The Mother of All Updates.......or, How I Spent My Summer Vacation

I'm not going to beleaguer the denizens of the Blogoverse with the whys and wherefores of my long absence from and negligence of this website......what I am willing to put some effort into is bringing you up to speed on some of the better aspects of the past several months and move on from there.

Prologue

Years ago, Kodak ran a series of TV spots featuring a singer in the background doing this weepy sort of ballad about how it seems one just "turns around" and one's children are all grown up........the point of it all being to sell film, of course, and I actually believe it was rather effective. In any event, I've had a number of these "turn around" moments these past several months and I'm going to share them with you.

Turn around.....Cassie

On July 15, my daughter graduated with an associates degree in Applied Science as a licensed Radiographer. On Aug 1st she started full time work at an outpatient clinic run by a local
hospital. These, in and of themselves, are flat and succint enough statements of fact from which to derive a sense of achievement on her part and a sense of pride on mine......but that doesn't begin to give it the real weight and import that it deserves. Just how to write and describe those aspects, of this and other of the vignettes I planned to include here, have delayed the posting of this entry for over two months. Each time I sat down with my "mental notepad" and started to compose, I've run squarely into how far back some of these things go in regard to both my children.......and how intimately personal are some of the details necessary to understanding the path they had to tread to get to where they are. Time and again I've come squarely against the realization that some of these details are too personal, on the one hand, and not mine, on the other, to tell.

What is mine to say about this and some of the other moments reported here is that, when in public, I used the camera to hide brimming eyes behind as much as I did to record the event. Perhaps if I knew you really well (and I trusted you very much) I could begin to impart how proud of her I am or how huge an accomplishment this is for her,and why. For the here and now, let me simply say that metaphor and hyperbole aren't enough.....that language alone doesn't possess the power or device adequate to the task of wrapping it in a large enough package.

Turn around .......Cheyenne

On August 17th my oldest grandchild, Cheyenne, started school. She was up bright and early, dressed in pink (her favorite color) and bearing "squeaky" new supplies in an immaculate new pink Barbie bookbag. It was another of those times that the camera served a dual purpose for PaPa as she waited for and boarded the bus. Her mother's employment is on second shift, and since she began that service, I have had the privelege of being there when Cheyenne gets off the bus and spending the evening with her. As such I've gotten to share with her the excitement of learning to read and discover books, helping her with her homework, and sharing in shaping her environment in a way that wouldn't have been possible if I were working.... (did someone say "silver lining" or "close one door and open another"?)
We make flash cards for her sight words (as she learned her alphabet, she insisted on making her own flash cards for the new words she gets every week), and as we read nightly I stop at each incidence of these words in the text of what we are reading, she reads the word and we continue. The real excitement came when she got enough sight words to make simple sentences and we have spent whole nights with all her cards laid out on the floor and her finding the words and arranging them into the sentences we make.
The public library held a series of reading nights for her age group on Thursday of each week until just before Thanksgiving (which will resume in February), but when those ended we continued to make Thursday our library night.
She will pick out words and spell them for me and ask me what they are (incessantly)and write out sentences and make cards, asking me how to spell each word that she wants to include...........and if you ever wanted to define patience for yourself, have someone do that to you for one or two hours a night for a couple of weeks!
She will pick up one of my books and look for the pictures and make up stories or ask questions ........"PaPa, why do they have pom-pom trees on this boat?" (about a depiction of an ancient Nile pleasure barge....ok, I never said my tastes or interests were either normal or ordinary) and she seems to have a keen interest in maps and a pretty fair idea of what they represent, which is pretty remarkable at her age.

Turn Around......Hallie

My second grandchild, Hallie, turned two years old on August 26th. Due to scheduling of other events we celebrated her birthday at a party on August 13th. Which later sequed quite nicely into an adult, kids-are-in-bed-grilled-food-and-beer, celebration of Cassie's birthday (the 15th).
Hallie is of course walking (and running) and starting to talk up a storm at this point, and adores her older cousin. She spent the day stuck to her side like glue, following her from room to room and saying "Shine, Shine, Shine....(Cheyenne in Hallie-ese)" over and over.
She calls me "Pop-Pop"...which I think is pretty cool, way cool as a matter of fact. The circumstances of my situation and Casey's distant residence have conspired to diminish the time I've been able to spend around Hallie. This is something that I have been trying to remedy by making a pilgrimage every other Tuesday with Cheyenne and cooking up as many excuses for weekend get togethers as I can. Shy of me at first, Hallie has begun to get used to me and the last time I went over (at Thanksgiving) I got the best reward that a grandpa can have......she ran to me when she saw me at the door, shouted Pop Pop,threw herself into my arms.....and when I scooped her up, she gave me a big ol' hug and kiss. (Insert image of the Captn with a big dopey grin on his face here......)!

Turn Around......Casey

I wasn't there, of course, to record the event on film, but it still counts as a milestone in Casey's life and one of those unmanly, "misty moments" for me to contemplate. Again, considering the example that was set and the
experiences that have shaped his perspectives, (the part I played, for good and ill, and the knowlege I have of these things) I find myself more deeply moved by the fact that it happened at all.
On August 6th, Casey and Diane took a trip to Chicago whch included dinner in the posh surrounds of the Signature Room on the 95th floor of the Hancock building on Chicago's lakefront.
There, my son....the man my little boy turned into...proposed to the mother of his children and the woman that he loves and wants no more than to share the rest of his life with.

Announcing......Colton

On September 23, 2005, at 1243pm, weighing in at 8 lbs 9.75 oz and 20 inches in length ...... Colton Osiris Boze was born. Ladies and gentlemen, friends and neighbors, Citizens of the Blog-o-verse. I present to you my third grandchild and my first grandson ......! Counting from 1892, the fourth C.O. Boze in five generations and the third in a line starting with me. (I was named after my grandfather.....he having named his first-born Cecil Clare Boze).

Afterword

There is more I want to post about my "lost months, but these are the most monumental events that occurred in those times and deserve to be a stand alone post for a few days, to be read and digested and savored before I move along to other things.
I want to revive Cooking With Gutz with a post, featuring a guest assistant chef (zut alores......who can it be????), and be timely in here with a post about Thanksgiving. Which, in its own right, took on a more than ritual significance in our family as a sort of point of separation of what was from what will be. These followed by posts of holiday recipes in Cooking, and some tidying up bits and pieces from the "lost months". At that point I should be caught up suffiently to follow along with a typical running stream of monologue, diatribe, rant, musings and observation.

It's good to be back......

Thus endeth the entry.......