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Next to Monopoly and Battleship, Get Grandma is one of the family’s favorite games. No rules, no limits, play as often as you wish, whenever and wherever you wish.

Years ago, both sons-in-law began jumping out of closets when they realized I had a strong startle reflex and often screamed loud enough to pierce two time zones when surprised.

Grandbabies arrived in rapid succession and broadened the game by hiding on the washer and dryer behind bi-fold doors, lunging from behind the sofa, the shrubs, or the kitchen island.

It became the grandma version of the old “Dick and Jane” books. See Grandma jump. See Grandma scream. See Grandma run. Run, Grandma, run.

I am one of those fortunate people who can so focus on a task that I tune out everything around me. This gift has preserved my sanity, or what’s left of it.

When the entire family gathered for a long weekend in Tennessee, I was savoring the solitude of a morning walk behind the property and heard a bear roar. I screamed and flew up three flights of stairs on the back of the house, to discover a son-in-law on the top deck laughing.

The newest version of Get Grandma involves knuckle cracking. Three seemingly sweet, adorable school-age girls are expert knuckle crackers.

They were demonstrating their talents when I said, “Did you girls know that popping sound happens because the fluid in your joints make gas bubbles that pop? That’s right, girls, your fingers have gas.”

I had them now. For all of two seconds. They giggled and resumed knuckle cracking. I resumed my work in the kitchen amid knuckle-cracking that sounded like fireworks in slo-mo.

“That’s kid stuff,” I finally said. “Grandpa can crack his knees!”

They cringed, squealed and recoiled. I smiled.

Then the youngest one quietly said, “Did you know I can crack my nose?” She positioned her soft little hand over her soft button nose and flipped it from side to side while clicking her tongue. Her timing was so superb it looked like the real deal. Snap, crackle, pop—Rice Krispies without the milk.

“Your nose could stick that way,” I said.

She was unmoved. Soon they were all snapping, cracking and popping knuckles and noses.

A box arrived the other day with packing inside and I am now prepared to fight back—bubble wrap.

 

Five police cars with flashing lights blocked the southern portion of a major intersection. Broken glass, debris and twisted metal spread a hundred yards. Partial remains of a horribly disfigured SUV sat on a flat bed. A mangled sedan was on its side in the middle of the pavement.

News reports said an SUV with four passengers ran a red light at a high rate of speed at 3 a.m. and crashed into a sedan. Two dead, three injured, two critically.

I immediately wondered if any of those in the speeding SUV had heard a small still voice like I did years ago.

As a senior in high school, I was on the way home from a movie seated in the front passenger seat. The driver was a boy I’d known a long time. His best friend and the girl he was dating were in the backseat.

My friend made a left turn at a high rate of speed and laughed.

I heard a small still voice in my head say, “Tell him to pull over and let you out.” We were only blocks from my home. I could have easily and safely walked. But I didn’t want to look uncool in front of my friends, so I said nothing.

A second time, clearer and more forcefully, the voice said, “Tell him to pull over and let you out.” Again, I stonewalled and said nothing. Fifteen seconds later, he took another corner on two wheels and we slammed head on into a parked truck.

The impact shot me forward and I shattered the windshield with my head. I don’t remember being dragged from the car, but I do remember a woman with red hair crying, looking at me lying on the ground, and saying, “She’s going to die, she’s going to die.”

In the ambulance on the way to the hospital, an EMT kept touching my feet saying, “Can you feel this? Can you feel this?” The answer was no.

I spent some time in the hospital and missed almost two months of school. I was doing make-up work in the graduation line, but by the end of summer I had recovered and was fine. I was beyond fortunate. Once in a blue moon, a vertebrae that was fractured still yelps just to say hello.

I never talked about the small still voice because I knew I’d been a fool.

But I’m talking now. We have new young drivers in our extended family, with more waiting in the wings pining for their 16^th birthdays.

Take it from someone who foolishly thought it was better to look cool than to speak up and be safe. If you ever hear the small still voice, listen to it and heed it.

Ignore what anyone else might think—because that small still voice just might be the voice of God trying to save you from something horrendous.

Our nightly dinner routine goes like this: I cook dinner and the husband sets the table. Last night we had Panera napkins, the night before we had Subway napkins. We have a drawer full of cloth napkins, but he prefers to save those until we’ve used all the extras that fast food places stuff in the bag with our order.

Sometimes he goes to the garage and rummages through one of the cars in order to finish setting the table. At least we’re not blowing our retirement savings on napkins.

Being that the husband hails from the Waste Not, Want Not gene pool, we also have numerous tiny bottles of shampoos and conditioners from hotels. This is fortunate because the days of travel-size toiletries are in the rearview mirror now that many states have banned single-use plastic.

Most hotels now offer shampoo and conditioner in large dispensers bolted to the wall. The only way to take some with you would be to pump them directly into your cosmetic bag.

I didn’t think so.

Pocket packers, people who take more of the freebies than they need, have made life difficult for everyone. Ketchup packets within reach have become a rarity. You have to ask for ketchup at the counter. And say, “Please.” Sometimes you have to say, “Pretty please.” And endure a withering glare. How dare you want ketchup with those fries!

We were recently at a burger place that still had ketchup in a pump dispenser alongside little paper cups. It had been watered down so thin it couldn’t qualify as tomato sauce.

Straws are often under lock and key. You can still fill your own drink at some places, but you’ll have to get back in line to request a straw.

Understandably, fast food restaurants are storing condiments in time-locked safes to prevent pocket packing by customers.

I wouldn’t like it either if people came to my kitchen and tried to make a getaway with our essentials. Oh, that’s right. They do that all the time.

Hey Grandma, you gonna eat these?

Hey Grandma, could I have some cookies for the road?

Some people call ‘em grandkids; I call ‘em belly packers.

George Washington is literally in the “pages of history.” A book on the coffee table has money hanging out of it—not play money, real money as in a one dollar bill.

I know in an instant the book belongs to a 12-year-old granddaughter.

The girl is an avid reader. She won the “Reader Award” in her class three times last year which translated into three free pizzas.

The grand with the book oozing money was helping us rake leaves last fall when she suddenly disappeared. I looked all around and couldn’t find her. One of her sisters deadpanned, “Check the big pile of leaves in the front yard.”

She had hollowed out a big pile of leaves and was nestled inside, reading a book. She marked that page with a red maple leaf.

My choice in bookmarks largely depends on what is nearby: paper clips, sticky notes, rubber bands and junk mail. A grocery receipt can do double duty, as it not only holds my place, but reminds me what I bought for dinner.

I understand why the girl doesn’t always use real bookmarks. I often receive handmade bookmarks as gifts and they’re simply too pretty and special to lose between the cushions on the couch.

On rare occasions, I rationalize paying full price for a new release hardcover because I can use the flap on the book jacket to hold my place. So, it’s really like a money saving two-for-one.

But at this moment, my most pressing question is this: Does the girl with the George Washington bookmark mark all the books she reads with real money? She has started babysitting so it’s possible there could be 5s, 10s, maybe even 20s marking pages. Shouldn’t someone go through the bookcases in her bedroom and check?

I’ve volunteered for the job but haven’t heard back yet. Rumor is they don’t think I have shelf control.

Reading is in the girls’ genes—and her jackets, her purses and her backpack. She’s like her mother, who never left home without a book in her purse or backpack.

These days, her mom is in a book club, a book-to-movie book club and hosts readathons for kids.

Of all the qualities and quirks we pass on to our children, a love of reading may be among the best.

 

Years ago, when women only a few years older than I am now announced they quit cooking, I silently judged them. I would think to myself, “How in the world do you just stop cooking?”

I get it now. They were tired—tired of chicken, tired of ground beef, tired of pork and tired of salad after salad after salad.

If a judge were to sentence me for my previous lack of culinary compassion, I would beg the court for mercy. I’d tell the judge I’m willing to eat humble pie, but that sounds like it would involve cooking.

For me, the meal planning part of cooking is far more exhausting than the meal prep, which is why I now ask others what they are making for dinner and follow suit. It’s far more fun than flipping through recipe books and has a certain game-show quality about it.

On Wednesday, I asked our youngest what she was making for dinner.

She texted: “Switching things up. Taco Wednesday, homemade salsa and queso. We usually have Taco Tuesday, but this week it’s Taco Wednesday.”

I replied that you can buy salsa at the grocery.

She responded that she makes her own queso as well.

And to think we’re related.

The next day, I texted our daughter-in-law asking what was for dinner.

Her reply said their oldest son was making butter chicken thighs. It sounded good, but because of our age and cholesterol concerns, we’d probably have to forgo the butter part.

When a longtime friend and neighbor, who is an excellent cook and gardener, dropped by with a bag of freshly picked green beans, I asked what she was making for dinner.

She’d planned on warming up homemade zucchini quiche from the day before, but it was too hot to turn on the oven, so they were going to McDonald’s.

You never really know a person until you know their Plan B for dinner.

Perhaps I’d be more inspired to cook if we freshened up the kitchen a bit. The kitchen of my dreams is from an early Martha Stewart cooking show. She was making a fall dish and a hand came up from below the counter and began removing dirty utensils.

On Friday, I asked our oldest daughter what she was making for dinner. She said she was getting ready for a dinner party for nine.

I hung up on her.

 

We’ve hit a rough patch over mowing the lawn this summer. The husband is temporarily sidelined with a knee injury and I cheerfully and enthusiastically (a slight exaggeration) volunteered to do the mowing.

We are now engulfed in turf wars. My mowing abilities are under intense scrutiny. The man has high standards. I call him the Sodfather.

He says grass should be cut at a height of five inches. I say why not shear it and then I won’t have to mow as often.

The fact is, I used to mow the yard all the time when the husband worked crazy hours. It’s one of the kids’ favorite childhood memories. The girls love to tell the story about when their brother fell off the neighbor’s monkey bars and came home holding his arm. I told him to sit on the sofa while I finished mowing and we would see how it felt in a few minutes.

Their version is, “Remember how Mom made him sit on the sofa with a broken arm while she mowed the yard?”

It was 10 minutes max, and when his arm still hurt we were at the ER in two minutes.

Their new story will be, “Mom can’t mow in a straight line.”

So maybe my lines are wobbly. Maybe it looks like the yard was mowed by a nine-year-old with no upper body strength. Make that a nine-year-old with no upper body strength and a drinking problem.

I try. I really do. I try and the husband is simply trying.

This week he started the mower, mowed a stripe and said, “Just follow that pattern.”

He makes it sound so easy. You can’t always go in a straight line when you hit small craters, tree roots and sinkholes.

To top things off, I am a visual spectacle wearing a sunhat, gloves, a mask for pollen allergies and big bright orange ear protection. The last time I mowed, a car drove by, the driver honked and yelled, “Trick or Treat!”

I suggested we consider one of those riding mowers. If he thinks my lines are crazy now, just wait until he sees what I can do with zero turn.

In the meantime, we have called a truce: I’ll mow according to his specs when he loads the dishwasher according to mine.

When my husband was asked if he would help teach twin granddaughters how to parallel park, he immediately yelled, “Yes!” If there was a parallel parking competition, my husband could take first place—unless our son entered the competition, then he’d take first place.

Our son lived in Chicago for 10 years and none of his apartment buildings had a parking garage. In such cases, you either learn to parallel park or leave the city. That’s why all the suburbs keep mushrooming.

The twins’ first parallel parking lesson involved a tiny yellow passenger car, an itty bitty red truck and a miniature Batmobile on the sidewalk in front of the house. The instructor maneuvered the little yellow car, demonstrating how to pull forward, align rear bumpers with the little red truck, put the car in reverse, turn sharp as you back up, then turn sharp in the opposite direction, and back up again, careful not to hit the Batmobile.

The lesson went well until the little yellow car lost traction, toppled off the sidewalk and tumbled into the grass.

I learned to parallel park in a maroon ’69 Ford XL, a vehicle similar in size to an Army tank. The car didn’t have a backup camera, but it had an AM push-button radio, a parking brake, ashtray, cigarette lighter and windows you rolled down manually. It also had side view mirrors, but I was so short I could hardly see them.

I was more shocked than anyone when I parallel parked without hopping the curb or hitting the car behind me and got my driver’s license on the first try. It was an event just short of feeding the five thousand with only two fish and five loaves.

When the husband promoted the twins to parallel parking in a real vehicle that could seat humans and not just Lego people, everyone had their fingers crossed—for the girls and for the vehicles.

They were to parallel park their mother’s car behind their father’s car and in front of their grandparents’ car. More than $130,000 in vehicles were at risk in the interest of parallel parking.

As the student drivers, their instructor and onlookers took their places, there appeared to be more lengthy instruction sessions happening in the car, each followed by a not-so-successful parking attempt. More instructions, more attempts.

After considerable time, it looked like the girls were getting the hang of it, although the sun was now down, it was pitch dark and hard to see.

The important thing to remember is that practice makes perfect.

The second most important thing to remember is that when a parallel parking spot appears impossible, keep driving—eventually you’ll find a spot you can manage.

 

My philosophy concerning a garden is the same as my philosophy toward dessert—there’s always room for a little more.

It didn’t take long this spring before I realized I was sowing too many seeds in too little space. Then a lightbulb flashed and I thought, “Why not go vertical?” I could just coax everything to latch onto big swaths of chicken wire and reach for the sky.

Fee-fi-fo-fum. Pole beans, sugar peas and cucumber vines coiled and curled and now brush the heels and pinky toes of giants.

The plan worked, though now we can walk around the garden but not actually in the garden. It’s a jungle. No zebras or elephants (that I can see), but a jungle.

I recently guided one of the smaller grands through the jungle to pick cherry tomatoes. It was like an air traffic controller helping land a plane whose instrument panel had gone dark.

“Veer a little to your right, honey. Careful with your left foot; it’s about to smash a potato plant. That thing on your head is nothing but a big cucumber leaf. Don’t look up, just keep your eyes on the little red balls.”

She maneuvered according to directions. “Plant your left foot to the side of the sugar peas and pole beans, now lean in, stretch as far as you can and I think you can reach the tomatoes.”

She nabbed her first few when I yelled, “Basil! You’re trampling the basil!” Of course, this scared her and the day’s take flew into the air.

Word is she’s not coming back to Grandma’s until the fall harvest is over.

Some suggest I have gone off the deep end. And yes, what you heard is true, when someone asks for gift ideas, I now say worm castings.

I have homesteader envy. I’m mesmerized by people selling homes in the burbs, moving to the country and declaring they will live off the food they produce.

Were we to go off the grid tomorrow, we would be sustained solely by 75 cherry tomatoes, rosemary, thyme, oregano and an unending supply of basil.

You’d be able to smell us before you could see us.

“How does Italian sound for dinner?” I would ask the husband.

“You mean some version of tomatoes?”

“Yes.”

“We had that last night.”

“And we’re going to have it every night from here on out.”

Welcome to the new frontier.

Fortunately, I didn’t see the late-night text from our son until early the next morning. I wouldn’t have slept a wink if I had.

His two youngest girls spent the night with us. They live in the country, know all the plants and trees and animal tracks and can give wildlife a run for their money.

The 10-year-old, who slept over, is gentle as a dove, soft spoken and loves mice and chickens. The 8-year-old has bright blue eyes, a sweet smile and looks like an angel baby. Angel Baby knows how to play a room and work a crowd. Angel Baby could also pull a live animal out of her back pocket any day of the week.

The text from the night before said, “Hey, so one of the boys had a dead spider that he tied up to fishing line, but it is missing. Can you please ask the girls if they know where it is / if they have it? I told the kids explicitly NOT to take it to Grandma’s.”

I wonder if a lot of grandmas get these sort of text messages.

Our son would say, “Only the special ones.”

The reason the girls were told not to bring the dead spider is because they have a history. The 5-foot-long snakeskin episode still sends chills down my back. The snapping turtle that slept in one of the bedrooms wasn’t bad, although the squirrel tail in the freezer had me reciting the Greek alphabet backward for weeks.

I knew immediately that the spider in question must be a wolf spider.  Wolf spiders are so huge you could toss one into a skillet, serve dinner for five and still have leftovers for the next three days.

When the girls wandered into the kitchen half awake, I immediately cornered my chief suspect, Angel Baby.

“Did you bring a big spider to Grandma’s?”

With a strand of hair cascading down her face, she smiled sweetly, batted those big baby blues, and said, “No.”

“Are you telling the truth?” Grandma sounded louder than usual.

“Yes,” she said.

I stood quietly, waiting for her to break. She whispered, “I didn’t bring it, but I know where it is.”

“Where?” I asked.

“At home.”

“Where at home?”

“On the mixer.”

I texted their dad. He said Wolf was not on the mixer.

Well then, Wolf was probably in whatever was last made in the mixer and is now inside all of the people who ate that. Yum. Protein.

The important thing was that Wolf wasn’t at Grandma’s house.

When the girls’ two brothers and older sister came the next day, the spider on the fishing line magically reappeared—dangling from the basketball goal spinning in the breeze, looking totally alive and terrifying. They also had fun perching the now visibly-dehydrated Wolf on a wicker chair where an aunt was sitting and attaching it to their clothing.

After the crew left, I realized I forgot to make sure they took Wolf with them. I immediately checked the mixer. All clear.

It was nearly two weeks ago that Wolf was here, but I still take a deep breath each time I open a cabinet or a drawer, or crawl into bed. Basketball is completely out of the question

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Bird Bonus
Robins built a nest in the dogwood next to the house, which means we have taken bird-watching to dizzying heights–standing on the patio brick wall, a small step ladder and nearby patio chairs to catch a peek and a few snaps for the photo album I will be preparing.

 

The morning of July 4th is so quiet around here, you might wonder if the entire subdivision entered the witness protection program.

But aound 9, garage doors start rolling up. Bicycles, ride toys, wagons and strollers emerge as Operation Decoration begins. Red, white and blue streamers wrap handlebars, balloons are anchored to Big Wheels and patriotic pinwheels glimmer in the sun.

Neighbors who know each other, and don’t know each other, begin congregating a block down from the corner. Friendly greetings of, “hello, good morning, nice to see you, and how ya been?” fill the air. The political divides and acrimony that often pierce conversations these days are temporarily suspended.

A convertible led the parade last year, a pickup the year before. The parade commences and loops through the neighborhood as parents steering toddlers and babies in strollers gradually fall to the rear. After the last set of short, pudgy legs cross the finish line, our brood returns home. Whoever drew the short straw lights the charcoal.

I can still see my dad firing up the grill on the Fourth years ago. The ritual began with a small stand to hold utensils taking its place next to the grill. On the front of the stand was a yellow sign that read “Men at Work” in big black letters.

Forever a farm boy, Dad loved the summer heat. The only thing better than an outdoor temperature of 101 was 102 with his shirt off.

Mom would be bustling around inside, putting a dash of paprika on the potato salad and monitoring the baked beans. She worked culinary magic in a small kitchen with countertop space not much bigger than a placemat.

Meanwhile, back at the grill, having subdued flames shooting 10 feet into the air, came the sound of hisssss-crack-pop. Man at Work just opened a cold one. Tradition and hydration all in one.

Most of the cracking and popping around here will be from ball games in the backyard. The grands are growing bigger, swinging harder and sending balls flying faster and farther. The zinnias are nervous and so am I.

The flag will fly from the front porch. We used to hang it only on holidays, or when family members who are veterans came to visit, but when our son-in-law deployed to Iraq, we began flying Old Glory every day and never stopped. Those red and white stripes are sobering reminders of the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands throughout the years. Flying the flag is a small way of saying thanks.

Fireworks at a sprawling sports park in a burb to the north will finish the day. Traffic is always horrible, parking is terrible and when it’s all over the thick ominous cloud of smoke hanging low overhead may send us to an early grave, but oh what a show.

With any luck we’ll be home by 11:30, in bed by midnight and fall asleep grumbling about the fireworks still popping off all around us.

It’s good to be an American. Happy 250^th!