Shoelaces and Love

Shoelaces and Love - A Snippet

I've been reading Dr. Seuss to the 7 kindergarten classrooms at Prince Elementary School helping with the transition from recess to classwork.

I hang out with the kids on the playground before then; there are hugs and there are Hi, Grandma!!'s and there are untied shoelaces. I believe that the Untying Fairy flies over the area and afflicts every other shoe in the vicinity.

I used to bend over and tie one and move on. Lately, now that the kindergarteners and I have bonded over Horton hatching that egg, I've had to sit on the ground. There are too many to do in a crouch... even when I could crouch with comfort.

And there I was on Friday, looking at untied and too long laces and knotted laces and soaking wet laces and muddy laces when I noticed a pair of grey shoes, laces loosely but securely tied. I watched from the corner of my eye as one shoe, slowly and stealthily, tugged on the longer end of the other shoe's lace, untying it.

It took a while, but that lace ended up in the Bring me that shoelace! brigade surrounding me.

Who knew that tying shoelaces would be a thing? Love shows up in the most unexpected places, sometimes.

MONDAY, JANUARY 16, 2017

Comments

Open House at Grandma's Garden

It was Tuesday and the Scholars were surprised to see me. There was a lot of work to be done to ready the garden for the Open House for donors. Although some were disappointed by the emphasis on work , after a little bit of cheer-leading the empty pots were filled with aloe and random seeds harvested from those spilled on the bench. The hanging garden received a careful hand watering. And there was raking. Lots and lots of rakiing. There was also mischief. The rules are few and simple. 1.Don't climb on and don't fall off the rocks. 2. All tools must stay below your shoulders. Sometimes you just have to stare at Grandma and see how far she'll let you go. Big smiles and giggles go a long way toward mitigating my wrath, specially when my heart is soothed by a kid who found a quiet place to dig with a pint sized trowel. Grandma's Garden is a good place for that. Wednesday was warm and partly cloudy,...

Retiring the Garden for the Summer

School ends this week. With no one around to tend the raised beds, it's time to retire the plants. There was giant lettuce (yes, those stalky things are lettuce run amok) and an alium looking flower atop what we took to be an onion..... until I remembered that alium are part of the onion family so why wouldn't they share a similar blossom? As with all good retirements, planning was crucial. Grandma Suzi thought that 50 pots would take care of all the plants fit to share; she was off by a factor of 4. There are no 3" or 4" plastic or ceramic pots left in Tucson - unless they cost more than fifty cents a piece. After three days spent cleaning out all the Dollar Stores within a 10 mile radius, I can confidently assert that this is true. Everyone wanted a plant to take home. Scholars who had never set food in the garden before were suddenly bound and determined to be farmers over the summer. Big kids and l...

GRINning

Search This Blog