Texas Thanksgiving

Texas Thanksgiving

 

November 29, 2005

The phone rang, so I answered.  A small voice on the other end said, “Could you please send me the wishbone?”  Not understanding exactly what was being requested and barely able to hear the small voice, I asked for a repetition and got the same request.  Slowly, I began to figure out what was happening.

JJ, Koby and Kira

 

Our three children and their families were with us in Texas for Thanksgiving and then returned to their respective homes in Palo Alto, CA, Upland, CA and Towson, MD.  Each of our offspring has 2 children, so six grandkids ranging in ages from 3 to 13 were visiting.  They are all bright and interesting kids but have a tendency to become excited when playing games.  The dominant game over the few days they were here was hide and seek.  They took turns hiding while the searchers covered their eyes and counted (as loudly as humanly possible) to 20.  Then in an equally loud voice stated, “Here I come – ready or not.” (I’m sure most of you grandparents out there know the drill very well.)  There are a lot of shrill voices as they excitedly search for the hidden one and then even shriller vocalizations when they find him/her.

Hide and Seek

 

As they played, their parents began to lay down the rules: no standing and jumping on beds.  So they obeyed by modifying their tactics.  Running and diving onto the beds was considered OK – they were still obeying the first rule.  So, a second rule dictated: no running and jumping on beds.  This procedure continued for several days – make rules, break rules and then new rules.  After a couple of days of this procedure, there were so many rules that it was no longer much fun to play in the house, so they retreated to the woods where there were fewer parents to make up rules.  

But, after they retreated from the house, a cursory inventory showed a broken arm on our new couch, deep gouges in a new tabletop where some kid tried to make the lounge, swivel chair spin like a top, a broken door stop where somebody tried to hide behind the door and a malfunctioning computer from some kid crawling behind it –  knocking several wires loose in the process.  Oh well, kids will be kids we reasoned.  What is more important, unbroken furniture or happy kids?  Of course, in the excitement of the games, kids slammed their little faces into door, floors, and furniture so that the fun and games was periodically broken by the wailing of a child.  Parents patched up the “wounds” with a kiss and a hug and soon the child was back in the game. 

Most of the kids were mostly unchanged from the last time we had seen them with two major exceptions: our 13-year-old had a high soprano voice which was now a baritone.   Our 3-year-old talked almost non-stop – would you have guessed that she is a girl? 

Kira and Win

We ate turkey, went out for Mexican food, roasted marshmallows on a stick and ate left-overs.  Koby and his little brother JJ from Maryland found the wishbone and tried and tried to break it to see who would have good luck.  But the 4 and 6-year-old boys could not get a good grip on the wishbone because it was still slippery from turkey fat.  So they left it out on the refrigerator to dry so they could pull it later. 

As they were preparing to leave, their mom searched the house from top to bottom to make certain they did not leave anything – finding a doll under the bed and a ball behind the couch.  But she failed to notice the wishbone on the refrigerator.  So the phone call was from JJ (our 4-year-old) and you know the rest of the story – except that the dried wishbone is now in the mail to Maryland.

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