BRADY GETS AN EARFUL

Well, the Quartet left for the States this morning, and this afternoon in the bleak of my mood, which was bleakening by the minute as I stayed indoors amidst years of signs of the presence of grandchildren and thought about things for which thinking is of no use, I decided it might be better to go outside into the garden and do some needful overdues, engage in some activity that could at least have the effect of putting my mind's foot down elsewhere than on my own neck.

So I put on my work duds and went outside, opened the garden gate in all forthrightness and entered that green dominion, stood there looking around with suitably humble authority, chucked a few too-long-ignored plants under the chin and in return received the worst visual scolding I've ever gotten from a garden.

Some pretty nasty vegetal syntax out there-- bean and pepper sarcasm, cuke and goya irony right on down the untended rows. Given their passive and vulnerable nature, vegetables can be pretty ruthless when given a chance to lash out; naturally, they're gonna give it all they've got. Fortunately, the grandies had left the country, so they didn't have to experience this, not that neglected gardens are all that restrained in California. I did have an excuse, though, sort of - over the past few weeks there's been so much going on in my own life that required my time, focus and energy - but full-time, hardworking produce has little sympathy for the problems of absentee humans.

The peppers were covered with weevils to an extent that agri-bureaucrats could call abusive; the favas had toppled into yellow tangles of no return; the tomatoes - mainly a distraction for monkeys - were plunging into lowlife with abandon and the climbing beans had that rebellious attitude I remember from high school. Neglected lettuce as well can be pretty damned ungrateful. The only satisfied plants were the luxuriating weeds and the stately fennel, which needs no one to maintain or affirm its beauty. The Andean potatoes as well were brightleaved and thriving at this luxurious altitude. The overall picture, however, was not a pretty one.

I went around doing what I could for the survivors: clearing some space, weeding, thinning-- more sunlight here, a bit of support there, a little encouragement over here and so on, but they knew my heart wasn't in it, I could sense it in their attitude - you know the way vegetables can get - they knew that next year things would be even more different: only two mouths to feed and fewer hands to plant and weed and care, no new hearts to laugh and be amazed at all the surprises that can stem from seed into beauty, no more shared delights of the spirit, spread out over summers like there used to be...

THE VISIT

The Trio of Brio came over for  brief visit the other day...

TRIO PLUS THREE

Last weekend the crew  came over for a visit, so after a snack I put them to work helping me replenish the dwindling stack in the firewood holder up on the deck. Weather getting Siberiocold, but still no snow. Keeping pace with three sets of reaching young hands while handing chunks of firewood up to the deck, however, kept us all busy and warm, and in my case gave rise to new thoughts about aging. 

We had to pause now and then when I came to a chunk of wood that had a cadre of kamemushi (stink bug) huddling together on it, plotting some noxious action while sandbagging out of the wind; I had to clear them off before handing it on up. After 15 or so minutes of this I picked up a chunk, turned it over to check all sides and under the bark (kamemushi are sly, for all their malodor) and found a young gecko there, not shivering, but immobile. He was clinging to the wood for dear life, with not much of a future, given the new situation.

I held the piece high - gecko-side up - to piercing squeals of delight, the trio being avid gecko fans, all the more so for never being able to catch one during the warm days, when the wall-to-ceiling mini-dinosaurs are fully active, but the girls could pick this one up like a rubber toy, which they did. He wasn’t really stiff; he was minimally alive, in a hibernal way. After the necessary inspections, introductions etc., the three of us who still had geckoless hands eventually got back into the firewood rhythm, while the engeckoed member stood with cupped hands, as a little gecko head tried to poke its way out.

And so the work went on more slowly, yet of all things I soon found another gecko, which meant there were then only two of us working - one of us unhappily - until, karmic tool that I am, I found precisely a third gecko. Three was the magic number; the cosmos had known that, of course.  After that, the three girls had maybe one iffy hand each to work with and no power of focus to speak of; my firewood relocation program, like the local gecko hibernation regimen, went sideways from that point. I quickly gave up the idea of continuing alone, since just above my head were six hot little hands full of warming geckos that had to be named and nurtured back to life, rendering firewood work a matter for creatures on some distant planet. 

So inside we went, where each gecko holder put her no longer anonymous gecko (Mitsuki's gecko: Chocolat; Kaya's gecko: Chako; Miasa's gecko: Ebura) in a plastic box with air holes in it and I went to research online into whatever might be winter geckofood. Sometime toward evening Chako lost his tail, which he paid no attention to even as it lay wriggling  beside him in his new residence.

Later, when the trio plus three returned home, Chako escaped into the apartment and could not be found; the next day the Trio released Chocolat and Ebura into the lush environs around their place. A few days later they found Chako in the apartment, with a new tail!

As Grandparents and certain geckos know, there are some things you simply can’t plan for.

A Cure You Can't Refuse

As you get ever elder and a bit more solitary, ever more fixed on the path toward perfection of your fine-tuned ways, grandkids are an excellent cure. 

With no effort at all they get you out of what you didn't even know was becoming a rut, lift you back to the surface of the Big Road you've always been on - the road you now and then dare to call your own - and when you're back up at your natural perspective, with all those natural wide-ranging prospects arrayed before you and those naturally broad horizons beckoning, your eyes return to seeing what they have grown to see, your ears to hearing full scale; your nose sampling the air for even more reality, your feet stirring with the old stride, where did I put my highway shoes, and before you know it you're on the road again, at least in your head; but plans are simmerin' in there, are they not, had a fire goin' all along, you sly dog... 

But for now you just stand there, new in a new way, savoring the true surface, source of all directions...

Grandkids are great.

While there Was Light

The Trio of Brio - Kaya (12), Mitsuki (10), Miasa (10) - came over for a visit on Sunday, and when in the afternoon I came downstairs from my editing work in the loft for a break to investigate the unusual silence I noted that while Miasa was doing the intimidating mound of dirty dishes generated by the youthful hunger crew, her sisters were nowhere around. I asked her about that, and she said - with no sign of solo-dishwashing rancor - that they were outside somewhere, playing.

In the continuing oddness, despite all the open doors and windows I couldn't hear a single kidsound from outside, a rare situation with the Trio around, so I went outside barefoot - just gonna be out there a minute - and found Kaya hunkered down on the suntoasted evening road with the big binoculars at her eyes, trying to focus on Mitsuki who 100 yards or so down the mountain was jumping up and down and side to side, I guess trying to make herself more interesting or harder to see.

While the two went on with their optical gravity visualization experiment (I didn't ask, knowing I wouldn't understand the response; anyway you don't bother focused experimenters) I just stood there and looked around-- the whole blue sky up there like a big robin egg shell lit up from the outside, the mountain arms around reaching out, shadowed and unshadowed, in the rays of the sun now behind the peaks; the darkening blue lake smooth as the sky, sparkling with boats; the big island beginning to glimmer with fisherman house lights and the same beyond, disappearing into the mainland; behind me the sheets of last clouds turning from pale gold to mango before the dark and the stars; about then the girls gave up on the binocs and grabbed the garden hose, began watering themselves and the locality...

I just stood there turning and turning, bare feet cooling in the flowing water, while there was light.

TERRITORY OF THE HEART

So then sometime down the time road there you are, going along as you always have, the way you went through youth, parenthood and age since you became an adult and had to begin making decisions of ever greater importance and complexity, all the way through study, travel, marriage, family, economy, kids leaving home--

And through it all, one big fallback has been the perspectives you gained from the words and examples of the elders met in your own life thus far; but in my case, it was only up to a point. For a while now, in terms of one aspect of life experience, I have been in no man’s land-- as solo as I can get, because I never had a father or a grandfather or any other who had resided in Japan, married into a Japanese family, had a son and a daughter, a daughter who also married into a Japanese family and had children.

It's hard to find the full foresight for this, so thus one day you run into the soft but impenetrable wall of the fact that as one-half of an international marriage and the singular chain of events that have led to this moment, you are an international grandparent, of grandkids who are more products of their native culture than their mother and way more so than I, and who completely speak another language than my mother tongue. With all the mystery that attends such a state. No Wikipedia entry for that. New territory of the heart...

Wondrous place.

LIFE AS IT LIVES US

Out driving today, at one point just sitting there waiting for a light to change, I saw a little girl in a bright jacket, 8 or 9 years old, arms raised, spinning, dancing and smiling by herself in the winter sun on the otherwise empty village roadside. 

I thought at first that she was talking to someone and sharing some laughter, but when I turned and looked around I saw no one else there; she was singing and laughing to herself. Her mood and manner, of dancing, smiling, singing all by herself and for no one else beside a country road, happy alone on a cold winter morning when expressing joy to the max topped her list of things to do, made me happy too, and I suppose happified any other lucky drivers who later chanced to receive this spontaneous gift as they were passing by.

Then the light changed and I went on my adult way, yet wondering at the unusual nature of this feeling. There was something else to this joy, that seemed to be only in response, but that in fact was partly my own. I realized that another great joy of children, apart from the gift they are, the gift they bring, and the gift they give, is that they evoke in us the children we ourselves once were. There are tremendous depths to this gift, to realizing that the children we were, we are still; they are there intact within us, like the grain in a tree, a lifetime cored with its earliest years, and because they are there they strengthen us, they quicken our soul, give us integrity and are grateful to be acknowledged...  

Folks of the type often called wise say that to relate to a child you must go to the child’s level. Kind of a locked-in adult way of looking at it, that from where you always are you must always bend down, lower your eminent self, yet continue being the grown-up, as though it’s all you are. Children feel that prejudice at once.

A child’s life is a search for true companions, and when to a child who is now in the world you become the child you still are, the child out there who caused this miracle is delighted, knowing her age like none other, and recognizing it in you. Thanks to them we are led to those children we were, whose easy presences we are so pleased to realize - whether we know it or not - still reside in our lives, waiting to exist again. They are a joy in us to re-become; yet so seldom can that can happen in our multistrictured world: that normal, busily obligated, mannered, social, employed, public, cultured world where too often we spend our entire adulthoods until they are gone.

So stop and enjoy the gift of children, who bring childhood back to life in those who have left it for too long; children from whom we learn that over and over again we can be 10 years old, we can be 5, we can be 2, we can even be an infant in our arms, looking into our own eyes, learning that we have never left, that life does not begin or end, unless we keep it to ourselves...

THREE FLOWERS

I am not going to complain about the weather, I am not going to complain about the weather, I am not going to complain about the weather, so spins my mental noncomplaint wheel. I must remind myself. It’s a pending hurricane I think, been hanging over the archipelago with its cloudy rainless veil and no sun to speak of for four days now; cool nights, good for planting if this was a month or two ago, but now I use it as ideal cover for my maxosweaty endeavors like pruning and cleaning the culvert beside the inner road, a superb source of upmountain soil and leaf mould, plus it’s free, only a lot of sweat required, which I am able to produce in major volume with little effort, so who could ask for more. Perfect weather for hard labor, but I’m not all that ecstatic. Every cloud has an aluminum lining.

On the brighter side, had the Trio of Brio helping me yesterday at the early part of the culvert etc. task, and with four of us it went way faster than me soloing this last little part. Which reminds me, I forgot to mention that when we went to buy the wheelbarrow together I noticed that the girls just walked along among the big bright swatches of potted flowers on sale display at the gardening center without paying any particular attention to the blossoms, despite all that color and fragrance, so after we’d picked out the wheelbarrow I said they could each choose one kind of flower to take home and plant in a pot. I hadn’t expected such an interesting result. 

So there I was standing by a brand new green wheelbarrow with yellow handles while three little girls went touring around among the thousands of flowers in pots, closely examining each kind to see which one was theirs, the one they wanted. What criteria were they using, I wondered. Looking for something that spoke to them somehow-- that said what? Of course the color and design, maybe the fragrance, but fragrance, design and color were in abundance; what else? That personal something more that each of them was looking for without knowing what it was until they saw it. It took a while; they went all over to see all the flowers and make sure. I waited. I’d already planted my flowers.

Kaya came back first. She had selected what the shop called Kashmir Decoration, a cluster of varicolored flowers that looked like small pointy brushes that had been dipped in special bright paints. Miasa came back after about 5 minutes with her selection, a pot of small round-petaled pink, almost cartoony flowers, called Fairy Stars, beautiful little things with white dots at their centers, that rose on thin stems and danced like pink stars in the eye-sky. We waited. Mitsuki, the fussier twin, was making extra sure. At last she came back holding a pot containing one big round yellowball blossom on a tall stem; it looked like a miniature sun, it was so piercingly yellow. It was called an African Marigold.

The thing that surprised me was how different and how ‘thought-out’ the flower selections were. In my shockingly offbase mindlock I’d expected that all three would just quickpick the same sort of cutesy, babybreathy kind of ittybitty flowerbunch, but their picks were as far apart and as different as one could get. I’d had no idea, I realized, how deeply different the three really are; even the twins! 

During the drive home the girls carried their flowers on their laps. When we arrived they each selected a pot they liked from among the empties stacked around the garden, and I helped them pot and water the plants, asked if they each remembered their flower’s name. We put the flowers in the shade, then the next morning moved them into the sun. The plants are healthy and growing day by day, so each time the girls visit, they run to see their flowers and go aaah! I see them saying the names to themselves.

Three such different flowers!

 
HOW TO BUY THE BEST WHEELBARROW IN THE WORLD

It might be surprising to realize how seldom you purchase wheelbarrows, but when you do go out and buy a wheelbarrow it's pretty straightforward, you generally just go right out and... buy a wheelbarrow.  When I recently came up against the gardener's curse of sudden wheelbarrow inadequacy, I gave it a bit of thought and realized that in over seven decades, I had purchased only one wheelbarrow! Talk about frugal.

So, I thought on, why not make the most of such a lifetimely rare occasion and buy the best wheelbarrow in the world? That would require young granddaughters, who are the goddesses of small things. Luckily, I would be blessed with the Trio of Brio on Sunday, who would be at the house ready for some gardening and general handiwork.

Being only 11, 9 and 9, the Trio have never bought a single wheelbarrow in their entire lives, either collectively or individually, so I figured this was a unique chance to spring it on them, put their inborn skills to work. I was surprised, though, to see how jumpy-up-and-downy they got as soon as I said "Let's go buy a new wheelbarrow," somehow triggering instincts the Trio didn't even know they had.

They had loved using the friendly lunky old one, getting rides in it and carrying each other now and then, until only a week ago, when old Wheelie, held together with cotter pins and baling wire as the bottom rusted out, had been on its third or fourth tire with its second inner tube and got a major flat just when I was doing the most important thing in the history of the world; isn't that always the way. The metal recycling guy was glad to have the remains.

Wheelbarrow purchase being one of life's special experiences for little kids, they are super great to have along when selecting which wheelbarrow to buy from among all those on offer, with all the different colors, depths, weights and materials, handgrips and other features that the tired elderly gentleman in some kind of hurry is willing to overlook for the sake of just getting this business over and done with it's too hot and crowded, a cool drink in the shade would be nice, but those new minds will not stand for weakness at such a crucial moment in life, which is good for said guy, who will be using that wheelbarrow, which is why in the first place he selected his young granddaughters as wheelbarrow advisors.

They didn't look at the rows of wheelbarrows, or the groups of wheelbarrows, or the categories, models and prices of wheelbarrows; they looked at each wheelbarrow. All over. Pulled them out and tried them. Tipped them. Said this one's got plastic here, this one's scratched underneath, this one has a dent on the front, this one's yucky blue, this is a nice green though, and has cute yellow handles, besides it's not too heavy, no scratches or dents, easy to push, this is the best one.

That's how I got the best wheelbarrow in the world.

It looks really perky at home in the garden.

FIREFISH

In their standard grammar school education, the three grandie girls (now 11, 9 and 9) get to follow the prescribed path for a prescribed time in age-segregated classes, learning to read and write, add numbers, sample science and social studies, acquire a national history, absorb the essential received ideas that bind a society together.

After school they sometimes play with their friends, in forms of play that are increasingly virtual as society edges further into deferred existence mode, but for years now, when the Trio of Brio come here to our house on the mountain by the forest above the Lake they get outdoor jobs to do, they get boots, gloves, big tools and - at first - necessary guidance on how to use shovel, rake, axe, hammer, pick etc.

So for some time they've been using mauls and wedges to split firewood, axes, saws, clippers to prune trees and bamboo, they dig holes with shovels, they want to learn to do all of it, use all the tools, now and then taking impromptu discovery breaks, e.g., one of them found a frog under a rock, they decided to name it by committee ("Oompa-kun" was the unanimous choice) or they play with long boards and log sections (an interesting sort of rock-and-rolling seesaw - for children only, btw) then back to work raking the garden, scything underbrush, tending the fire (with a brief sports break, dipping long, curvy windfall cedar branches into the fire to catch the firefish that swim in the flames), raking leaves into big piles, sweeping cuttings, clearing culverts, lugging buckets of leaf mould, planting seeds, pulling weeds, harvesting stuff etc., in the process acquiring considerable and increasingly useful counterweight to the virtual. It's a real lift to see how much they get done, how naturally comfortable they are with physical labor and how proud they are of what they achieve in the heavy realms.

By now, when we adults have to go inside to do our indoor work, we can leave the girls  in charge of everything: the fire, the wheelbarrow, all the tools, the tasks to be done - it's all up to them - and a bigness fills their boots. Tugging on their work gloves, they set out to tend to everything, and how they change, then; they become their full selves, walk around with authority and intention: straight, tall, assertive, wasting no kiddy time, getting the things done, taking the tasks to heart and taking care doing them...

Proud delight it is, to watch them from the upstairs window, see them find reward in being responsible, a character strength of great importance for the future of humanity, though not as important as firefish.

THE NEXT GIFT

When in your life you have finished with the task of raising the child you've been-- the child we all begin with being-- when you are at last mature enough to move on, ready to bring a child of your own into the light of your experience, the moment that child is born an ancient door is opened to a place you never knew your heart could hold.

The difference between you then and you now is like the difference between a seed and its tree: neither at all like the other, yet each being the other, in the most secretly invisible and magical of ways. Thus we live and grow through stages with which life itself is deeply familiar, but to which we ourselves, at each advance, are utter strangers, entering new galaxies of being.

Raising a child is its own distraction: you have so few moments in that dense procedure to fully step aside, sit aside, think aside, stop and love as deeply as you can-- until, the moment you can, the child is grown and gone, loving on its own.

Then, if seasons follow, from that child is born the next gift: grandchildren. And on these new beings, now that you are free of the rush of child rearing, you can spend your love as freely as sunshine falls on green leaves. And when those grandchildren are far away, the question becomes what to do with all those warm rays? Thus is more indiscriminate goodness and warmth borne into the world.

Not long ago I came across a snapshot of my daughter when she was ten years old or so, a delightful little person I remember well, and realized I miss that 10-year-old very much; I tried to explain my feeling when she came to visit, now a mother, with my granddaughters, but I could tell she didn't really know what I meant. She hasn't been here yet. She'll understand one day, decades from now, when as a grandmother she's going through some old photos, and the past tells her what it told me, what it tells us all, if we stop to listen: open your arms to this moment and its children.

GOLDEN MOUNTAIN

These are the last few days of this late summer mountainside, covered with nodding heads of rice growing more golden with every sunset--

Within the evening breeze I can hear - beneath the hurried hum of summer insects - the low drone of harvesting machines and the shouts of families at work on the edge of the village down by the Lake, where the local harvesting begins-- Driving down there earlier today I saw that a couple of paddies had already been shaved to the bright gold stubble that remains after the summer wealth has been shorn and stored for winter.

Somehow-- I suppose because from up here I can I watch the rice growing throughout the summer of its lifetime-- and so throughout its mornings, days and evenings I can watch all that life accrue from seed to maturity, watch effort rise into spirit as all weaves together, the rice fields collectively mean as much to me in a spiritual way as if I were growing the rice myself...

One afternoon a few weeks ago the grandies and I were driving down past those lower fields when the rice stalks were as though about to topple with the weight of their treasure - practically leaning into the car windows - I slowed beside a high paddy and we reached out to run our fingers through all that jade and gold.   

For me the summer lifetime of rice is much more affecting than the celebrated three days of cherry blossoms...

THE BIG FAT MATTRESS OF NORMALCY

Well, things have plunged somewhat back toward normalcy now that the grandies have left for their home in the north, it's getting steadily quieter around here I notice, the ambiance is less dynamic following the abrupt decline in spontaneous creativity flying around and bouncing off the walls which is good in some ways, especially for my back, since the girls are bigger each year yet still want to shimmy all the way to the top of the big timbers in the living room with a full body length boost from me and then to be spun around like living tops on the hard oak floor before being dragged around the big room like kidsnakes, then there's always This is the Way the Gentlemen Ride etc., and Ride along to Boston etc., then outside digging potatoes and raking together a big and bigger and biggest pile of leaves there ever was to roast the tubers in while the wild native girls run around the towering flames chanting in some kind of ancient granddaughter ritual as with my rake I try to keep everything from catching fire until we eat, and now it's time to take a nap.

Letter from the grandgirls -
out from the paper tumble
tiny ice cream cone
tiny rose

GOODNESS AND JOY
(From when the twins were born, 6 years ago this month)

Well, the newborn twins are with us for a while, and are they ever new. And since we know from experience that newborn newness is as temporary as a dewdrop we are making the most of it, short of keeping the little sleepies awake too long.

After each of the babies in my life has grown up, I've somehow managed to forget how tiny newborns are, a lapse absolutely corrected by the next newcomer. Throughout their ephemeral awakenings, how wrinkly and skinny and endearing they are, with their tiny actual legs and feet with genuine toes, hands and fingers that work, professional yawns as though they've been yawning all their lives, which in fact they have been.

Between yawns they lie there patiently, practicing all the many faces, smiling a full-bloom smile before they even have a sense of humor; then there's a look of heartbreaking disappointment, hopefully never to be used, but practiced nonetheless. And rage, and glee and other excitements: all rehearsals.

Even when their kitten-cries pierce the air like arrows, carry upstairs and downstairs, penetrate thick walls and doors and bring instant silence to the most important adult conversation, they aren't really crying, they aren't in actual despair; like humor, that also requires personal experience of the highs and lows of the world out there, for which they're busy rehearsing. So as they weep and laugh it is our pleasure to feel it on their behalf.

And before they drift off to sleep, they watch for miracles with those bright brown eyes, as the faces of ancestors drift through their own by the minute, as clouds through a sky: there is their mother in the smile; now their father about the eyes, then the look of an uncle of mine, and then the young face of my mother, as they pass through all the faces they have come from, including me, I guess. It is startling to see one's own memories flow across those tiny others, who just got here. At no moment in our lives are we apart from eternity.

Hence the familiar ancient feeling one feels, on peeping in through the bedroom door to see them at last asleep: two tiny quiet bumps in the coverlet beside each other, two tiny lifesteps out into the world that we will do our best to ensure are continued on pathways of goodness and joy.

DAYSEEDS

The Grandees came over for their final visit yesterday afternoon and soon after their immediate snow frenzy we pulled and hose-washed more large bunches of baby carrots for the gang to take back north with them.

Then I issued small and medium bamboo rakes to my volunteer raking crew and directed the consequent little-girl-powered leafstorm as best I could so as to fill up a whole big tarpful of leaves, which we all four then dragged along between the trees and down the slope and across the terrace and down the stone step and dumped on the compost pile, which at that point became a 2-meter-plus high enclosure of leaves, a sort of vegetal trampoline atop which the leafy trio bounced in extended worship.

Then later when it was getting dark and starting to rain we all went down to the village to polish a bag of whole rice into brown rice for them to take back home. We did this in the village's big noisy polishing machine, some of the polished rice grains being caught in each little hand before going into the big rice bag. We also saved the bran to throw onto the compost pile, which after we got home we did, then we had some waffles, the first waffles the twins ever had, which was interesting: how DOES one handle a first waffle-- and without chopsticks?

Then later on, over by the stove I showed them some actual seeds, which Kaya knew all about but the twins had never seen before - I had some spinach and broccoli seeds left over from last year - and they didn't want to just look into the packets, they insisted on my pouring out some seeds into their hands so they could see them and poke at them. There's a deep magic to seeds in little cupped hands...

I poured the largish spinach seeds first and explained that a whole bunch of spinach grows out of each seed, just like the picture on the front of the packet, at which statement their minds went churning away in the totally weird-fact-processing area; they looked at the seeds in the light, then gently put them all back into the seed packet, careful to pick up any that had fallen to the floor, then I poured out some tiny broccoli seeds and the twins went Ooooohhhh...

As they rolled the tiny orbs between their fingers I explained that one tall broccoli plant grows from each of those teeny things, and that carrots seeds were tiny too, that just one little seed grew a whole carrot into the ground! Then they ran off to select one of their just-picked baby carrots to nibble carefully from the very root end while they spun around with their eyes closed and one arm extended, so as to experience that particular activity.

Now back to routine daily living, seeded with all those moments...

ON TREATING SMALL CHILDREN INFECTED WITH TICKLEBUGS

The Ticklebug is a mystery to both medicine and entomology. It is such a mystery, in fact, that I have never seen a single report on the creature [I can't even find a photo!]. For some reason it does not seem to be a matter of much scientific concern.

Yet every time my granddaughters visit they are immediately found to be carrying one or more Ticklebugs somewhere on their persons. Thank goodness I am a specialist in treating the condition. My children Kasumi and Keech were also frequently infected when younger, so over the years I have learned by experience how to treat this giggly curse of the young.

My ministrations relieve the symptoms about as well as can be expected, given the recurrent nature of the condition. The ultimate symptoms include loud squealing and spasmodic movement, in time leading to roiling motions on the floor in an attempt to avoid treatment, which must be thorough.

As to the methodology, I first look carefully into the patient's eyes, and about the face, for the slightest sign of laughter: a twitch at the corner of the mouth, perhaps-- a sure sign that a Ticklebug is hiding somewhere on the victim's body, already generating early indications of extreme gigglitis.

Under the chin or the arms, for example, are favorite Ticklebug hiding spots - on the side of the neck is a good spot too - so those and various other possible areas of infection, such as along the ribs, are also checked by palpation, though the diagnostician seldom gets that far before the victim is already in spasms on the floor, for the closer you get to the Ticklebug's place of concealment, the louder the laughter and the weaker the knees. Let these be your guide.

As well, there is usually more than one Ticklebug involved, so the victims should be checked several times a day, if you can catch them.

TURNING MY HAND

Grandchildren, among all their other unknowing kindnesses, point out to us one by one, step by step, all the countless things we ourselves had to learn (or unlearn) to become as and who we are. With our own children there was no time in the blur to note such fine points; this new privilege is another of the gifts that grandkids bring to us in their little hands.

When they come to visit, and out in the garden I give them a rake or a shovel to help me with, I am caught unawares by the fact that they don't know how to use these things (that's not inborn?!) so I have to show them how to hold them and then how to use them (I used to not know how to use a shovel and a rake!), and for example how to extra-hold the rake with one hand so as to pick up leaves against it with the other hand (I had to learn that!), or how to best light a fire (they touch the lighter to the top of the leafpile) so I show them how heat rises, and they feel a new power when they light the pile at the bottom and the fire complies; how to get leverage when using pruning shears (they love the sharp knowledge of cutting stuff into pieces) and how to hold a pruning saw (the branch came off!) and then in the house when I add wood to the woodstove, whatever they're doing the twins run to look through the open stove doorway into the fire, amazed that there's a blazing fire here in our own living room-- in all their few years they've never seen such a thing! Big sister Kaya likes to add some wood to the fire; when I open the stove door she gets a stick from the kindling pile, tosses it in quickly and gingerly, pulling back at the heat, the twins still just watching from a distance that inferno roaring with all its red tongues right here in the room inside that open door, and what amazement it is in myself to behold in the grandgirls the fascination at every single detail of all these things, all these actions and tasks, right down to the heft and weft of the mass of the nature and the gravity, every second of having to learn how water behaves, and ash, and leaves in the wind, and dirt and fire and spark, handle and blade and twig, how to run with boots on sandals on sneakers on barefoot going updown stairs and hills on grass or snow or sand the infinity of it all how ever do we do it, how do we ever learn it all, how ever do we make it to my age, where I stand right now without the slightest idea of how many such things I've come to know, or how I learned them like turning my hand...

IMAGINE

Imagine you're a grandfather my age and your daughter takes an afternoon off to visit some friends for the first time in a long while, and on the same afternoon your wife goes off for a few appointed hours to practice yoga, leaving you alone on a hot August day in a mountainside house with no car and three granddaughters aged 7, 4 and 4 years whose every request must be honored, in order that it may cease.

While you're at it, imagine also that you have a large editing job to complete by tomorrow morning and that every now and then, while the three are engrossed for the few minutes possible - for example in energetically drawing large, bright images with colored felt-tipped pens on small pages atop your unmarked oak floor - you sneak upstairs to do some quiet typing until before too long a small shadow comes creeping upward to stand beside you and ask, "What are you doing? Can I use the bubble gun?"

Then it's out on the deck (more fun than typing) refereeing turns with the bubble gun, which soon runs out of bubble juice, so you try to make some more over the kitchen sink from dish detergent etc. with six small arms hanging from your own so as to help you finish faster, then back out and one girl blows bubbles while the other two chase the rainbow orbs into the garden, where the girls begin sampling herbs and trying out the garden hose, it works very well, wets the firewood, the girls and an upstairs room nicely, so you go into the garden to supervise, then they get thirsty, then hungry, and a full half-hour has passed already, only 4 or more hours to go.

At some point in the long blur, one of the 4-year-olds points to your midriff and says "Is there a baby in there?" referring to those few pounds you've only just begun enjoying as the first small bit of fat on your body in all your life, the look on her face perhaps implying that this non-stop exercise is just what you need. Yet through all this, somewhere inside you, in a place not quite accessible at the moment, you love every relentless minute of it. Ah, how we discover new reaches of the heart. Imagine.

OPERATION TORNADO

Yesterday in the clear, hot afternoon Echo and I had the Tornado Trio again, this time while their parents went to a nice French restaurant for lunch and spent the rest of the afternoon doing their own relaxing thing. As per the plan laid out in Operation Tornado we took the kids and their gear upmountain to a secret forest waterfall a kilometer or so along the rough road (the kids loved that rocking and bouncing!) above the spring we go to sometimes to get our special mountain water.

Kaya had visited the falls before and liked it, so we figured it would be a good place for the three to burn off some of their pent-up house-energy. When we got to the spot, made our way down the path from the road to the 5-meter-high roaring falls under a close canopy of trees and got the kids into the shallow sandy part of the pool, the twins looked way up at the giant roaring cascade and, all unexpectedly to me, got scared and wanted out immediately.

So we went back down to the spring to fill the jugs with water, the kids helping for about 30 seconds because from the spring there issues a small meandering baby stream of foot-wide overflow, in which all three girls splashed and played happily with their bags of beach toys for an hour or so until all the toys had been used up one by one in all the various permutations and they had learned for example whether it is possible and what it takes to fill a big water bottle from a stream by the spoonful and then empty it into the stream by the ladleful, how long it takes to empty a big bottle of toy-shoveled water into a little stream, how to hold the bottle while doing so (emptying whole bottles of water right out, again and again, without an adult interfering even once!), how much water a plastic bag can hold, how to carry a plastic bag full of water and how to pour it into a small-necked bottle, what happens when you suddenly squeeze the bag, or poke a hole in it etc., wisdom-bits we all must acquire (whether we remember it or not) and somehow assemble along the way into what we come to call understanding, as way back when little Keech had to learn whether or not dad's favorite pen would write on toast (nothing like a buttery nib), or how many times you can put a ball into a box and take it out, thereby early on acquiring a hands-on grasp of what he now understands as infinity.

Speaking of infinity, it was exhausting for Echo and I just standing back and monitoring the whole freestyle affair cubed, so when the trio at last wore the stream out, on condition they cleaned up all their beach toys we took them back down the mountain (fun rough road again!) to a secret little beach we know of on this side of the lake, where they could frolic in the waves and sing their spontaneous water songs while we lay flat on our backs in some shade on the sand and just breathed. We grownups have to play too, after all.