The Stick People

It has been four and a half years and I'm still learning about little boys, studying them as if they were seven-legged, three-headed curiosities beneath a microscope. As one of three sisters who became a mother to three more, my experience in this area has been limited. When mother's friends brought their young sons along on a visit, my sisters and I would line up to simply stare at them. Approaching age ten, the stares turned to giggles. We didn't know how to talk to them, play with them or what to do with them. In a way, I still don't. But I'm getting there!

My present day twin grandsons have taken me by the hand and introduced me to the place where little boys happily dwell. Monsters live there. So do "bad guys." Anything with wheels shouts "vroooom" and crashes into things. Sofas are caves of upended cushions. Elevated hearths are where you stand to cast your line and go "fishing." And sticks? Well, over here, sticks rule! Yard sticks, backyard sticks, regular sticks...any old stick will do. The boys run to grab them, leaving me, once again, speechless and staring. What the heck is it about those darn sticks?

One day last week grandpa moved the yardsticks and panic ensued. Our sticks! Where are they? We need our STICKS! Relief arrived in quickly subbed wrapping paper tubes, and once again there were swords to wield, barricades to erect, laser beams to focus, poles to fish with, and pointers and pokers for every need.

But little boys are okay with plain-brown-wrapper sticks and grandmas are not. So we fixed that.

When my favorite little "stick people" returned this week, their tubes were waiting for them, covered in bright wrapping paper. I offered additional multi-colored scraps for stripes and an abundance of streamers, stickers, and glue. We decorated them in the finest pageantry. And then we had a parade, hoisting high our sticks, roaring and chanting, taking turns in the coveted lead...upstairs, downstairs, inside and out, scattering cats like a shake of confetti in our wake.

After that, this grandma no longer wonders about sticks. I have my own now and am very, very happy to share cushioned caves concealing monsters and mount vroooming trucks in pursuit of bad guys to poke with the pointer I decorated alongside two little boys who fully understand how to be themselves and don't mind inviting grandma along for the ride!