Simple fun and kids enrich life

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

When Xena, the cousin I love, was here, before she grew up and met the boyfriend she loves, we would walk from my house all the way downtown, then home again.

She was 11 that summer and couldn't read. And no one had known. She'd buffaloed her teachers and her parents and everyone else. She had listened, observed and pretended to read. It was her fifth-grade teacher who finally realized that she couldn't.

I signed her up for a summer reading course and she packed her bags and came to live with me for six weeks. It was the best time. Mornings she went to school but afternoons and evenings she was all mine. We went to the beach. We ate clam dip and played Spit, a card game she always won. I introduced her to horror movies - "The Birds" and "Psycho." And we walked every day all over town, talking, laughing, telling stories and playing the spelling game.

In the beginning, she couldn't spell at all. But she learned fast. Every day we repeated our steps and I repeated the words and pretty soon I couldn't trick her. "Train," I'd say. "T-R-A-I-N," she'd answer. "Rain," I'd say next. "R-A-I-N." "Stain." "S-T-A-I-N." "Plane - the kind that flies," I'd throw in. And she'd get it right. "P-L-A-N-E," she'd say, smiling, pleased with herself.

We read signs and banners, bumper stickers and menus and it was fun, all of it, the reading, the spelling, the walking. I felt like Big Bird parading down the street, running into people I knew and introducing them to Xena because always the person would nod and smile and say something like, "Hope to see you again," polite, just like on "Sesame Street."

"Who are the people in your neighborhood," Xena and I would sing, making up the words. That summer passed this way, one day leading into the next.

It ended too soon and Xena went home. And though she came back the next year and we walked again, she didn't stay as long and we didn't walk as much. And we didn't play the spelling game anymore because by then she could spell and read anything.

Now Xena is 17 and the boyfriend is her world and I understand. It happens. Kids grow up. And childhood gets left behind.

Earlier this week, I walked another child downtown for the first time - my new granddaughter, just 12 weeks old.

We stopped at Dr. Batchelder's and he said, "Good to see you" and "She's beautiful." Then we stopped at the Canton Citizen to see my friend, Beth, and her friend, Rosemary, and they fussed over Lucy, too. Then on we walked to my husband's office.- Then to the hairdresser where everyone knows everyone and makes a big deal out of everything. Then to the baker who said, "Lucy looks just like her mother." Then we ran into my favorite postal clerk.

As we headed for home, we walked past the high school at the exact time the kids got out.

And I found myself feeling like Big Bird again, happy in a kid sort of way. Happy for the moment, just to be. Happy to be pushing a baby carriage, to be outside on a perfect September day. Happy to be able to ring a bell or open a door and be welcomed by someone I know and invited inside.

That summer with Xena didn't seem special at the time. I would like to have taken her to Disney World instead of taking her to school every day.

But it turned out to be the best summer for both of us. Life's surprising like that. Things that are supposed to mean everything can end up meaning nothing. And sometimes the simplest things can become grand.