So when someone teases her, her response is varied.
A strange family trait in the Ward line is something only my dad and I shared, but on our last trip to Reno, I found that Sammy had it too.
I gently put my index finger between her big toe and the skinny next one, and hysterical laughter from her voice begins immediately. She spins. She twists. She squeals. The laughter is contagious.
And then the twisted into her mother's lap and bit Lydia on the arm.
No one found humor in that. But I did. It's about the whole passion thing.
If you can't be completely involved in something like that, why even be bothered? I mean really. Why laugh or twist? Sammy is consumed in the moment. I find my grandchildren fascinating, each one is different, and each has something I love about them.
Sammy has a classic type of single-mindedness, a type the ancients also possessed. Through time, most people don't have that kind of discipline of focus.
It's almost a Greek response, like those who became so caught up in a Bacchanal rite. Running wildly through woodlands and celebrating spring.
A week or so ago, Tommy hurt his arm. He cried because it hurt so badly, and that is not something Tommy does. It must have hurt.
Sammy came to console him. They communicated in simple terms, sometimes one or two-word sentences.
Sammy looked at him in the eye. "Shit," she said. Tommy began laughing immediately.
The hurt was gone. Sammy worked the wonder of a Shaman, working the healing wonder with her brother. In just minutes, tears of pain and sadness because ones of joy. Tears of pain are just as salty as those of sadness, but somehow, they don't sting your eyes as much.
Today, I talked to Lydia--just as she took her kids to the public library in the Reno area.
I had a call come through, while we were talking, and I had to take it. A call from an insurance company is not something you can pass on in today's situation.
I tried to call, but Lydia was most likely on the road.
Here Sammy works on a puzzle, while Tommy and Anna find books. We heard nothing until later that evening.
The next stop was at the Disney store. Sammy was just walking and tripped. It just shows how unexpected things happen, and how they occur so quickly.
I thought maybe she did the sport she loved so dearly to during mealtime, during playtime, during any time she is in a spot where she can get to the highest point possible by taking a series of steps at a time.
But she wasn't She fell after tripping on her foot, which is so strange, because she has been walking since before she was one year old. She is athletic, graceful. She doesn't often trip like that.
It's upsetting to hear about our little sweetheart feeling pain. It took eight stitches, but Sammy is a tough nut.
Her mom was as a child too. All our children were. I like to think I was as well. My Annie often has dental work done without having a shot deaden the gums in her mouth. And my granddaughters remind me of different things about Ann when she was little, at least how I remember her when we both were little and growing up on the same street and attending the same church on Sunday.
In my mind I see Sammy crying after the fall, not because she expressed a lot of pain, but because it scared her and because it probably made her mad.
But one thing for sure, ice cream or frozen yogurt is the way to go to rehabilitate a wound like this. A bandaid covers the spot, where I hope the doctor used fine stitches.
Because according to what I've heard so far, I did a better job as a kid sewing grain sacks that what the guy in the emergency room did.
I hope time heals the wound and covers any scar like it did for me.
Tomorrow will be another day, and hopefully Sammy will decide climbing is not as much fun as she thought, although it might be worth the ice cream. I know she didn't fall from climbing, when she hurt herself, but I worry. It's a parent thing-- a grandparent thing too.
I worry. Therefore, I am.
I know Sammy's Pop Pop would take a good fall for a hot caramel bowl of ice cream, like the ones we once ordered at Snelgroves in Salt Lake City.
But wait, that was a double double my dad and I always ordered, with extra small jugs of hot caramel. My dad liked the hot fudge.
Ice cream was always a weakness in our family. Grandma Liza loved Maple Nut or Banana Nut or Neapolitan ice creams. Dad loved Strawberry, although the first two Grandma Liza liked were my dad's favorites too.
Even when his sugar levels in his blood became too high, my dad would send my son Cles to the basement with several empty bowls.
"Fill 'em really full," he'd whisper. All the while, he'd watch for my mom and hope we could get the deal done, before she returned from some things she did in the next room.
Ice cream works wonders, and I'm glad it did that for Sammy today. I can't stand the thought of the little one's suffering pain like that.For Lydia, we seldom had ice cream, so when she rode her tricycle down a short flight of stairs, there was no treat to smooth thing over.
And when Lydia as a toddler about Sammy's age crawled into a laundry chute and fell ten feet, there was no treat either.
Both times, miraculously she didn't get a bump. There was a blanket at the bottom of the laundry chute to cushion the fall. And the tricycle thing is still a mystery.
Lydia was a tough little nut too.
And for the record, the only thing that changed was her going on a parachuting adventure when she was in her late teens. I could have strangled the kid, who took her on that date.
Oh, and she jumped from bridges too. So Lydia, I'll tell you what my dad told me once about your dare devil antics.
"It's all about getting a taste of something you used to dish out." My dad was talking about karma and not ice cream, and he too worried about some of my adventures.
I will never write about them, because I don't want my children to relive them or think they have to do something more fun.
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