Sylvia's Journal

Faro’s ‘Opanoma’ vacation has come and gone. Opa and Oma are our grandparents names – to distinguish us from the other two sets of grandparents he has (Grammi and pep in Beverly and Gramps and Amma I Manchester). 

Faro was delivered to us the Saturday before camp and stayed behind when dad and sister left on Sunday afternoon to return home. He was a little sad the next morning.

We did what grandparents do: we spoiled him, somewhat to the dismay of his parents who disapproved mostly in the food department. 

We quickly slide into our roles for the week: Axel was responsible for stories and beach activities, I ran the breakfast and lunch department. We shared the drop off and pick up to and from the Audubon camp in Ipswich. Let year Axel was responsible for nearly everything when I was still employed. I had a new appreciation for how much work was involved in creating a successful into ‘Opanoma’ vacation. 

Breakfast and lunch always included something chocolate (chocolate milk, hagelslag (a Dutch invention), and a dollop of chocolate whipped cream from a can on top of the pancake or waffle. Every morning I prepared (from scratch) at least a pint of chocolate milk. During story time Faro had learned about the concept of ‘counterfeit,’ from a Hardy brothers adventure Axel read to him before bedtime. After inspecting the milk, and after a thumbs up that it was not counterfeit, I poured the chocolate milk into the Roy Rogers thermos that fit neatly into Opa’s, somewhat rusted, Roy Rogers lunchbox.

After camp pick up Faro quickly changed into beach gear and rushed off with his water wings and snorkel to check on the crabs, unless there was another activity, such as the pretend Beatles concert in Masconomo park. I would not be surprised if Faro knew more about the Beatles than any of the teenagers. He knew songs we didn’t even know. An ice-cream (M&M) was unavoidable, what with the ice cream story right there. Two days later we went to another concert on Castle Hill in Ipswich where we met up with friends, another opa and oma and their daughter, son in law and two grandchildren.

On the other nights we watched Shaun the Sheep’s naughty adventures, a claymation movie, which gets Far in stitches, no matter how often he has seen it. After that sleep came quickly.