Making room, time for a lifetime of memories

It wasn't planned. Kind of shocking really. Our youngest daughter actually said yes to a couple of her kids remaining over a month when she traveled home to Alaska after surprising her dad for his 70th birthday. They are 14 and 11 — David and Natalia.

Having never ventured from their nuclear family, it was a huge decision for everybody. They felt the left-behind bite as their grandpa drove off to the airport with their mom. “Just think — I could have been in that car.”

Just think — now that three weeks have gone by and “could have been” is but an echo. What has replaced it? This morning they caught a hefty garter snake after I yelled for them to “Get out here quick!” No snakes in Alaska, so a definite novelty.

The pond hasn't had bullfrogs in the seven years we've shared living with the couple who owns the property. I was at a loss to explain that strange sound the other evening. David was sure it was the cows in the field below us — I was just as sure it wasn't. Now we all know.

“Grandma, those meatballs were insane.” The ultimate compliment from a teenager. I had to pitch it back — though the meatballs would have elevated me to his dad's culinary achievements. “Thanks — they're Schwan's.” Along with snakes, another thing that doesn't live in Alaska.

A relative visited us at our lakeside camp, and brought with him the fine art of roasting Starburst squares — one of each four colors on a stick. Roll the melt down into a ball for a fruity “marshmallow.” Natalia was iffy on that — but found it so tasty she kept herself supplied with Starbursts the rest of our campout.

David earned his grandpa's highest praise — ”You done good, real good” — after getting greasy under our friend's Jeep in the drive helping install new front suspension. A job that seeped from “today” into “tomorrow” — in sweltering weather. That's a vocab word these Alaskan kids have acquired. Not much reason to use sweltering on the Kenai Peninsula.

Natalia won't forget beating her grandma in not one, not two, not three, not four — but twelve straight games of dice over several days at our camp trailer table. Or the deer she spotted in the next site over. (A moose, that's ordinary if you're raised in Alaska, but not a whitetail.)

I hope she'll remember standing in the big waves of the lake, holding hands, and getting our clothes soaked as they smashed against us. And baking piñata cupcakes for her young cousin's birthday. And helping her grandpa build a new bird feeder stand.

Quality time — and making memories, the good kind — are what I prize. The grands could have gone home to the familiar. Instead they chose something brave and new. A first step to independence — to making more room in themselves for life experiences.

Good for them. (But they do miss their dogs.)