One Foot in Front of the Other

My cute baby granddaughter thought about Up. She watched her brothers running through the house, her little brow furrowed in concentration. How do they do that?  One day, at the ripe old age of eight months, Babykins pulled herself to standing, using the sofa for support.

 The first couple of weeks didn’t go well for her. She hadn’t learned how to un stand; when her little legs fatigued, she fell backwards. She quickly learned how to roll her spine so as not to whack her fuzzy head every time. Feet were another issue. Sometimes her little feet slid out from under her, and she ended up doing splits. They sometimes slid away from the sofa, leaving her at an untenable 45 degree angle, clutching the sofa, squawking for help. Her mother rescued her, picked her up for a hug, chuckling at the baby’s determination to get back and down and try again.

This all reminds me of the baby’s mother at that age. Once my daughter learned to stand and take two steps, she refused to crawl ever again. It was simply beneath her. That was fine once she could walk capably, but the first couple of weeks were rough. She’d stand up against a chair, take a few wobbly steps, invariably tip over, and scream as if she’d been attacked by lions. One of us would have to go stand her back on her little feet; she simply couldn’t bear to crawl the two feet to the chair. A pride issue, I think, along with early evidence of a stubborn streak wider than her head. She kept on practicing, and as other adults, she now walks without a thought.

No one criticized her when she was learning, and no one scolds Babykins for not doing it right, for falling over yet again. We praise her for trying again, clapping, smiling, telling her, “Good! Now try again,” knowing that, with practice, she’ll learn to walk like everyone else.

I’m an author of sixteen books. I suppose I know what I’m doing, to some degree, and I keep on learning daily, constantly improving my craft. Some of the phrases I string together are flat, hokey, even syrupy. Other times, I read over a paragraph in delight. Sometimes I kick paper wads in frustration, knowing what I want to convey, but unable to get my point across. 

I suppose what babies and toddlers deal with effects writers, too—the terrible twos are partly about being frustrated because you’re smarter than your motor skills or your mouth, you want to color the picture, ask for the toy, and you’re bumbling, incoherent and no one gets it.

My advice to writers is WRITE. Write a lot, good stuff, worthless stuff, keep on writing.  My baby granddaughter will be chasing after her brothers in no time, but it’s not only time that propels a child onward to more sophistication and skill. It takes effort and practice, and occasionally falling on one’s head. Write, write, write because the road to good writing is made of words strung together and not all of them are well-arranged words. With practice, it gets better.

We don’t scold a child for stumbling when learning to walk. We value their adorable attempts, and pick them up when they tip over. Do that for the writer inside you. Praise the good parts, encourage the weak parts, and keep putting one foot in front of the other. 

When the Family Gets Together

by Kari Diane Pike

About thirty years ago, my husband's parents came up with a plan for a family reunion every three years. Each of the seven siblings has taken turns as the "event planner" with everyone else pitching in to help make things happen. The location has varied: Mom and Pop's house in Calabasas, CA, Bear Lake in northern Utah, an empty school in Cottonwood, AZ, a beach side campground near Santa Barbara, CA, and even the Redwood forest. Activities have ranged from surfing and swimming to hiking and card playing and the giving and receiving of lots of hugs.

This year marked our tenth such reunion. We returned to Mom's house (Dad has been gone for nine years now) to celebrate "Grandma the Great turns 88".  For the first time in many years, all seven of the Ken and Delores Pike children were able to attend. Even most of the grandchildren and great-grandchildren made the journey from as close as living in the same house to as far away as Anuktuvuk Pass, Alaska in order to celebrate our much beloved matriarch.

Dad Pike's family has a long history of family get-togethers - usually geared around Thanksgiving and Easter. With nine children in that family our numbers regularly fell between 80 and 100 people. This year was no exception. We laughed, talked, body surfed, browsed museums, discovered hermit crabs, sea anemones, and the occasional scorpion, and played games with about 117 links from our family chain. I'm happy to report that only one child wandered off and went missing for a few minutes at the beach and no one got run over.

We can't forget about the food. One night alone, we consumed 18 large Costco pizzas, three watermelons, 7 pineapples, 10 pounds of strawberries, 6 pounds of grapes, a #10 can of mandarin oranges, 4 large bags of Caesar Salad mix- plus croutons, and two entire sheet cakes. On other days, parents and grandparents alike pitched in to feed the masses with countless pb&j sandwiches, hamburgers, hot dogs, granola bars, bagels, cold cereal, french toast and the requisite s'mores.

Our daughter Kati played a video she had created from snatches of old home movies taken over the years. Seeing the smiles and hearing the voices of children now grown and older relatives  who have passed on brought tears to my eyes. My sister-in-law Penni provided stories from the lives of Ken and Del and from each of their parents. We played a family trivia bingo game based on the stories and sang "Love is Spoken Here" and  "A Child's Prayer." Old wounds received healing and love and the hearts of the children truly turned to their fathers as we remembered who we are and why we are here.

Getting together is getting more difficult as our family grows and spreads around the world. Del is the last of her generation still living from her side of the family and only one of Dad Pike's siblings remains. The Pike reunions of days past fell by the way side as the older generation passed away. Some how the baton got dropped. I hope that we never drop this one. Families truly are forever.

Hugs~