Today’s find: Cat’s Cradle

Even the simplest of feats can delight a Gramps, I’ve decided…

…nor does it take much for a beloved Old Man to impress a granddaughter – at least, not at this stage of the game.

Those are my two Quick Takes on the 18 hours or so I was blessed to spend with Granddaughter Hannah over the weekend. This much I know for a fact: She’s growing up fast, in a world that changes a lot faster than I’d care to fathom.

Witness the sock-puppets she proudly displayed – the handiwork of her very own industrious hands and self-starter spirit. It seems Hannah had searched out a suitable craft for a seven-year-old…all by herself, on YouTube – and then went to work creating her engaging little characters, with those internet videos as her primary instructor.

Then I discovered Hannah was just getting warmed up. She spent the next 15 minutes or so describing her latest hobby – learning to wield a 3-D pen. I take it to be something like the hand-held version of a 3-D printer – with outputs that actually rise up from the page, to give real form and substance to any of her flights of fancy.

Way to go, Gramps: The Operation was a success!

What a consolation, then, to learn that my archaic, outdated and analog world still holds a few charms to engage the imagination of this Digital Girl. She was mightily impressed, for example, when Gramps managed to repair the hard-wired tweezers on “Operation”…and get the Patient’s battery powered light-bulb-nose to illuminate again.

Best of all, Grandma spent a goodly part of the evening teaching Hannah a bit about string theory – boggling her mind with a few fingertip tricks that could well keep our granddaughter’s questions about quantum physics at bay…at least for a few more years.

An engaging text on String Theory…

“Sticky” knowledge, too, it turns out – this lovingly conveyed string theory: Just imagine how it warmed Gramps’ heart…to see Hannah greet the dawn by whipping out a quick Cat’s Cradle in our living room.

Such a clever girl! Such a joy-filled bearer of God’s promises in my life, and in the lives of everyone she meets!

You spread the table before me…
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.
Only goodness and kindness follow me
    all the days of my life…

All tangled up in pink and purple…and the beauty of God’s promises!

Let us pause now…to recall that we are in the presence of the Holy & Merciful One.

IHS