GRAND Magazine - November/December 2008 - 16

grand central http://omasally. blogspot.com/ The magic of lost teeth On my last visit to see my granddaughters, I shared in the joy of Juliet’s excitement over losing her front tooth. It had been loose for weeks, and while I was there my daughter gave it a little tug and out it came. Juliet placed her precious “baby tooth” in the pocket of a pink gingham pillow embroidered with “For the Tooth Fairy.” The pillow had belonged to my daughter, and she’d saved it to pass on to her children. Juliet was so excited she could hardly fall asleep. (She also had a fever, which may have had something to do with her restlessness.) The next morning she came running in to see me. “Look what the Tooth Fairy brought me, BaBa!” she said and held up The Tooth Fairy Book, by Deborah Kovacs and Laura Lydecker, which my daughter had found online. The book tells of the world of Tooth Fairies and what becomes of lost teeth. It includes sayings, riddles and stories of different traditions about lost teeth. The book also comes with a velvet pouch for a child to put her tooth in before placing it under her pillow, and a journal to record the child’s experience of losing her first teeth, and pages on which to place “before” and “after” pictures. When Juliet went to school that morning, her teacher took one look at her and said, “You have a window in your smile!”—Donne Davis http://gagasisterhood.com Super Granny I was outside the NYU Medical Center in Manhattan recently when I saw two children, about 10 and 11, with an elderly man who looked as if he was about to keel over—he was lurching sideways. As I stopped to help, the younger child, a boy, asked me if I had a phone. I took out the phone with one hand and gave it to him. Meanwhile I reached out and held up the man to keep him from falling. The girl dialed a number but it didn’t go through. Neither of the children seemed to speak very much English, and the elderly man wasn’t speaking at all. With the help of another passerby and an attendant we got the man, who turned out to be the children’s grandfather, into a wheelchair, and the attendants took him to the Emergency Room. The three had been visiting the grandmother, a patient in the hospital, and when they came out the grandfather apparently had a stroke…. I felt really bad for this family, wondering how the children would get home, who would be there to take care of them, and how they would deal with the trauma of seeing their (continued on pg. 18) One happy iSland There are very few situations that would compel a grandfather like me to order a mai tai with a tiny paper umbrella floating around on a chunk of pineapple. But there I was, in an open cabana at Aruba’s Bucuti Beach Resort doing just that. I blame the tranquility. Aruba is an island of silvery beaches surrounded by the aquatoned waters of the Caribbean, and Bucuti is the island’s exotic retreat. I like that it’s a relatively small hotel with its facilities an integral part of the island theme, including the open-air Pirate’s Nest Restaurant, built in the style of a 16th-century sailing ship. The rooms and suites, in tones of sand and walnut, offer king-sized beds, full bars, microwave ovens, coffeemakers and free wireless computer connections. For all of the activities available to tourists in the hacienda-style resort, life moves at the slow, easy pace of an iguana. Serenity is the word of the day, romance the mood of the night. —Al Martinez Avital, OR Allisa, NM Brandon, NJ Brayden, NY Ella, New Mexico Cristian & Jasmine, CA 16 GRAND NOVEMBER DECEMBER 2008

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GRAND Magazine - November/December 2008

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of GRAND Magazine - November/December 2008