The children are excited because tomorrow Grandma comes to stay.

She’ll only be here a few days. Just long enough, she says, to shake off the respectability of her apartment block and get the feel of city pavements out of her feet.

And while she’s with us, she won’t stray beyond the grassy track between the field and the ravine. For Grandma can no longer walk through our British Columbia woods, or climb the hills that overlook the sea. And yet, to us, she seems so young and so alive.

That’s the gift she brings our household – a share in her zest for life, and in her deep delight at the wonders of the natural world.

With Grandma, the children have stood beneath the cherry trees while the blossoms drifted down “like gentle snow.” Or waited, breathlessly, at the big east window for the magic moment when a winter sun would “climb over the edge of the world.”

How their minds are quickened by Grandma’s simple but vivid turns of speech. She makes the unknown clear and bright, and gives a freshness to the familiar by phrases like “golden as a dandelion”, “clammy as a frog”, “softer than a pussy willow.” “Cheeky as a bluejay,” Grandma will brand an uppish child. “You smell sweet as Balm of Gilead,” she’ll whisper to another who comes scrubbed and shining to the table.

Yes, Grandma makes the great out doors seem very close and real. And while her monthly visits last, each day holds some unexpected pleasure. She may beckon a child to tiptoe to a window, for a red-crested woodpecker is clinging to the radio pole, listening and tapping by turns. Or a squirrel’s scolding by the maple tree. If one were to creep out quietly he might still be there, busily cracking the light-winged seeds.

There’s no end to the sounds that Grandma hears as she wanders through the orchard. A raven’s croaking up the ravine, and somewhere in the bushes a cock pheasant calling. That harsh voice belongs to a heron. Likely, he’s been wading with his long legs in the shallows of the creek. There’s a kingfisher down there, too. Grandma heard his rattling cry awhile back. Chances are he has some favourite tree overhanging a deep pool, and such a splash he makes as he dives! And that’s a killdeer shrilling plaintively in the next field. If you go there, it’ll flutter a few feet ahead of you, trying to lead you from the nest hidden where the sweet spring grass is growing. Four eggs there are, maybe, so like the ground you’ll almost step on them. But you mustn’t touch or go too often or the bird will leave the nest.

You see, Grandma has the knack of making birds seem human, of translating their activities into the understandable business of eating, raising families and avoiding danger. She’s not fooled by their tricks, either. Those wood pigeons, cooing so innocently, are waiting for a chance to raid the cherry tree, for a pigeon loves sweet cherries as a jay loves ripe corn and fresh young walnuts.

The idea of their naughtiness fills the children with delight. They feel the same way when Grandma shows them the wickedness of weeds – the pale roots of the twitchgrass creeping underground, the hooked seeds of the burdock, and the lightness of thistledown floating in over the fence.

Always Grandma has great respect for the resourcefulness of Nature. She’s never too hurried to admire the protective colouring of an insect, the ingenuity of an energetic ant, or the crinkled miracle of an unfolding leaf-bud.

It was from Grandma, too, that the children first learned the pattern of the seasons, their continuity and endless repetition. Such-and-such would happen, Grandma’d say, when the hummingbirds came back from the South. “No bonfires yet,” she warned, one summer day. “Not till there’s frost in the morning and the maple leaves are deep enough for scuffling.”

For Grandma knows about the fun of scuffling in the leaves on a golden October afternoon, She and her brothers and sisters did it half a century ago.

“We hadn’t any expensive toys as you have,” she tells the children. “we weren’t near stores with comic books and candies and ice cream. Of course we had no picture shows or radio. So we made out own fun at home or found it out of doors,”

It’s a theme which Grandma often discusses after the children are in bed. It grieves her to see how dependent many youngsters are on the man-made pleasures of today. She’s genuinely appalled by the false values of most movies, radio and comic strips. They’re quite incapable, she feels, of laying the foundation for a contented constructive adult life.

“I’m not a rich women,” Grandma ends softly. “so I can’t leave the children any worldly wealth. But if I can show them the ways of Nature, and make them consciously aware of birds and plants and trees, their lives will never be commonplace. They’ll have a sense of permanence and stability. And no matter where they go, they’ll find others who speak the same language.”

Ruth Enke Chambers