At some point, when she was quite young, she informed her mother that she needed to "go to Grand B's to spend some Days." (It was probably shortly after the birth of her younger sister and she needed some extra attention, but I don't recall exactly when she prompted us to start calling these extended visits Days.) It has sort of become a tradition and we simply refer to her extended visits as... Lillie's Days. (We are original and unique and creative like that!)
A couple of weeks ago marked Lillie's Days. We were lucky enough to share about four days - all of them quite hot days. It was quite wonderful for me and I think she enjoyed the time as well. What did we do?
Well, visited the local library. The one way that girl is like her grandmother is that she has ALWAYS loved books.
Even as a baby she was intrigued by them. That is one thing that thrills my heart. She picked out a couple of books at the local library. It seemed that the criterion for what a wonderful book is to her is that it must involve a horse in some way. Her selections were Everything but the Horse by Hollie Hobby (Who knew she was an author? Not me! I thought she was just a doll who wore a bonnet.) and Liang and the Magic Paintbrush by Demi.
The teacher in me tried to steer her toward a couple more of the books I love but she had none of that. She is a girl who makes up her mind and sticks to it. As it turned out, the books were quite wonderful and we both enjoyed them tremendously, reading them every single day that she was here. We also had to read our traditional favorites, The Alley Cat's Meow by Kathi Appelt and What About Emma? by Ken Rush.
The conversations are always interesting and mature when we sit down to read and discuss our books. The comments from this less-than-fifty-pound, shorter-than-five-feet, seven-year-old scrawny little thing are always enlightening. As I would read, Lillie would ask me questions like this, "Grand B, remember when I was a little girl and you would..."
Another activity we both enjoyed each and every day was to go to "Nan's pool" (My sister and brother-in-law who live here on the 'family compound' have a backyard pool.)
She loves to splash and jump and imagine and experiment. She started off quite cautious and wearing water wings and a ring floaty.
Then, she discovered that she could touch the bottom and not risk the danger of getting her face underwater (truly a catastrophe if that were to happen!) and she was a free and flippery little fish. (Of course, I sat a little bit closer to the edge and was a mite more alert.)
Our days were full of fun and we both wish they could happen more often. Wouldn't it be nice if we had no responsibility and could just take a few Days to spend wherever we like whenever we wish?
No comments:
Post a Comment