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Guest column

Grandma's lesson: Playtime not just for children

By DIANE STEINLE
Published December 27, 2005

In households all over America today, lucky children are playing with the new toys they found under the Christmas tree. I hope they are not playing alone.

When I was a child, I learned something about the value of play from watching a woman in her 70s.

I was reminded of that lesson recently while cleaning out a closet. I pulled out a bag that had rested undisturbed for so long, it was covered with a layer of dust. I upended it on the floor and out tumbled the doll clothes that Grandma Nora had made for me when I was a little girl.

No Barbie clothes, these. They were made for real baby dolls with fat cheeks and round bellies and chubby thighs, and the clothes were as special as they would have been for a real baby.

Frilly pink dresses with layered skirts and satin ribbon sashes around the waist. Crocheted sweaters with matching caps. Tiny knitted booties with tassel ties. The dolls disappeared long ago, but the clothes were made with such care that I couldn't throw them away.

Making doll clothes was a habit Grandma Nora couldn't kick when I got older and lost interest in dolls. New dolls soon appeared in our household that were not offered to me, and the sewing machine clacked for hours as Grandma turned out clothes that fit her dolls perfectly, though she never used a pattern.

She dressed her own dolls as lavishly as she wanted, knowing they would not be subjected to the hard knocks of a little girl's playtime, then placed them safely atop the tall furniture in her bedroom.

Grandma didn't talk to her dolls, or set them up for a tea party, or stuff them in a toy stroller for a ride around the yard, but dressing them up was as much play for her as those other activities had been for me. I had a grandma who played with dolls, and she neither explained nor made excuses for it.

She didn't confine her playing to dolls. It was always easy to buy gifts for Grandma at Christmas, because she loved toys. She even bought her own.

Bad knees, a painful hip and later, a disabling stroke, kept Grandma virtually housebound in the last couple of decades of her life, but that didn't prevent her from shopping for toys. She combed the thick catalogs that came to the house and bought what tickled her fancy.

She was especially fond of battery-operated or mechanical toys that would do something to make her laugh. Balls that zipped around the floor on their own. A monkey that played drums. A stuffed pup that yapped and waddled stiff-legged around the room.

Grandma Nora wasn't into sharing her toys. She kept them in their original boxes in the living room coat closet, and she didn't bring them out for just anyone. Her grandchildren were special to her, so we could play with her toys, but only under her supervision. We would laugh and play together.

I can picture her now, sitting on the sofa while we played, her long mane of silver hair piled into a loose bun on top of her head, her cheeks pink, a big smile deepening the creases in her face.

I understand now that through play, Grandma escaped the infirmities that kept her housebound and forgot the anxieties of growing old. She was able to dwell on the pure pleasure of the moment, just as children do.

After awhile, she would declare it was time to put the toys away. They would go back in their boxes, back in the closet.

"Now," Grandma would say, "how about a game of Chinese checkers?"

I would scramble to set up the board and the marbles, and time would roll by as one senior citizen and one young child shared the joy of play.

--Diane Steinle is the editor of editorials for North Pinellas County. She can be reached by e-mail at steinle@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 27, 2005, 02:30:20]