Does this happen to you, too? I often wake up in the middle of the night and then have difficulty getting back to sleep because my brain decides this is a good time to solve the worldās problems, or least some of my own. In fact, I am writing this at about 4:30 a.m. Once my thoughts started spinning wildly, I had no choice but to get up and write. I realized that I was actually experiencing a āgeezer momentā different from so many of the others I have written about in the past. I had a flashback to a day a few weeks before, when I was riding in the car with my seven-year-old grand-daughter, Sophia. We often, as I am sure many other grandparents do, go pick up grandkids from school, take them to activities, or bring them over to our house for some quality time together.
Before continuing, Iāll need to give you some background information about the Geati children and their children. We have four kids, including a set of identical twin sons. In all, we have eight grandkids, including three sets of twins. One son has a set of identical boys, and the other has two sets of fraternal twins. So much for the theory that twins skip a generation! Sophia is one of the grandkids not a twin. She is very close to her cousins, so close that usually the first words out of her mouth when she gets situated in the car are āGrampa, please tell me a story about my cousins and me.ā For months, I have been making up stories to pass the time while we are traveling. The stories, according to Sophia, must be funny and scary at some point. Imagine the pressure to constantly come up with new adventures of Sophia and her cousins! My creative juices have to work overtime to keep coming up with fresh, new ideas to meet her criteria. Sometimes, I cast them as high school or college students, or even as adults with kids of their own. Sophia always chimes in with her own suggestions as the stories progress.
You are probably wondering by now where this is all going, right? Well, on the way home with Sophia after a snowfall had left us with about six inches of good packing snow, I started a story by saying that the cousins all got together to make a snowman. However, they didnāt want to make just an ordinary snowman, they wanted to make snow people. As soon as those words came out of my mouth, it hit me. I asked Sophia, āWhy donāt we make snow people when we get to my house?ā She instantly caught the fever, and we starting brain-storming how we would construct our snow sculpture.
As soon as we pulled into the garage, we jumped into action, as we already knew what we needed to fulfill our mission. We scoured the house for the necessary props and quickly started production. About an hour later, we had our āpeopleā sitting on lawn chairs, facing the street, dressed in swim suits of sorts, complete with hats, one of grandmaās black bras to sub as a bikini top, and various other pieces of apparel. We had a TV tray set up with drink cups between the chairs and a boom box blasting out music by the Beach Boys. We used a red bell pepper to cut out and shape their lips, bite-size pretzels were used for eyes, baby carrots for noses, and tennis balls for ears. Somehow, the guy ended up with drum sticks in his hands. Sophia couldnāt wait until Grandma came home to see our masterpiece.
As we stepped back to look over our production, I experienced a truly great āmomentā with Sophia, one I will never forget. Itās your turn. I know you have āmoments.ā Send them to me at greengeezer9@comcast.net. I look forward to hearing from you.
Sammy
