No Stopping

LtoR in zigzag fashion: Geri (great grandmother), Joan (grandmother)
Alice, Betty ad Michael all playing Uno.

As we left for our morning walk Rebecca warned me, “We shall walk, but there will be no stopping to visit along the way – just a friendly wave at our loved ones and then we will be walking on.” 

I didn’t know that I was doing that, but in retrospect, I can see it is hard for me to keep walking on when there is someone interesting to chat with who beckons me from a driveway or comes out to walk for a while with us on the road.

Up and down Pilling’s Road we strode, me wondering if it was just a bit too wet to walk on, as there were the occasional puddles from last night’s storm. Actually after the storm there was a gentle calm until we had a late night power failure. For us the power failure came just as the teens were watching The Exorcist. Twice. Two power failures during the film.  Some things I just can’t make up.

I was wanting to pick up with where the conversation left off on our last walk.  Rebecca was telling me about a new Swecwepemc mythological character named Sna’naz, or about "The Chinook Wind" or "Summer in a Bag". 

Rebecca wanted to talk about her projected writing projects. Since the person who can both walk and talk gets to decide the subject of conversation, she got to decide what to talk about. I was just walking at a pace where I could keep breathing and not gasping for air.

I couldn’t add in talking.

On our return Rebecca stopped to talk to three little children on the stoop of the Wood’s porch, children who were playing with a slug. I knew the rule of “no talking to the neighbours along the way”, but this was an opportunity not to be missed. A photo opportunity of the best kind, but both of us had forgotten our cameras.

Who knew that stopping there would provide many minutes of conversation for me later.

I was working in Miranda’s yard with her, clearing out the underbrush. Her kids who had been playing became restless, and while they were eating a Revel to calm them down things got worse with Alice tattling that Betty was copying her. And sure enough, the more Alice complained, the more exaggerated Betty’s copying became.  On the inside, I was laughing so hard at Betty, but on the outside I had to be a stern grandmother.

I just went over and told them both to give me their ice-cream since they couldn’t get along, and of course, the copying stopped for now they had a common enemy who was taking their treats away from them.

“One more word of complaint from both of you and am taking those Revels away,” I said.

Holding the ice cream close to their bodies and now giving me dark looks, I responded with, “We are playing the game of '20 Questions'.”

 I thought playing the game of 20 Questions was like earth, water, fire, air … knowing how to play it just one of the great givens of life.

I was soon to find out that a 3, 6 and 7 year old don’t know about animal, mineral, vegetable, nor about how to ask yes or no questions. Learning the rules brought a lot of complications to the game, one of them surprising Michael since he had asked no questions by question #17 and now the game was just about over.  "What!  This is a game of cooperation?  I was saving all of my questions for later."

I told them that what I was thinking of was something I saw the Wood children playing with this morning. I was the one giving yes and no answers, but I was also having to do careful coaching about how to ask such questions along the way so that they could successfully find out the answer to "20 Questions" and then have their own chance to be the person saying, "I have something in my mind and it is animal (or vegetable or mineral)."

That game took two adults coaching.

In the end, Miranda had to help Betty find a subject and then ask the question. The trouble with Betty is that in the middle of the game, she happened to see an inch worm crawling along a stick that was near her side. She suddenly changed the topic she was thinking about to “inch worm” and she couldn’t get the idea out of her mind, no matter how much her mother tried to make her go with her original suggestion.

Well … a game to be tried on another day, hopefully one where Rebecca and I will stop at the Wood’s house to see what the children are investigating on the porch stoop.

Arta