Where Did July Go?? Or... Our Amazing Grandchildren

 

Where did July go?? The highlights of the month seem to have revolved around grandchildren. No, they did not visit nor did we... but technology is a wonderful thing and we enjoyed a Zoom concert by Kestrel singing and playing guitar and Cedrus accompanying him on the piano... his new piano. The occasion was a request from me for Grandmother's Day (a fictitious holiday I made up). Kestrel sang "Imagine" at my request. He also sang a Portuguese song that he has sung locally at an open mike. Cedrus is simply amazing on the piano and gets more amazing every time we hear him. There must be some incredibly fortuitous combination of musical genes on all sides of the family... generations removed. Those genes skipped right over Johnny and me.

Those same two kids then spent weeks in the Boston area at camps. These were not your ordinary summer camps. Kestrel's was a young writer's workshop at Bard College at Simon's Rock. 

 https://simons-rock.edu/academics/beyond-the-classroom/young-writers-workshop/

Kestrel has been writing novels since he was a little kid. This camp was like a coming out party for 16-year-old Kestrel. The introvert became extroverted and now has many long distance friends from camp and a whole new way of looking at story writing. Plus, he spent every weekend at nearby theaters with others from his camp watching incredibly well-acted plays. One of the plays was the best acted play Kestrel said he has ever seen... the seldom performed Shakespeare play, Henry VI Part 2. He was so inspired that he is now writing "Clyde V" -- in iambic pentameter!

 Plus, on a less happy note, he got Covid. That gave him another set of friends since all the Covid kids (there were 15 of them) were isolated from the rest of the camp for the last week of the three week camp. And Kestrel became friends with all of them. Thanks to modern technology and smart phones, Kestrel is keeping in touch with his new found friends. 

 

Meanwhile Cedrus was at an arts camp, Snow Farm, for two of those same weeks, taking ceramics plus painting and drawing. 

 https://www.snowfarm.org/

 

 

Cedrus, 14, whom I have considered to be an extrovert since birth, tells me that he is an ambivert... and his mother agrees. (I had to look up ambivert.) Whatever, he is extraordinarily good with people and now has a pile of 14-18 year old friends, all of whom were as excited about the arts as is he. I think that was one thing both mostly home-schooled boys were amazed at... how many young people share their passions. Although Cedrus has been drawing and painting forever, he had never done ceramics and was thrilled to learn. And in the drawing and painting side, he said he learned how to create the same thing he has before but in a different way. 

Plus he did a metal smithing workshop where he got to make rings from a sheet of copper with a blowtorch. What young teen wouldn't love that? 

Cedrus is very happy that one of the friends he made at camp lives just 20 minutes away from where he lives in California. (Most of the others were from the Boston and Springfield areas of Massachusetts.) Serendipity! 

Munazza had found and arranged for these incredible camps and accompanied the kids to Boston at the beginning of Kestrel's camp, then hung out with Cedrus for that first week exploring Boston. When Cedrus started camp a week after Kestrel, she flew home. Two weeks later, Steve flew to Boston to accompany the kids back to California. What a busy summer!

Our grandson in Washington is having a busy summer, too. Kevin and Jessica's son has been working all summer for a CPA (and part time during the school year). Ian is a business student at a Univ. of Wash. business school. Just this week he flew to a convention in Las Vegas for an honorary organization he belongs to:

 

 Ian found time (while driving) to phone us when he returned and tell us a bit about his Las Vegas adventure. His chapter of this Accounting Honor Society is from Univ. of Wash. Bothell. Ian is vice president of that chapter. To join a student has to have 3.0 GPA, be in a certain selection of majors, plus have a certain number of community service hours and professional hours. Ian has all of that.

This convention focused on professional development, chapter development, and networking. The University paid for it. Ian graduates in June and will take the CPA exam right after graduation. It is a four part exam that has to be taken all at once... and, he was told, there is a 98% chance that everyone who takes it will fail one part.  Whew.

Ian is my usual partner on treks to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in Ashland, Oregon. However he is so busy now that I've asked him to just find a weekend to come to the farm and hang out with us. Hopefully, he'll be able to squeeze that in before school starts again. In the best of all worlds, Kevin's partner Kellin will be able to come with him. Kellin is an artist and an animal person, especially dogs, something that is much more like me than art or music or business sense! 

Grandkids, my father once told me, stretch us to learn about worlds we never knew existed. How right he was.