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Article Excerpt
Byline: FRESH APPROACH By Jan Roberts-Dominguez For The Register-Guard
About five years ago, our oldest granddaughter - in her toddler wisdom - decided that my husband and I should be Papa Steve and Papa Jan. Her parents had a moment of concern that I'd take offense. Such a masculine spin on the exquisite role of grandparenting. On the contrary, I reassured them. Anna had transformed Steve and me into a category, which was all right by me, considering my husband's fine character.
During the hazelnut harvest in late October, Papa Steve and I took the family on a picnic to a nearby farm where our friends, Margy and Dave, had just finished gathering the year's crop. After our simple lunch of cold cuts, store-bought potato salad, fruit and cookies, we explored the orchard with its cool, leafy-green canopy overhead. Anna and her little sister, Lily, marveled at the dusty beams of sun bursting through the trees; how it seemed to be making golden puddles of light on the ground. We inspected the tough-shelled nuts, cracked them open to see the treasures within, and speculated on how many a squirrel would need to get through the winter.
Next stop was the barn where Dave kept his rock tumbler. I explained to the girls that Dave was polishing some of the special rocks I had collected on the coast last winter. What kind of rocks? they wondered. So I showed them the treasured blue-black agates and unique bits of jasper. They said they had never seen such beautiful stones.
"Would you like to choose one to keep?"
"Oh yes," they exclaimed. After much agonizing, pondering, selecting, reselecting and finalizing of their choices, we shut the door on the rock room. As we left the barn, each girl clinging to one of my cherished blue-blacks, Anna reached for her mother's hand. "Oh Mama, do you think we could ever be bored with Papa Jan and Papa Steve?"
A picnic, a walk through an orchard and a free rock. Talk about cheap dates. In our attempts to build The Best Christmas...
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More articles from The Register-Guard (Eugene, OR)
`Domesticity' author explores the wonderful comforts of home.(Entree), December 24, 2008
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