Holding Little Hands

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For three days last weekend, hundreds of women tramped on the powdery orange surface of a venue which usually hosts livestock shows. We strolled among the booths of Santa’s Workshop, an annual craft fair sponsored by a nearby Junior Women’s Club and held at our local agriculture pavilion.

The $3.00 a person admission supports many good local causes. The club must have made a bundle this year. The parking lot looked more like the scene of a major sporting event than a craft fair. When I started down one aisle to see the booths on either side, I turned around and went the other way. Shoulder to shoulder people were literally blocking my way.

An outing to Santa’s Workshop has become an annual tradition for two of our grandchildren (ages 4 and 6) and their Little (that’s I). On Saturday we sniffed homemade soaps, held wooden toy tractors in our hands, shared a bag of kettle corn, and looked at just about anything an American Girl® doll will ever need — dresses, pajamas, raincoats, shoes, necklaces, beds, and even little rooms.

The same elderly couple who patiently showed our grandchildren how to operate their handmade marionettes last year, did so again this year. The lady who makes four-foot-tall soft sculpture dolls of Mary and Joseph, along with a little baby to place in a manger, let the children play with them again this year, and even remembered that they did the same thing last year.

When the children tired of going up and down aisle after aisle of crafts, we climbed into the purple and yellow stadium seats to look out over the sea of booths below us — grandson on one side, granddaughter on the other, and Little in the middle.

I explained why orange powder was beneath our feet and why red and white drapes stood between the booths and what the announcer really meant about Santa leaving his picture-taking post to go see his reindeer.

It was wonderful.

On Sunday I went back to the craft fair alone to purchase a couple of things I had found the day before. A second trip made more sense than juggling stuff on Saturday, when I much preferred holding two little hands to carrying stuff. I arrived a few minutes before the show opened on Sunday and stood in line behind two ladies I didn’t know. They had come to the craft fair together. The three of us chatted while we waited.

A Little Hand

Let’s call these ladies Gwen and Becky. I didn’t learn their names, so these will do. Gwen was a grandma of an unspecified number of grandchildren two and under. Becky was a grandma wannabe. The two friends talked about the limits of how much they want to include grandchildren in their plans.

Gwen said that during a recent trip, her husband had talked about the possibility of bringing their two-year-old granddaugther along on a similar trip. Gwen had reminded him that they had said that they weren’t going to be ‘that kind of grandparents’ who brought the grandkids along. Her husband also suggested that they rent a house and vacation with their whole family. Gwen said that that was too many people.

As the ladies agreed about their limits, I remembered my own sweet experience the day before. I feel sad about what Gwen is missing. Every moment a mama spends with her child is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. That’s true for grandmas, too.

Among your many blessings to count this Thanksgiving, I hope you will count your many once-in-a-lifetime moments.

. . . always giving thanks for all things in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ to God, even the Father . . . .
Ephesians 5:20

 

 

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