1+1=11

a marvel

"I'm sorry, I was thinking so hard about something that my ears quit working," I confessed to my granddaughter.
She nodded wisely and knowingly. "Have you noticed that everything is so LOUD when you start to hear again?" she asked.
Dear girl!
It felt wonderful, not only to be graciously forgiven, but also commiserated with in the comforting way comparison can have.
Isn't forgiveness a marvel?

thinking small

My granddaughter had watched me stitching felt rabbits and baby rabbits and more baby rabbits and it occurred to her that since I seemed to be a toy factory, perhaps I was the right person to ask for a dog.
A toy dog of course.
She wanted it to be dark brown, like long ago Charlie.
She wanted it to have puppies.
Puppies that could be born before her eyes and nursed.
I suggested velcro and snap fasteners.
She suggested zippers and magnets.
Amazingly, the very next week I pounced on a package of the worlds smallest magnets at a thrift shop. They needed to be very small to fit inside a tiny puppy face as well as stitched in a row on the mother's side.
I gathered my supplies.
Plotting and planning followed.
A lying down dog seemed necessary.
I snipped and stitched.
And snipped and stitched.
Soon there was a small mother dog, brown like Charlie, and two little puppies that had a magnetic pull towards their mother just as you would expect of puppies.
I was pondering the stomach closure when my granddaughter visited.
I whisked out the dogs with a flourish.
Gadzooks!
She had imagined a toy dog big enough to be a real dog.
I had imagined a toy dog small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.
I had been thinking small.
She had been thinking big.

parts

Sometimes old snippets of songs waft out from where ever they are usually held in cold storage. Yesterday it was a Round I learned in elementary school; Sweetly Sings the Donkey. (By the way, there is nothing sweet about a donkey braying. It could stop your heart.)

Sweetly sings the donkey
At the break of day
If you do not feed him
This is what he'll say
Hee haw, hee haw
Hee haw, hee haw, hee haw.
Hee haw, hee haw
Hee haw, hee haw, hee haw.

Some afternoons, our teacher would stop writing on the blackboard.
She would fix us with a sprightly smile and wave her arm.
Hazah, we were divided into groups.
Group one would launch into song.
Just as they teetered on the brink of the second stanza she would fix her eyes on group two and waving her arm, stir them into action. Sometimes there was even a third group and heaven help us, a forth.
Children all around the room squinted their ears and sang with fervor. They tried not to listen to, in fact, they tried not to even hear the person singing one row over. Listening to the song as it rolled out in waves was a fatal mistake as your voice invariably followed your ears.
That is because Rounds are the musical version of patting your head while rubbing your stomach.

I told my grandson today that it reminds me of politics.
People are all singing their song as loudly as they can.
They are not listening to anyone else if they can possibly help it.

Our teacher always let us sing the song through several times and gradually a second song emerged to our amazed ears. A harmony that went in and around and up and away.

That's the hope isn't it, with politics, that somehow, the very different lyrics will blend and become greater in their sum than their parts.