve, this worked out fine for me.

Working at malls isn’t the same thing as shopping at malls. Which I never do, because everything at the mall costs three times what it’s worth so that mall shops can pay rent on the high-dollar property and hire expensive entertainers like us to bring in the crowds. I’ve always been of the strong opinion that elves should be able to postpone Christmas until New Year’s without suffering any ’spirit’ penalties (and coincidentally cashing in on all the after-Christmas sales when everything costs half or less of what it cost the day before Christmas). But of course it’s never actually works out that way.

Then 15 years ago our son died, our business (he was a partner) collapsed, and we moved our broken hearts to a small mountain cabin to mend and figure out a way to start over. Our daughter and her 2-year old son moved with us, and we’ve been here ever since (and we adopted a few along the way). Until this year we’ve always decorated the cabin - it’s definitely made for Christmas! - even if we were planning to be elsewhere for the actual holidays.

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