Are You An Elevator?

Reid helping with the great 2024 clean-up

John Clark, semi-piggybacking on Kate’s post about growing up on Sennebec Hill Farm last week. One aspect of being a writer is the constant flow of thoughts that run through my (and hopefully your) mind. Last week, they took an interesting turn, inviting me to hover outside myself and ponder how even the most simple utterance or deed can create one of those better than average ripples in the pond of life.

It started when I watched two of my three grandchildren help us plant stuff in the garden. First off, it was soon to be five year old Reid helping me plant pole beans behind the garage. I poked the holes and he dropped seeds into them. A week later, it was even sooner to be five year old Gemma helping us plant broccoli. In both instances, Beth and I held back any orders or corrections, letting each child participate in their way. Reid’s beans are now beginning to climb through strands of string on their way to bearing pods while Gemma’s efforts are growing just as nicely.

Reid’s Beans

I remember Judi Redding, a very wise family therapist saying at a workshop on family systems many years ago that the three words kids hear the most while growing up are “no, don’t, and stop!”

Unlearning the instinct to use those admonishments and let kids feel a part of the bigger world around them is challenging, particularly when that’s how you grew up, but I am doing my best to back off as well as encouraging all three of my grandkids to feel like they’re an important part of our immediate world.

Last summer we took Piper, then age ten, on a Road Scholar grandparent/grandchild week in Virginia where we learned hands-on about marine life and ecology as well as seeing the wild ponies up close. Next month, we’re taking her to a working ‘rope and ride’ ranch outside Tucson, Arizona on a similar Road Scholar adventure. Every time I watch my grandchildren involved in a family activity, I flash back to when I was their age. My experiences were different, partly out of necessity. We grew up on a poultry farm and times were often hard. I was more pressed into service without explanation than invited to become a part of the family operation. There were exceptions, like the annual bean factory event where we, and often friends or summer guests, snipped, snapped, washed and packed fresh beans in canning jars.

Beth and I bought the half acre lot behind our house last year, for privacy and to avoid a house being built there. It was full of brush, fallen limbs and downed trees that were in varied stages of decay. After I’d cut up as much as I could, we rented a 30 cubic yard dumpster to haul it away. On the day we had a family cleanup party, Piper, Gemma, and Reid all did themselves proud, carrying whatever they could to the dumpster where the adults thanked them and added their contributions to the pile.

Last weekend, everyone got together to erect and enjoy a slack line that included various climbing apparati. Reid and Gemma kept busy chopping some of the huge crop of jewel weed that has overtaken the back property. I’m slowly weeding it by hand (my OCD tendency to count how many weeds I’ve pulled in each session (upwards of fourteen thousand at present), and their knocking it all over slightly complicates my cleanup. However, watching two almost five year olds merrily hoeing and hacking, is a most satisfying sight.

Last Saturday at Kate’s cottage in Harpswell, the family gathered again with Reid and Gemma having a delightful time with their cousin Robbie, a personal trainer who is as much a kid at heart as they are. Between finding perfect little pinecones to to toss into the ocean and making a sand and rock castle with a plastic pail of crabs as guardians, it was a most enjoyable family event.

There’s no way to protect their generation from the evil being inflicted by those in power, but we can make certain that they, and others we encounter on a daily basis, feel involved in things that are nurturing and mind healing, hopefully creating good memories to get them through dark moments.