Good-bye 2019

... Auld Lang Syne dates back hundreds of years ...
(Getty Images)

I have come to the close of another year of blogging.

Thank you to all who have read.

Thank you to those who have commented.

Thank you to family and friends who sometimes join in with pictures or text.

I think I have found my blogging rhythm.

I like to post every day and sometimes twice a day when something catches my eye.

In a perfect world that would be my goal, writing at least once a day, and the world is pretty perfect since I seem to be able to find a sentence or two, even when the waking hours are busy ones.

I  think about something in my day that I would not want to forget has happened and then the words spill out of my fingertips and that incident gets caught in black and white.

To finish off the year, here are the words I would sing if I were with any of you tonight:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And auld lang syne.

Chorus

For auld lang syne, my jo,
For auld lang syne.
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

And surely ye'll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I'll be mine!
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae run about the braes
And pu'd the gowans fine
But we've wander'd mony a weary foot
Sin auld lang syne.

Chorus

We twa hae paidl'd i' the burn
Frae mornin' sun till dine.
But seas between us braid hae roar'd
Sin auld lang syne.

Chorus

And there's a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gie's a hand o' thine!
And we'll tak a right guid willy waught,
For auld lang syne.

Chorus

Christmas Dinner through Photos

Betty will sing songs for people -- either songs she has made up, or songs she has learned about Christmas.
I love to have her do the 12 Days of Christmas.  She can start at the top, "twelve pipers piping ... and
make it all the way to "three French hens, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree".

This is Betty's Christmas dress from Grandma Joan.
Betty tells people about the softness of the velvet bodice.
A wonder to her!

A 3-D printer isn't exactly a Christmas present.
But it sit in the corner of the living room, a conversation piece for everyone who comes into the room.
"Is that a 3-D printer?'
I couldn't have asked the question.  I didn't know what it was.

Miranda's mom gave her a specialized sewing machine for Christmas.
Joan Turnbull is the best.

A Family Portrait
Taking this picture made me laugh.
No matter what Mati and Sumi did, the wiggles in this boy couldn't be controlled.

Michael and Richard playing with new Christmas toys

Kelvin sand I sit at the same end of the table.
We talk.
The children interrupt us to show us something.
Then we talk again.

Betty is reading the instructions for a new toy.
Betty doesn't know how to read.
But she knows that the first step in opening a new toy is to read the instructions.

And so another Christmas gathering comes to a close.  The dishes are done.  The food is packed away and people are still talking as the evening grows long.

Present:  Richard and Miranda Johnson, Michael, Alice Betty, Ron and Kerry Singh and Veer, Joan and Chris Turnbll, Great grandmother Joan Turnbell, Kelvin Johnson, Arta Johnson, Mati and Sumin  Poon and Sumarga

A Midnight Visitor - Corrine McBride

Corrine McBride came to stay overnight.  I forgot to take a selfie with her.  I forgot to give her a necklace that Rebeca promised her.  And I forgot to put the jalapeno pepper into the scrambled eggs when I tried to make breakfast in the morning.  I just must have forgotten everything in the excitement of having her here.

We played one game of Azul together, since if I have to play a game, that is my game of choice.  But she told me that games are not really her thing.  So that took some pressure off of me.

In the end, a delight to have her here.  We had time to chat -- about her hobbies (one of which includes a dazzling array of coloured pencils.  Breath-taking actually.).  And we talked about the past -- remembering the Johnson's we knew with stories that delighted us.

There are two apocrophal stories in her family.  I think the first one is true.  Her dad, Keith McBride, had gone to a restaurant with a group of people.  They had ordered Chinese food.  The fried rice was so bad that Keith went into the back and showed the cook how fried rice should really be made.

I believe that story.

The second story is about Keith's guns.  Uncle Orvil had given Keith an old family gun that belonged to their grandfather.  Much later Orville asked for the gun back, but Keith said no, it had been a gift to him and he wasn't giving it back.  Now the part of the story that I will leave it to the reader to believe is that the gun was won in a shooting contest beween his grandfather and Wild Bill Hickock and his grandfather had won.  I don't care if the story is true or not.    I am just happy to see an old gun having such a fine provenance.

Arta

Christmas Dinner on 26th Avenue

Turkey Perfection, Chriatmas 2019

There has never been a Christmas dinner that didn’t seem like it was just one notch better than the one previous.

When I think about the decades of Christmas dinners I have had, I always think that the last one was the best.

Joan Turnbull does most of the Christmas dinner preparation in her own kitchen and then travels across the city and feeds 15 of us in the evening.

Richard carves the turkey.
Kelvin gets the neck.

Or maybe that was 17 of us.

This resembles going out to dinner for me, or at least ordering in.

The turkey had a golden colour never to be forgotten.

Joan stood at the stove and worked the drippings over until they became the most delicious gravy.

Joan makes the gravy.
Miranda welcomes all into her kitchen.

I had to tell her that I have dishes of all sizes, shapes and colours, but I couldn’t supply a gravy boat. 

Embarrassing, a bit, but I always use my 4-cup pyrex dry-ingredient measuring cup as a gravy container.

And I have two of them, because 1 litre of gravy is never enough.

Each Christmas, I  decided that in the new year, I go to the store; I will go shopping for a gravy boat that will be the right size to hold gravy for 17 people.

And then I forget about that shopping trip and pull out my measuring cup again when Christmas rolls around again.

Arta

Grandmother and Great Grandmother

Arta Johnson and Joan Turnbull

Here you have us:  the grandmother, Arta, and the great-grandmother, Joan.

Although I am a year older than she, she has one more "great" to her name than I.

We share the same little loves ones.: Michael, Alice and Betty Johnson

And on the plus side about us -- neither of us were afraid to get in a selfie!

I embrace my wrinkles and great-grandmother Joan has very few.

Arta

Christmas Eve Snowed In

Moiya is snowed in for New Year's Eve.  More snow than David Pilling has ever seen, even when he lived there in his youth.

Desiree, Brandon and the kids are there -- Aiden, Celeste, Parker, Tanner, and Seth.

So their New Year's Eve is without electricity and  left-overs for food.

The hot dogs from a couple of days ago are being cooked on the pot bellied stove.

There is some hot chocolate -- mostly for warmth.  The martinellis, which Moiya can pull out of a cupboard, makes the evening seem festive.

Moiya had taken out a  casserole that can can be warmed on the pot bellied stove and bedding and sleeping bags laid down on the floor so that is where the children get to sleep tonight:  next to the warmth of the wooden stove.

There are many candles lit.  And people are living with flashlights.

It gets dark right now -- at about 4 pm.  And Moiya said she has been wanting to turn the lights on all day, even though it is light out.

Celeste said to her grandmother, We are living just like pioneers.  You have a nice house grandmother."

Reza and Sora Jamshidi's Party

Carol, Arta, Reza Ilsa, Sora, Emma, Eliana, Pouria

I was invited to lunch at Reza and Sora Jamshidi's apartment: 7 adults and 2 children.

The afternoon was so restful for me, hearing the conversation as people who have been far away from each other gather, to fill in the details of their jobs, or in Eliana's case of the post-doc she will be doing at York.

The parents were watching the two little girls: Ilsa at 15 months and Emma at 12 months.

Ilsa can run.  Nothing gets in her way.

Emma is still deciding if the fastest place from one point to the other is walking or crawling. So she alternates between a halting walk or a fast drawl, depending on the hurdles (to her) that she must manage.

We had ghorme sabzi an Iranian stew, which I immediately went home and googled, since although it is made with lamb or beef, I had the idea that elk might be fabulous that way as well.

I forgot to mention the fabulous squash soup
that preceded the meal.  That blue bowl in font of me
is empty here, bt it was filled twice before this picture.

The preparation takes hours.  Even the video took a long time.

The next day, Pouria brought me the recipe, as it can be made a quicker way, as well as he brought me all of the ingredients:  the dried herbs, the canned herbs, the dried lemons.

Some people just know how to give exactly the right gift.

Arta

No power, great fun

Photo Credit: Moiya Wood

Moiya sends me an email that says "No power, great fun".

The scene is beautiful.  Probably magnificent from the warm and comfort of her living room.

Brandon, Desiree and the children are all there.

Knowing this family, they will probably be out tobogganing before the snow stops falling.

Arta

On reading Returning the Feathers

Returning the Feathers: Five Gitxsan Stories

By M. Jane Smith, Illustrator Ken N. Mowatt

I printed off some of the pages that Rebecca referred me to in M. Jane Smith’s dissertation, Placing Gitxsan Stories in Text: Returning the Feathers: Guusx Mak' Am Mik' Aax.

I took a lot of care to put them into a binder that will work for me, one with purple shining see-through pages, and I made a table of contents so that I can find the stories quickly. As soon as I start making an investment of time into photocopying something, the product reaches a new level of interest for me. I don’t want to have wasted all of that time by not doing something with it.

For myself, one evening, I read the "Story of the Blue Jay: and the "Story of Mosquito", getting ready to read them to Michael, Betty and Alice.

The childen occasionally drop in, the last one reporting that the first two are over here without permission.

I wanted to read to them. I knew they would want to play with toys.

First I cleared off the table. Then I spread out their Christmas Lego, and made a sidebar of the food they like (olives for Alice and cheese for Michael). Then I would just read, read, read, I had decided.

Betty was the first one in the house. She asked me if I had any Dilly Bars. I was laughing inside. I never have Dilly Bars – only when Wyona drops by the Dairy Queen with half price coupons and I am in the car with her. Still, just the thought I might have a Dilly Bar entices Betty to come over to my house.

I have the Gitxsan stories printed now: 52 to page 77, and that is 12 point, single space and no pictures. A long read out of that shiny purple binder. At one point, Michael did ask me how long the story would be. I told him that it was a long, long story, so he just continued to listen.

The narrative is about three supernatural children: a lot of stories cobbled together.

I could have stopped reading at any time.

I had to do all of the imaging with my voice since there were no pictures. – keep the tones low when Nuhlx was whispering to his sister, I thought to myself. “The man has lice on his head, the man has lice on his head””, and gradually getting my voice louder and louder, trying to catch the horror of what the little snot boy was telling his sister.

And now I have given it away. He wasn’t a normal child, but made from the mucous what came from her mother’s nose as she was crying and crying during puberty and at the same time finding out that her village had been mysteriously deserted.

Well, now you have too much information. But it didn’t seem like too much information to them. They would lean forward over their Lego pieces on the table, eyes wide, bodies still and the they would relax and lean back when the story got less frightening.

Sumin came downstairs during the story, stayed for a while and then went back upstairs. Later Mati told me that Sumin likes to peek in when the children are over. She had come back up to report that Arta was reading and that the children were in all sorts of positions, but still listening. The girls were on the treadmill, Betty making the belt move by the sheer force of her might, feet pushing back on while Alice swings back and forth on one of its handles.

Michael was in his chair but in a questionable position: his back on the seat, one leg pointing toward the ceiling, the other toward a wall, one of them going north and one going east. Mati told me that in Nepal those children would have been swatted and made to sit in their chairs circumspectly in a chair.

I don’t think that method of reading to kids would have worked for me or for them.

Richard did tell me that he was up all night, a few nights ago, every few hours, with Betty’s night terror dreams. He needed to be beside her, rubbing her little back and telling her that it was OK and she could go back to sleep. But that can only be blame on Christmas fun, for I hadn’t been telling Gitxsan stories to her yet.

Arta

Rebbeca sends an electronic gift

Gitxsan means people of the Skeena River

Howdy family:

I am just attaching a file for the files:    

I am working on a Gitxsan Human Rights Project this next year (on Gender and Human Rights INSIDE Indigenous Law), and have just spent the last couple of days reading Gitxsan stories.

The Gitxsan are the people at the centre of the Delgamuukw case 

It is the case that people talk about as having ’turned the tide’ in how the courts and govts have had to deal with Indigenous Law.    It is not a huge community, but they have had a major impact on the law in Canada.   My. Colleague Val Napoleon worked there for 20 years [was adopted in] before going to law school.  

Here is a link to the Gitxsan webpage if you want to root around with more history on them. . It is up in Northern BC in the area around Smithers, Hazelton, etc.   

Anyways, just in case any of you are looking for a bank of stories to tell to your kids, or to work with, there are lots in M.J. Smith's Dissertation. which is entitled Placing Gitxsan Stories in Text: Returning the Feathers: Guusx Mak' Am Mik' Aax.

The Gitxsan version of the Mosquito Story is on pp. 91-93.  Since we have been thinking about the Mosquito story in conjunction with the LaRue case, I thought you might enjoy thinking through/with the story.  

The Blue Jay origin story (p. 88) is also suitably interesting/creepy (and fun if you live in blue jay territory!)

At some point, we will probably produce a casebook with brief for these stories (like with the Secwepemc Land and Resource one).  But… for now, here is a resource of stories in case you end up wanting to play with some stories.

Xoxox and Merry Christmas to you all!

Rebecca

Single Parenting

Alice likes to play with other set of toys 
besides the Nativity, Alice asked 
if she could have Lego for girls for Xmas.
So here she is with the Pool Party.
Betty looks on with great interest as to
how to construct the slide to the pool.

I have a small Peruvian nativity with the figures dressed in the national costumes of Peru.

I keep it out year round as well, hoping that Alice will play with it.

She does.

In fact, she broke the head off the donkey, but that was easily fixed with a glue gun.

I, however, dropped the figure of Mary, and smashed it to smithereens, yesterday.

I thought I had a good hold on it, but it just dropped out of my hand.

There is just no hope of getting it back together with a glue gun.

I wondered, is it better, while trying to downsize, to just throw away anything that is not in perfect condition anymore which would mean throwing out the whole set.

I opted instead, to keep, rather than throw it away, leaving it on the lower shelf in the china cabinet, and in the days ahead, Joseph shall just have to do single parenting.

Where have the wisemen gone?

I should have known when she was
asking where the wisemen had gone
that she was referring to this set.
I often see her playing with it.

When Alice came downstairs today, she asked me where the wisemen had gone?

I asked her what she meant.

She said, “You know the wisemen from the Orient.”

I asked her if she were referring to the nativity set of nesting dolls that I keep on the bottom ledge of the china cabinet all year long.

She said no, she wanted the big ones. It took me until the afternoon to figure out she was talking about a large porcelain Nativity set.

I identify it as the one I got at Safeway when it was 90% off.

I would have known more what it was by that description.

Only I would buy a set where the figures are 15 inches high and you crowd them together on a small mahogany platform where they don’t have an inch to breath. I think I was curious that she identifies what is going on there as the 3 wisemen being important. She even sang me a few strains from “We Three Kings of Orient Are”, to refresh my memory in case I had forgotten who the wisemen are.

Next year I will try to make Mary and Joseph the more important pieces in that set for her.  Or maybe not.  This story is a lot of people's story.

Arta

2 to 6 Days out of 365

"I like to do crafts at her house."

Is it really worth it, to put up Christmas decorations?

"I am colourig while my gtrandmother packs away decorations."

At a modest estimate, it takes me at least one day to take them down and one day to put them up.

Some of my sisters say they set aside 3 days on both sides of Christmas – just to get the boxes out of the garage and the musical toys with batteries again, and the nativities put together and the tree decorated, and that is after the lights have gone on.

And I am not talking about any decorating done on the outside of the house.

"If you ask, I will sing you a song that I make up."

Now some families bring everyone into the living room and have all participate.

Now this wouldn’t happen at Christmas, but I noticed that I was having the kids putting up decorations for Chinese New Year already and there was a lot of shoving going on.  

Maybe that wouldn't happen during family decorating time at Christmas.

Mimetic desire.

You can’t go wrong knowing that the desire to have or do what others are doing is innate.

Arta

Preparing for Remote Access to my Computer

... Splendor at one side of the table. 
Also a game of Uno at the other side of the table...

I needed to have some long distant secure remote access help when I was figuring out how to set up my new-to-me computer.

When that kind of assistance is given from a Help Desk there is a statement read, one principle of which is that you can stop the session at any time, and you are warned that the person coming in remotely can see what is on your computer.

... Michael prepares to beat his grandmother at Splendor ...

The last statement wouldn’t bother me, since I lead a quiet life with nothing on my computer that I couldn’t show anyone.

So in the person came, and as their cursor was moving around my desktop I saw a file that was called Torture Files.

I couldn’t remember what it was that I might have put in such a file, but I determined to look deeper into its contents when the session was over.

So here is what the contents were: pictures of me playing board games.

... Alice's hands control the cards ...

Yes.

Torture to me.

But I am drawn to board games since they present an excellent way to interact with my grandchildren.

I watched Doral’s friend, Pam Dirk, this summer.

When the games with children began Pam dove in with all of the excitement of a newcomer about to have the best moments of the day ahead, rolling the die and making her moves with such joy.

... a meal first and then cards ...

I am trying to follow her model.

But I can’t quite do it, can I?

I am at about 98% able to show excitement.

... Betty with her cards laid out in front of her ...

It is just that little 2% in me that has to label the file “Torture”.

Arta

Preparing for Court and Looking Out the Window

.. the Bay in the forefront, the Calgary Tower in the backgound ..
as seen from Lawson Lundell

Present at the Court: Moiya and David Wood, Glen and Janet Pilling, Laynie Hicks, Wyona Bates, Rebecca and Arta Johnson, Marcia Bates

December 16th – 20th were days that LaRue (the holding company for the lands at the Shuswap) spent at the Court of Queen’s Bench.

Rebecca said that with all of its vagaries, she wouldn’t have missed it for the world.

For me, it was better to be there, than to be somewhere else wondering what was happening.

The final result is that the case was ruled a non-suit. That means that we failed to bring sufficient evidence, which may seem disheartening, and it was, a bit, to us.

LaRue’s job was to test if its lot licences were valid.

 The final answer is that the lot licences signed after 2007 are valid but are unenforceable.

... Glen, waiting for Robert in the boardroom of Lawson Lundell ...

And that is what we wanted test, so for us it was a win.

Now we will go to a different jurisdiction for LaRue to work out what is called the ping-pong problem: envoi.

We are a company that holds land in B.C., so there is a point to having the court in BC. However we are an Alberta Company, so with Alberta licences, the BC court would send us back to Alberta. You can see the ping pong problem.

We spent 5 days together in court and 3 days before hand in preparation.

Glen was tutored as to how to answer questions in court – just answer the question, no more, no less.

... snow on the Plaza of 7th Ave and 2nd Street ...

We had a judgement that is hard to make, or maybe for him the judge it was easy. 

Just hard for me to watch. 

When two of our lawyers gave Glen the pre-court challenge of answering questions that were to come up, the rest of us watched in awe and wonder – me always thinking, could I do as good a job?

Judge Keith Jamouci told us that he had been fascinated with the case.

He said that he could have ruled on it right from the outset, but that he hoped the rest of us would know he listened carefully and was interested in the complexity of what was going on.

I think he used the word, fascinated.

Darla was awarded minimal costs against us – ones on the schedule as though we had been in master’s chambers. We are happy to pay.

We got the advice of a seasoned judge who had once been a lawyer dealing with international bankruptcy and who had taught at the University of Calgary.

He told us how to narrow this down to one important issue and then to proceed on that basis. Wyona calls what we learned, “a magnificent loss”.

... the faint reline is the view of the
C-train from 11 stories up ...

Not everyone leaves court as happy as the four of us did.

That is what happened in that week in a nutshell.

Court is not over.

Darla has initiated another Statement of Claim (2019), this time to be heard in Kelowna, British Columbia.

So?

Litigious times still ahead from her, so if one can take the perspective that this is going to happen, then I shall also take the perspective that I will find any joy in being in the company of the rest of my siblings.

Arta

WWWD

The middle pendant is a gift from Rebecca to Wyona,
one of Rebecca's clay pendants which are
often gifts from Truth and Reconcilation Meetings.
This one is a gift after the court case to all attendees.

Wyona and I were driving down Crowchild Trail on a Boxing Day adventure. We just got in the car and made a couple of wrong turns before we even got onto Crowchild Trail.  It isn’t really that hard to get there from my house.  But this day it happened to be hard.

We made 2 wrong turns before my phone rang and I picked it up to hear Catherine wondering what our adventure was about. And then she asked, “Is it a WWWD day?”

I laughed.

Yes. WWWD. What Would Wyona Do?

So here is what she did, in story form. It didn’t matter where we went on our shopping trip, clerks commented on Wyona’s jewellery. And I guess the question, What would Wyona do was exemplified in what she was wearing.

Rebecca gave all of us who attended court a new pendant: lawyers, relatives, litigants – all of us gathered in the Court House Cafeteria afterwards and picked out something to remember court by.

Wyona added more beads to the pendant in the first necklace.
And she added some semi-precious stones
 from South America for the see second necklace

I knew that what I wanted would be left to the last, so I didn’t fear that the best would be gone first. I like good sized pendants that are always left behind.

Wyona picked something orange this time. A small piece. Then she went home and strung it with other beads. And yesterday she wore it with another set of beads she has designed.

WWWD?

The Answer: In whatever way she can find, she will be creative.

Best Parts about Christmas

... Hebe with  her home-made candy floss ...

Catherine asked me what are the best parts about Christmas. 

I had to tell her that one of them was letting to play along with Hebe with the home made advent calendar. 

Every day there was a small gift and then a riddle.  The riddles were hard, for someone who isn't tuned into that kind of play with language (that person I am talking about is me).

I have tried riddles myself.

I used to try them on my children.

No luck with either.

But I have enjoyed the 24 riddles about Santa Claus this December that have come from her house.

My favourite?

Question: Why did Santa move is bed into the fire place?

Answer: He wanted to sleep like a log.

And one more thing about upping the ante on how to make the best Christmas ever. 

Whomever heard of getting a candy floss maker for Christmas.  Now that is among the best-presents-ever toy.

Arta

O Tannenbaum

... Duncan with the last tree on the lot ...

I have to go to the internet to find out that the song, O Tannenbaum,
is actually referring to the ability of the fir tree's branches to stay  green.

I think of the song, mostly as a Christmas carol.

However, getting the Christmas tree is an important part of Christmas.

Duncan and Rebecca got the last tree on the lot.

There was nothing left in the warehouse when they were through.

... Duncan going with minimalist decorations ...

I think on of the loveliest trees I have ever seen was decorated with a white owl.

That was all that was on the tree.

It was quite lovely.

I think Duncan and Rebecca also had minimalist decorations.

Photo: Joan Turnbull

... the fairies put this tree on the wall...

Richard and Miranda had a different tree this year.

The lights on the wall formed the tree.

That was a perfect space saving tree.

There was still plenty of room left on the floor for the best part of Christmas: playing with the new toys.

Arta

More on the Cull

Richard added some insight into the cull of the deer near Magrath:

Deer 1:

My father in law shot a doe, just west of the Porcupine hills and south of Longview.

We turned it into deer jerky and bratwurst.

All of the deer jerky is gone already. The bratwurst is about half done.

Deer 2 and 3:

... down to Magrath for the deer cull ...

We were on the north property of Colleen and Doug Keeler.

... Richard and Naomi Brooks ...

Actually, just north of that at Ken Laws property. I asked Ken if I could hunt and he said yes. I saw two deer sheltering against hay stacks against the Magrath wind. The biggest one had horns. It was a long shot. Maybe 300 yards. I'm awesome.

I thought that I'd missed the first deer, and shot at the second one.

It ran off.

I asked Chris if I could shoot two deer and use his tag for the second.

Thats a bit of a gray area for hunting, but not that against the rules. As I walked up to the deer I saw another one come hoping around and shot it.

Then I found the first. It was a fawn coming back to look for mom. The first one I'd shot was a doe. I thought it was a buck. Deer 2 & 3 are at the butchers right now and going to be turned into chorizo and Octoberfest sausages.

Deer 4 and 5.

... in the garage ...

Magrath had an 'after season' cull to get rid of more of the deer. They really do have too many down there.

On Thursday I went down and met Sabey's, Cook's, Taylor's, and Leishmann'a. Cook's let me catch one on Thursday.

I brought it to Lethbridge and gutted it with Naomi just south of Lethbridge. Saturday I went back and brought Naomi for the whole day. We caught another one in Alison Cooks back yard. Deer 4 & 5 will be as much jerky as possible and the rest will depend on if Chorizo or Octoberfest end up more delicious than Bratwurst.

Richard

Keeping My Eye on Betty

I have been keeping my eye on Betty. 

And for good reason.  I just don't trust a person who likes to clean so I have to watch her closely to get to understand her. 

As this photo shows, just give her a damp cloth and she is happy shining mirrors or wiping up spilled milk.

Today the kids had pancakes for breakfast, dollar-sized pancakes.  Their mom left for Costco and I came over to watch them for a while.  I saw Betty adding extra Maple Syrup to her pancakes as soon as her mother was out the door.  The pancakes were already swimming in the maple syrup by time I could grab back the jug.

I thought to myself, just let her enjoy what she has there. 

What I loved is that she leaned down to lick the syrup off her her plate -- why put the pancake in her mouth when she could just have syrup.  She must have done this before, for I saw her take her both hands and hold back those curly blonde locks so that they didn't fall in the syrup as she was running her tongue around in it.

I love being a grandparent, sitting back and watching incidents like these happen, feeling no need to discipline or interrupt childhood happiness.

Arta