I can’t say when we started calling Grandma and Grandpa’s house “Wamma-Wampa’s”. I imagine it was someone’s early lisping first phrase–a corruption of “Gramma and Grampa’s”. But it caught on and now we rarely call it anything else.
In the past when we’ve visited Wamma-Wampa’s, it’s been at least a half dozen of us–if not throwing in several families together to make a couple dozen. Dozens is the way they come at Grandpa and Grandma’s house. They had a dozen children, and their dozen have been faithful to multiply.
Which is why today’s visit is so unusual. Me and Mom and Dad join Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Ruth to make only a half dozen even. The three of us arrived less than half an hour ago, after the others were already in bed. Mom and Dad found the bedroom in the basement–and I was left to pick my room upstairs.
To pick. Imagine it. To have my choice of the three upstairs rooms (not including the landing). I didn’t have to determine whether it would be best if girls or boys stayed on the landing, who needed to be in the three-person room or the two-person room or the one-or-maybe-two-if-necessary room. I could just pick. I chose the three person room–the room I’m most familiar with.
At many a previous visit, I slept on the short twin bed by the door while Anna and Grace shared the full by the window. Now, I have set myself up on the full bed, just me. The window is open and I know my head will be congested by morning, but for now I don’t care. For now, I’m just enjoying the quiet that isn’t really quiet of the country.
No train whistles, no traffic, no car alarms, no domestic disputes. I can’t make out a single cricket, but the combined music of hundreds forms a pleasing lullaby, begging me to leave behind my city-folk worries and just be a child at Wamma-Wampa’s again.
Alas, in this too, this trip is different. I’m here on break, but not really. I have fifty papers with me to grade, four texts to peruse, and a sheaf of journal articles to review for my thesis proposal. This is a working holiday, and I’ve borrowed my sister’s laptop for the journey.
Which is yet another way that this trip is different. Instead of being unplugged, I’m more “wired” than I ever have been before. With wireless internet throughout the house–I can now blog whenever I please. But I also have to respond to students’ e-mails, input grades on blackboard, and maybe get some research in.
I’m already weighed down with the tasks I have for this weekeng; but I’m wishing, longing, hoping for something beside. I’m hoping that I can take a moment, just a brief breather, to enjoy some sort of holiday. I’m hoping to just once lose sight of all that must be done and spend some time just being.
As life grows busier, it becomes harder and harder to find that place. But if that place can be found, I’m pretty sure, I’ll find it at Wamma-Wampa’s.
