Fourth Monday Susan Speaks

Self-portrait on green paper

Another granddaughter moment

By Susan C. Price

Our kids and the granddaughter live on a short, dead-end block. Perfect for small fry walking with grandma: no traffic concerns.
    Across the street lives a boy a few months older, Parker. For the first years, Parker and granddaughter played together daily. Mostly, they played well, but Parker was given to throwing things. Parker was the first to call me “grandma”...as he associated my grey hair with that title.
    Farther down the block lives another small girl. She is usually not around on our afternoons together, but her side yard, open to the street, had an irresistible swing in a tree. Granddaughter and I would frequently make good use of it. “Higher, grandma, push me more!” Now, the swing has been changed out to a trapeze. Granddaughter is fascinated...and she is figuring it out...and I am terrified.

    Across the street from the trapeze (yikes!) live some very nice folks who have blooming lemon trees that we are welcome to pick for our cooking and cocktails, a kumquat tree with a step stool (for reaching the high ones), and...a wooden bench. They actually refer to it as, “the kumquat bench.”

    One day this spring, these green-thumb neighbors were also raising corn in a raised bed in the front yard. Granddaughter and I sat on the kumquat bench, eating tart kumquats in the sunshine near the corn. I began to sing “...and the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye...” (“Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma) and granddaughter sat beside me, sucking a kumquat, swinging her legs and not stopping my singing.
    This IS as good as it gets, I thought.
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Copyright © 2013 by Susan C. Price

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