Imagination by Merrillee Whren

This week I'm staying with my daughter in anticipation of my second grandchild's birth. While I'm here, I've been playing with my three-year-old granddaughter. She has a vivid imagination. So we are constantly playing with imaginary friends and imaginary animals. The writer in me wonders whether she will one day follow in my footsteps and put her imagination to work writing fiction. Long before I ever thought about writing stories to sell, I made up stories in my head. I played with imaginary friends and had imaginary conversations.

These days I still make up people who have conversations in my head. I count it a privilege to share these people with readers as I write books.

How do you use your imagination?

The Things we Do for Love (or grandchildren)

Carolyne Aarsen

Ever since my children were little I wanted a play center for them. Something they could climb up and slide down and in general be busy enough with to let me get a few things done. But finances and time conspired against us and them and they had to content themselves with a large metal swing set my husband made out of leftover pipe stem. It worked and was used endlessly. That and the tractor tire sandbox. Then for awhile, the swings lay still until the grandchildren came. They love the swing set and can spend hours being pushed back and forth. But now we have a bit more money and a bit more time and, well, it's grandchildren, right? So off I go to our local Ag Center in the hamlet and order a play center. Then my husband and I spent an entire day putting it together. It got finished tonight after the grandchildren were in bed and tomorrow they can climb and slide and swing and play. And maybe I can get a few things done, though I doubt I will try. It's too much fun watching the grandchildren playing. Something else I didn't always have a lot of time to do when my children were little.

Swimming lessons

As a relatively new grandmother, I can't keep from sharing news of my sweet little granddaughter. I'm always anticipating the next time I get to see her because she lives much too far away. Right now it is seventeen days and counting. It is tough to have so much distance between us. Since we have a swimming pool, and her parents have a swimming pool, her mom and dad have enrolled her in a safety swimming course for toddlers. Her dad was a bit skeptical about whether, at sixteen months, she would even understand what the instructors were trying to teach her about staying afloat if she accidentally fell into the pool. But even though, she cried at her first lesson, her dad's now a believer after he saw her holding onto the bar at the side of the pool by herself.

Here is a photo of my granddaughter in our pool with her mother when they were visiting a year ago. She was already enjoying the pool.



I'm pleased that she is learning some pool safety, even at a young age. Of course, there is no substitute for adult vigilance and safety alarms when it comes to swimming pools and little kids, but it eases my mind that she would know what to do if she fell in. I still remember taking my two girls for swimming lessons when they were still babies because we had a swimming pool. I'm thankful that they learned to swim at a very early age.

When did you learn to swim?