BORING FAMILY GATHERINGS?
SPLIT A GUT – OR SOMETHING
Journal of Healing – March 5, 2003
By Mary Koch

How do you play host to five teen-agers for an entire afternoon without boring them to death? The question nagged at me all week as we prepared for a family gathering that would include our five teen-aged grandchildren.

Entertaining the grandchildren used to be easy. We had a big, old pool table that made a thundering sound every time a ball fell into a pocket. That table was a noisy source of amusement for years.

After my husband's stroke, the pool table was removed to make room for two wheelchairs, a hospital bed and a Hoyer lift. I suppose the kids could have dreamed up some entertainment using the Hoyer lift, but we did not encourage that.

I'll admit, I'm sensitive about my husband's relationship with his grandchildren. These are the years John expected to actively enjoy the grandkids — skiing with them in the winter, jumping in the river with them in summer. He hadn't planned on being a mute spectator from a wheelchair.

With each family gathering, I figure we're building memories. I wonder what those memories will be 30 or 40 years from now. What stories will be told about visits to Grandpa Andrist?

* * *

MY OLDER SISTER tells of visits with our Swedish grandfather, whom I barely remember. She recalls how Grandpa and his pals would sit on the front porch in companionable silence. Finally, one of the old gentlemen would break the silence with the observation, "Dat's de vay she gose."

More silence. Then a pithy response: "Yah, you betcha."

My sister's excruciating boredom makes for an amusing family story now, but I definitely don't want visits to our house to go down in the grandchildren's memory banks as their Most Boring Events of childhood.

That's why, by the morning of the gathering, I'd reached a state of high anxiety. I'd prepared one or two questions to ask each teen, hoping to get them to open up about themselves with more than a monosyllabic answer.

Food, of course, is always a good entertainment for teens. I figured it would take them up to 16 minutes to ravage the buffet table, leaving us only four hours and 44 minutes to fill with activity.

* * *

DESPERATE, I CALLED the father of three of the teens.

"How do you keep five teen-agers from being totally bored for an afternoon?" I asked.

"I've often wondered the same thing myself," he answered wryly. My weak laughter told him I was serious.

"We'll think of something," he promised. And he and his fellow parents did — a solution so deliciously simple, so old-fashioned, I'm surprised my Swedish grandfather never thought of it.

The grandchildren were handed axes and dispatched in the direction of our woodpile. Who knows? For teen-agers today, maybe splitting wood is an exotic experience.

All I know is, an afternoon of teen energy resulted in a shoulder-high pile of split wood, neatly stacked on ol' gramps' and granny's front porch. (I'm kidding. Any kid calls me "granny" is gonna get smacked, and it's just too bad about their memory banks.)

"How long will that last you?" one of the boys asked, beaming with pride.

"Whew," I answered. "Probably into next winter."

He looked a little disappointed, perhaps wondering how he'll entertain himself on visits this summer.

Memo to myself: Order another cord of wood before the next family gathering.