Shel Silverstein – Dear Liza

Dear Liza,

This weekend was the last of our street fairs, and it’s the one closest to us! Just a block down the street we found all sorts of fun things and yummy food.

First off, this character was doing an old-fashioned silly magic act, making balls disappear under cups and pulling coins from behind kids’ ears. It was fun and felt just right.

Street fairs need craft booths, of course, and this one fit the bill! An entire army of six-legged Monster Barbies was walking across the table of this booth. Well-done, certainly. But a bit too creepy for us.

We listened to some good jazz, saw little kids dancing with their dads and watched this lady cook about a million chicken kabobs on her small grill. They smelled heavenly, but we needed a place to sit down and get some shade.

Paradox, the vegetarian restaurant up the street, was just what we needed. Air conditioning, soft seats and smiling folks let us recuperate from the bright street. Lemonade for Grandpa Nelson and fresh, cold carrot juice for Bridgett and me held us until lunch got delivered.

I found a kindred spirit in Sienna, one of the servers! She has a tattoo of one of my favorite illustrations from Shel Silverstein’s “Where the Sidewalk Ends”. This one is called “My Beard”.

My beard grows to my toes

I never wears no clothes

I wraps my hair

Around my bare

And down the road I goes.

The fact that this lady, younger than either of my kids, has memorized one of MY favorite poems, just makes me smile. Poetry is like that, I guess.

We enjoyed our lunch and then spent a little while returning a set of lost keys thanks to the NextDoor website, which let me post pictures of the keys and get notes from people who recognized them. It was amazingly simple and ended up happily for everyone. Hooray for community!

Then, happy, tired and well fed, we headed home.

Love,

Grandma Judy

Dear Liza,

At Tanner’s Spring Park, we all enjoyed the undulating fence made from old railroad rails and the paths paved with ballast from sailing ships.

The Spring itself rises through a paved circle and meanders along tiny streams on its way to the Willamette, creating an environment enjoyed by birds, insects, and lizards, and us! We imagined our characters shrinking to one inch tall and adventuring on the tiny “river” and flying between the tall grasses. My delight in this nature preserve surrounded by glass high-rises must have been contagious.

At lunch time, the kids agreed on sushi. We stopped at Sinju, where the ladies were very accommodating and made Kestrel mango sushi. Though she ended up mostly lunching on the crackers and fruit I had brought along, her roll didn’t go to waste: Jasper enjoyed his California roll AND his sister’s lunch. He’s a growing dragon, after all.

Walking toward the streetcar home, we watched it go by…but no harm done. It went by just in front of Cool Moon Ice Cream! A wonderful snack, Shel Silverstein poems (I always bring books on adventures) and interesting knit cow heads helped pass the time until the next streetcar.

Our energy was starting to fade as we watched the city pass by the windows. Crossing the Tilikum Crossing Bridge, we had incredible views of Mt. Hood with a fresh frosting of snow, rising like a ghost over the east side of Portland.

We switched from the streetcar to the Orange line at OMSI and rode it just one stop down to get off by Books with Pictures. We were all pretty much out of gas. The kids tucked in with books on the beanbag chairs, and I walked home and napped for an hour. Adventuring is exhausting!

Love,

Grandma Judy

Tag: Shel Silverstein

Belmont Street Fair

Another Transit Adventure, Part 2