A Visit to the Farm

 I have an image of the perfect visit to the grandparents. The city grandkids go to the farm and help the grandparents with the farm chores— milking cows, feeding chickens, riding up on the tractor, picking fresh vegetables from the garden. Time in the kitchen shucking corn or shelling peas or baking some fresh-picked blueberry cobbler. The grandparents don’t have to plan any special excursions, just include the young ones in their daily routines. Then, of course, some storytelling and singing or reading on laps in the evening. 

 

For this city grandfather, it’s not quite the same. I do like to grab the kids and walk to the bakery to get the bread they like and have them help me with some shopping or cooking, to get on the bikes and wheel through the park, maybe with a basketball in the backpack to shoot some hoops. But both my wife and I spend a lot of thought and energy finding special things for them to do, some of it pricey like a play or magic show, some of it cultural like an art museum, science museum, jazz club, some of it just wandering around the city together on an “adventure.” 

 

Of course, Zadie at 13 has her own independent thoughts about what’s worth her time and Malik is starting to push back a little on the day’s planned activity (though after his initial resistance, he does end up enjoying it). They both humored me, with a little strategic coaching (that for once did not involve ice cream) and agreed to my Vertigo tour and Vertigo movie. But I can tell my “which Hitchcock film should we see next?” days are numbered. So it goes. 

 

Today, we finished the Vertigo tour with a quick stop at San Juan de Bautista and then had a short walk-around Hidden Valley Music Seminars in Carmel Valley where I enjoy two weeks of Orff-teaching bliss every summer. Though I've taught there 12 years now and gone there for weekend Orff retreats once every two years since 1987, none of my family—wife, daughters or grandkids—have ever been there. Partly because the summer course is always when my wife is in Michigan and the kids are traveling or parenting. For the grandkids, the memory of that short tour will certainly be 100 times less than the kid remembering the first time driving the tractor with Grandpa or Grandma, but nevertheless I persist in sharing such things with them. 

 

Throughout their short lives, they have seen me on my "farm" teaching kids at school, putting on a play at school, being honored at my pandemic-delayed farewell party at school, teaching classes in their school, leading the neighborhood Christmas caroling, playing piano at The Jewish Home, giving an Orff workshop to adults in the Portland Orff Chapter and more. Time will tell what it all means to them, but it certainly means a lot to me to share the things I love in this life with them. And that of course includes the cooking, game-playing, book-reading, movie-watching, music-playing, swimming, biking, hiking, basketball/ frisbee/ cornhole etc. we’ve all done together and continue to do. As well as starting to go to their organized league basketball games and hear them read things they’ve written for school and even listening together (and or dancing together to) songs they like. 

 

It has been nice to break up the drive to Palm Springs and go south on some new roads. The Carmel Valley Road east from Hidden Valley (which I had never driven!) is gorgeous and while the kids are with their Mom Kerala and Tita Talia in the town of Cambria,  Karen and I just had a dinner near Santa Barbara with Karen’s childhood friend. We’ll meet up tomorrow here and then finish the drive to Palm Springs (well, technically, Indio), where our annual wild rumpus there will begin. 

 

Maybe while I’m there I can find a tractor ride.