Aiden Adorable

                          Gather round and listen to the tale of the mispronounced "Seyfried"

I find five year olds to be the apex of cuteness, my grandson no exception. They are old enough to be very verbal and capable of much more complex thought than their toddler counterparts, but are not yet self-conscious or self-editing, so what they blurt is what you get. They are riding their bikes now (more freedom), but still need those training wheels (continue to need lots of support). Every day is an exciting adventure, be it an ice cream outing or a trip to the park, and if you don’t go (or even if you do) you will later be treated to a play-by-play of all the action.

They have friends now, friends of their choice and not just the convenient offspring of their mom’s buddies. But this also means periodic heartache, as those friends sometimes snub them on the bus, or say cutting things to them in the cafeteria. In addition to the kindergarten drama, they are learning to write and spell and count and read and follow directions and a million and one other skills they will need to navigate the challenging grownup world. Whew!

In any event, we are really enjoying Aiden this year. He is funny and outgoing and imaginative. His big thing nowadays is performing “magic tricks” for us (his version: he tells us all to close our eyes. Then he does whatever he’s going to do with the coin or whatever, then tells us to open our eyes again. Where did the object go? Amazing!) My favorite part of this whole routine is the finale, when we applaud and he says, with a bow and flourish, “Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for clapping. Thank you.”

Aiden is learning to write his Chinese characters from his mama, who works diligently to make sure he and Peter know their Taiwanese heritage, language and culture. He seems to switch seamlessly between Mandarin and English, but understands that it is pretty fruitless to converse in the former with non-Chinese speakers. When an American visitor asks him to say something in Chinese, Aiden shakes his head and says, politely, “No, this is an English house.”

In January, Sher and Yaj will take the boys on their annual visit to Taipei, and they’ll be gone several weeks. This is such a good thing, as they will continue to build relationships with their other grandparents, aunts and cousins. But I will miss them terribly as I always do, and long for them to return. This year, I expect to get a FULL report from Number One Grandson, and I can’t wait to hear.

I’ll be helping this year in Aiden’s kindergarten class. In the 20 years since Julie attended the same school (with the same wonderful teacher, Ms. Irvin), much has changed. But I am guessing that all the fives will still be as adorable as always. I promise to try not to be partial to mine.

All bets are off if he does his magic tricks, though.

My happy (half) Chinese character!

Know-it-All

Typical Cunningham library item

A strong memory from youth was the sickening feeling when I looked at the clock and realized that the library was closed, and I had a homework assignment due the next day involving research. That Battle of the Bulge paper was not going to write itself, and my family was not known for its wealth of great resource materials just laying around the house. Indeed, the only Battle of the Bulge info available to me was contained in a "Woman's Day" article about diet tips. Our sole set of encyclopedias came from a great-aunt who had passed away, leaving us her mouldering volumes of World Book that PREDATED WWII (see “Battle of the Bulge” above).

I think of this every time I search for something on my laptop or phone. The answers come before I have even mentally formed the questions. While most of the time I take this totally for granted, once in a while I reflect on this seismic shift in the acquisition of information since my girlhood. My smart-alecky persona back in the day led to my being called Nicky Know-it-All by my father (and that was NOT a compliment). Now, everyone knows it all, or can find it all in a twinkling.

The Internet Age has led to changes in the way we think, and process. Memorization of facts has, in large part, gone by the board. I notice this teaching Confirmation class at church. There is precious little the young teens can rattle off from sheer recall, without the aid of electronic devices, including the Apostles Creed, the 10 Commandments and, often, the Lord’s Prayer. I tell them that learning some stuff by heart is a great thing (I use the story of driving in an ice storm; repeating “Hail Mary’s” over and over is, I’m convinced, what got me safely home), but I don’t think they buy it.

In addition to a boatload o’ prayers, I can also recite (from memory) a good number of poems (some gems, others? Well, let’s just say I know every clunking stanza of Joyce Kilmer’s “Trees”). In conversation, it’s impressive to sprinkle the chat with quotations, whether or not they are pertinent to the subject at hand. When someone tells me they resent the high cost of pumpkin spice lattes at Starbucks, I reply sagely, “As Nelson Mandela famously put it, ‘Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.’ ” (Wrong kind of resentment. Plus it implies that pumpkin spice lattes are poisonous. Also I’m not 100% sure that’s a quote from Nelson Mandela. It might be Reese Witherspoon.)

So here we are, in a world where we are simultaneously idiots and geniuses. We don’t know much about history (as Sam Cooke warbled), but we can locate it instantly. And as I mourn the loss of a certain kind of learning, I recognize the value of another: expertly navigating the ever-expanding tidal wave of knowledge.

Which sure beats settling for diet tips from "Woman’s Day."

BIG improvement!!

Fast Forward Friday

What will happen on this little speck called Earth?

The popularity of “Throwback Thursday” on Facebook has waned a bit, but for years I could count on weekly pictorial trips down many memory lanes. If I wanted to see what a neighborhood friend looked like at age six, or a distant acquaintance as a little buckaroo in a cowboy hat—all I had to do was wait until Thursday!

I too played the game—two of my blog posts over the years were “Throwback Thursdays.” But today is the day AFTER Thursday, so to shake things up a bit, I thought I’d begin a new tradition. Welcome to “Fast Forward Friday!”

On FFF (that abbreviation reads like what you’d say when you hit your thumb with a hammer, but whatever), we dust off the old crystal ball and get a gander at the future (or at least, the future as we imagine it). Here are my predictions for the year 2050:

Mankind will hang on by a thread. We will frantically recycle, reduce emissions and embrace solar power, as we put down our weapons and love our fellow humans at last. We will probably all be living on a small patch of land in Nebraska, after East and West Coasts have been obliterated by sea level rises and uncontrollable fires. Cozy!

Social Media will still exist, but keyboards will be replaced by mind control. To misquote Descartes, “We think, therefore a Tweet appears.” We’ll spend our time reading each other’s minds, until we realize how dull other people’s thoughts are, then we’ll resume just dwelling on ourselves (back to normal, eh?)

So much for the world order! How will the Seyfried clan fare?

Sheridan (65) and Ya-Jhu (also 65) will still be playing and composing, zipping around in supersonic transport to international concert halls in seconds. The average audience attention span will have shrunk to seconds too, so their pieces will, of course, be very brief.

Evan (63) After a storied career as a Naval Officer/Campaign Finance Director/ Phlebotomist/Spelunker, Evan will pursue yet another doctorate, this time in Comparative Universes. Carry on, Ev!

Rose (61) Rose’s 2019 job producing interactive video content will prove prescient. By 2050, she will be CEO of 5 billion one-person companies, each providing compelling original material and interacting with every other company’s shows to beat the band.

Patrick (59) Pat will still be an Executive Chef, but now he will be not just inventing recipes, but creating entire new food groups. Who needs vegetables when you can sauté blergs instead?

Julie (56) Jules will have achieved her dream of owning a bed and breakfast, but she will also still be renting space to Broadway musicals. The resulting clever combo will make it possible for her B&B patrons to be served their morning coffee by Lin Manuel Miranda.

As for my grandchildren (present and future), whatever they do, I predict they will rock it.

Steve and I will be watching this, amused, from Heaven (or so I assume).

That’s my Fast Forward Friday! What’s yours?

If I make it to 94 (according to Aging Booth:-)