Debra Darvick

We were having brunch with Olivia and some friends who moved from our area some years back. We were talking about things to d
in the city when our friend exclaimed, “YOU HAVE TO GO TO THE BALLOON MUSEUM. IT’S LIKE NOTHING YOU’VE EVER SEEN!”
He began recounting what awaited us” giant ballooons, a ball pit the size of a football field (or so it seemed), enormous bubbles formed by reverberations of air passing through a  speaker fitted with a giant bubble wand. Can you even wrap your head around that one? I’d love to meet the artist who came up with it!

Had our friends not been grandparents who had visited the Balloon Museum earlier in the month, we never would have known about it.
Had Olivia not been with us, the opportunity might not have arisen during our quick weekend visit.  But she was and it did. Once again the child within us got to come out and play. With us, with one another and with Olivia.

The Balloon Musuem travels across the world. We saw 18 of the installations. Visiting the website I learned there are many, many more. If you can get to Chicago before early April, go. Otherwise, chase them down somewhere else if you can.  Grab the opportunity before it escapes your grasp. The Balloon Museum

Photo at left courtesy of Debra Darvick
Photos below courtesy of Martin Darvick

Many years ago I wrote a column about members of a band coming to visit and the joy of having a mountain of sneakers by the back door once again. The band stayed with us a few times when they had a gig in town eventually moving on to other ventures. The mat stayed clean and empty.

 Twenty-five years later, we once again have shoes by the back door — a gentle hill of pink Crocs and sparkly tennis shoes. It’s a great feeling.

This week I saw a tree bent into the shape of crooked letter Y.  I snapped a shot of it, texted it to my son with a note for him to share with Olivia: “Dear Olivia, A long time ago you would ask me, “Why? Why? Why?” Sometimes, when I ran out of answers I would say to you, ‘Y is a crooked letter.’ You knew the alphabet by then, so you would get the joke. It made me smile to remember.  I hope this makes you smile too, even if you don’t remember!”  I hit send and wondered what her response would be. Within an hour Elliot texted back: “Will show her! And she absolutely remembers. Said this phrase to her the other day and she said you used to say it to her.”  

His text made my heart soar. Olivia remembered! And remembered something from her earliest years. It tugs at me to consider what she will remember of me when memories are all that’s left.  Certainly, the older she gets the more she will remember. How much time will we have to build her memory bank? The answer lies ahead in the mists. I hope and pray that she will remember years of Passover Seders, small moments and great; my presence at her Bat Mitzvah ceremony; her high school and perhaps even college graduations. Beyond that it’s mist and miracles.

But for now, Olivia remembers that Y is a crooked letter and that I love her so so dearly.

The summer before I left for college, my grandmother took me to the knitting store to choose yarn for the afghan she wanted to knit for me. Except for the year I spent in Europe when I was a junior, the afghan has never been out of my reach. For the past fifty years it has kept me warm and  kept her close. It is my go to blanket when I want to take an afternoon nap.

Our kids spread the afghan over a dining table for their hideaways and pulled it out for sleepovers.  I can still see my grandmother sitting on the couch in the den, knitting needles softly clicking blocks of blue into being.  We didn’t choose soft wool yarn or crisp cotton either, but some sort of sturdy no-nonesense polyester blend that washes easily and successfully. It has held up well, looking as bright and fresh as the day she gave it to me. Gathering it around me, I am shawled within her love. The connection is physical.  What she touched still touches me.

When my grandmother died I brought home her set of  hammered Club Aluminum cookware. Like the afghan, like my grandmother, the pots and pans are straightforward and uncomplicated. They get the job done. For over twenty years I’ve loved knowing that our hands touch across the decades every time I pick up a skillet or set a pot on the stove.

This Thanksgiving the handle of the smallest skillet broke in half, splitting away from the bolt that had held it in place for decades. There is no way to replace it. How many meals were cooked in this pan over her lifetime? Had she received the set as a wedding present? Married during the Depression she told me that she and my grandfather were so poor they didn’t have a pot to you-know-what in. Maybe she bought them when my grandfather’s law practice made such a purchase possible. They are the only pots and pans she ever used. I’d imagine they are at least 90 years old by now, which means my father grew up eating meals cooked in them as well. He too is now gone and so I cannot ask him; even if I could, I doubt he’d remember. But he would remember her blintzes and the sweet canned blueberries she stirred into warm indigo syrup. He’d remember the corn fritters, too

I’m not sure yet what I’ll do with the pan. I can’t throw it away.  Perhaps I can use it as a shallow planter? Enhance it somehow with a glue gun and baubles and hang it from a tree branch in the garden? Eventually it will become a why-did-she-hold-on-to-this? left-behind. So be it.

One of the unexpected delights of being a grandparent is hearing stories from and about other grandparents.  This past week, one such story came my way.

When my friend Rhona was young, her mother made up  stories about the escapades of three children: Ollie, Bollie and Mollie. These stories, during which Ollie, Bollie, and Mollie got into and out of all sorts of mischief, were standard bedtime fare during Rhona’s childhood. Rhona told them to her children and a generation later, her adult children have become the storytellers and their children are now the rapt listeners. During a recent family reunion, Rhona told me that her grandkids wanted to hear Ollie, Bollie, and Mollie stories again before bed. She was surprised and delighted that even the older ones and their cousins wanted to hear them, too.

You will be happy to know that Ollie, Bollie, and Mollie as well as a few new cousins are still getting themselves into and out of various scrapes mischief originated by their great-grandmother four generations ago, with a few new twists added along the way.

photo by Globe Life