Grandsons and their grandmother's technology

This is something I wrote a few weeks ago and have neglected to publish. My apologies for not keeping this blog up to date.

The following is for entertainment only. Any resemblance to actual persons is completely coincidental (feel better?).Enjoy!

It's the time of year for pictures. Trees have changed the color of the leaves and abandoned a carpet of them along the neighborhood lawns. The very sky has drained itself of its golden light: azure blue in the afternoon; Fabergé pinks at crisp dawn; sherbet oranges melting of a chill sunset. Charcoal geese have ushered in wet clouds the color of slate and through their honking have brought with them the rumor of winter. Sounds have become muted in the damp, cool air. Mothers unfold comfy sweaters from the bottom drawer. The outdoors smell of cedar and of smoke.

College students call home an extra time during these weeks. New moms dress their little boys in all their newest hand-me-downs. They have waited all summer to affirm their assumptions that he'd be a darling version of a little man in a chore coat, and brown leather belt.

Grandmothers everywhere again will take to the task of solving the riddle of their new digital cameras.You've seen them at the city park. They follow the little toddlers around viewing them almost exclusively through the viewfinder on the back of their new cameras. She may stumble unexpectedly as her foot steps from damp, grassy earth into the soft, slow pea gravel. And she'll mutter; or out and out talk to herself or to the camera in her hands as one holds it while the other works buttons on the back and turns a dial on the top. She may appear to be following the camera around, rather than following a possible subject for her photography. She is likely to demand of it, "Now, why won't you let me get back to that one I took earlier?" You may overhear her interject above the camera's silent argument with her, "No, no. You're not going to erase that one." She likely will call out to her daughter, there with her in the park, "This thing won't let me save more than one picture at a time," then ask, "does yours do that?"

Please be kind to these grandmothers. Look out for her safety if you see one. For you may have occasion to find her rebounding repeatedly against an out of the way windbreak wondering aloud "What's this thing doing?" or she may trapped in the corner of the shelter area expressing her bitter disappointment in the down turned camera, "I don't want to be clear over here. Take me back, take me back!"

But, she'll capture those little boys' smiles; the crooked blaze orange hunting cap; the slightly big chore coat and little brown leather belt. And the wind will blow brown paper bag leaves into a pile below the park bench. You'll see less and less of them as the season grows old and dies. They'll be back on one of those warm, false spring days just before February slams the back door and keeps keeps everyone pinned inside for a month. He'll be pulling her along by one hand, while she feels her way along with her feet, scowling as she complains to her newest technological marvel in hand, "No, I don't 'want to delete this image'!"