Stuck At Home Fun #9

Today was a superly fun day at my house and that’s mostly because there was a lot of imagination that needed to get used thanks to my Grandpa Two Rivers who Skyped with me.  He said that lots of times, I ask him to tell me about back in the day when he was a little boy growing up on the rez (that’s shorthand for reservation) in Tyendinaga in Ontario (that’s in Canada), and lots of times he tells me the best stories ever and I believe them even when they aren’t too believable because my grandpa doesn’t make stuff up.

Anyway, he asked me to tell him a story about when I was a little girl and I laughed because I was a little girl just a while ago, not like him where it’s been a superly long time since he was a little boy.  But then he said I should pretend I’m a grandma or a Tota (that’s the Mohawk word for grandma) or a Nohkom (that’s the Cree word for grandma) and I’m telling the story to my own grandchildren.  I said probably that would be hard to do because I haven’t ever been a grown-up yet so that means I would have to pretend to be old and plus pretend to tell a story to little kids.

My grandpa laughed a whole lot.  I love when he laughs because his eyes crinkle up and laugh just as much as he laughs with his voice.

Then he said, “That’s why it’s called make-believe, and I know you’re good at that because I remember the days of your dotting map stories — the ones with the Sneaky Itch and Floaty Penguin and the Tree of Fourteen and the Pea Pod Garden.  I remember most of those stories, Missy.”

So I told him a story with me being the grandma and him being the little boy, and he loved hearing all about how I came up with the dotting map and all the places on it.

Before we had to say goodbye, he asked me to write some of my stories down.  He said it would be a good idea to write down as many stories about my life up to this point, and to maybe do a time capsule that he could keep safe and locked up until I’m way, way, way older. He said I could even add drawings and maybe some photographs because they would be like artifacts.  I laughed and said that my other grandpa talks about artifacts sometimes, and then we both laughed because it was nice to know both my grandpas know about artifacts and why they matter.

Then my Grandma Two Rivers reminded my grandpa to remind me that she left a whole box of beads for me at my house on Valentine’s Day so if I need other things to do, I can just practice my beading.  I think I’ll do that tomorrow because writing all those stories is going to take me a long time to do and plus, probably lots and lots of days in a row.  I’ll do some beading when I need a break from storytelling.

 

Stuck At Home Fun #8

I don’t know about you, but over at our house, every once in a while, me or one of my brothers says, “I wish” and then adds something every day to it.  Like today I said, “I wish Grandma and Grandpa Barrett could come over with one of their Thin Man movies so we could make popcorn and watch it with them.”  And yesterday, I said, ‘I wish Grandma and Grandpa Two Rivers would come over so grandpa can make his world famous Indian tacos for everyone for supper.”

My mom got this superly fantastic idea, and her idea is so easy to do, everybody can do this.  You don’t even have to go anywhere to get what you need to make her idea happen at your house.

She always keeps a few junior composition books in her office in her supply cabinet but you can use anything — loose leaf paper in a binder, newsprint paper in a folder — and it still works.

Then every time someone in your house says, “I wish” they just go over to the book (or the binder or the folder) and writes down what they wish.

But how is that doing anything constructive (as my mom would say)?  Well, my mom says that when the self-isolating time is finished and everything goes back to being pretty much like before, she’s going to schedule all of the “I wishes” from the book into a list of things we’re going to do as long as nobody gets silly and puts something like “I wish we lived on the moon” or “I wish I had a pet penguin” or something like that.