My Coaches Are Three And Four Feet Tall.........

*** My Ohio name is "Ginny," pronounced like that snooty relative of the Irish pound from days of yore, the guinea, which permitted members of the legal and medical professions to charge by the guinea [twenty one shillings], while lesser mortals, like the butcher, the baker and candlestick maker, charged by the pound [twenty shillings], and fractions thereof. Why "Ginny?" you ask? "Grandma" was taken, since the other grandma already had a few grandchildren, and T's first attempts at "Granny" came out sounding like "Ginny," so there you have it....



It's Fall in Ohio. Season of changing leaves. Football season. Although, for little grandsons, any day of the year is football season!

I don't recommend American football for people my age. As a spectator sport, maybe, but certainly not as an activity for those whose idea of a good workout is an hour of Tai Chi. The medication was tinkered with, tweaked this way and that, so that a person could walk again, without limping, and play tennis even. "But only doubles!" the wagging finger cautioned.

That was in my last-week-life. My this-week-life would make the wagging finger blanch. Every day I've been throwing that strangely shaped "ball" with T and B. It's child sized, made of soft rubber, pleasant to throw and catch. Complications don't set in until B nods encouragingly at me and lisps "You can run, Ginny!" after he's thrown and I've caught. Because he knows he can catch me as I try to get by him! Then he jubilantly shouts "Got you! Two hand touch!"

The pair of them, pint-sized coaches, have been schooling me in the finer points of America's favourite game. I know what a "hopper" is now and a "hike" ---not, in this context, a traipse through the woods!


I finally have a glimmer of an idea why those hulking players you see on TV hug the ball to their chests and run like hell, to get it over the touchline. It only counts if they're not tackled....Which is what B dearly loves to do. No matter that he is about three and a half feet tall, and weighs a little more than a third of my weight. He can throw! He can catch! And is completely unacquainted with fear. He takes it on the nose, he takes it on his little pint-sized chest, "I'm okay!" he shouts, lest the game lose momentum.....He "takes a licking and keeps on ticking."



[Here they are, on the weekend, with Dad, M, the biggest footfall fan of all!}

After the first few days I wised up. Having landed, one time too many, with a thump, on the grass, I decided it would be kinder to the aged bones to throw, only. Less chance, that way, of returning to Florida in a body cast! But, as the saying goes, "Good luck with that!"

My resolution was short-lived. Who could resist those limpid blue eyes, looking up pleadingly, from under those sweeping lashes, holding the football and saying "Please, Ginny?"

Today,I've been lying low, sitting inconspicuously in a quiet corner, stitching. It's raining, proof positive that there is a God, and He does look down with mercy on feeble grandmas!

But tomorrow the sun will be out, and I'll be ready, again, to do my coaches' bidding!

Because it's a narrow window here. I know how fast the years and decades tumble by. I'll throw that ball as long as they want me to!