Conversing with Little Gobblets

We were all hanging out in the kitchen: Yeh Yeh (Grandpa) was making his special blueberry pancakes breakfast with yogurt and fresh berries and maple syrup, and Oliver had pulled himself up onto the kitchen island by his elbows to explain the finer points of a game called Gobblets, a game of strategy not unlike tic-tac-toe.


"First, we do rochambeau to see who goes first," Oliver said. 


"Okay," I agreed.


"Once, twice, thrice," I chanted, as my mother had taught me a good fifty years before.


"It's not once, twice, thrice," Oliver corrected. "It's rochambeau." He shook his head, as if having to explain something to a child much younger than himself, say a three-year-old.


"When I learned, it was once, twice, thrice," I said, feeling ancient, "But, let's just say rochambeau."


We counted off and I threw rock. Oliver instantly formed something that looked like a peaked roof with his hands raised at eye level.


"Volcano!" he crowed. "Volcano beats everything."


"Volcano? What do you mean volcano?" I asked. "There's no volcano in rochambeau." 


"Well, let's say there is."


"Let's say you throw lava," Oliver elaborated, making a wavy motion with his hands. "Volcano would beat lava."


"Or dinosaur," Maggie suggested. "Volcano would definitely beat dinosaur."


"I see your point," I said. "Why don't you just go first, Ollie."

*

"How about a game of I Spy?" I suggested later as we drove towards the politically themed Bread and Puppet Museum in Glover, Vermont. "Maggie can go first."

"I spy with my little eye something blue," Maggie said,

"Is it in the car?" asked Oliver.

"Yes, it's in the car."

"Is it Yeh Yeh's shirt?"

"No."

"Is it Maggie's fleece?" I guessed.

"No."

"Is it the cover of the Map of Vermont?" Yeh Yeh tried.

"No."

"Is it the sky?" I said absently.

"No, in the car," said Maggie.

After a few more rounds of incorrect guesses, it was determined that what Maggie had spied was a thin line of blue writing on an envelope just barely visible poking out from behind the sun visor on the passenger side.

"Are the puppets we're going to see scary?" Oliver wanted to know. 

"I think some of them could be scary," I said, "But, I've never actually seen them. They're pretty big."

"How big?" Maggie asked.

"I'm not sure," I said, not realizing that some of the puppets are actually 15 feet high, described as some of the largest puppets in the world.

"What if I don't actually want to go in?" Oliver asked a few minutes later.

"What if I just want to peek inside from the front door to see if they're scary, and not actually go deep into the heart of the museum?"

"That's fine," said Yeh Yeh reassuringly. "You don't have to go in at all. You and I can wait outside while Maggie and Amy go in."

"But, if I change my mind, can I still go in?"

"Of course," we said.

"It's okay, Ollie, if you don't want to," Maggie said.

"Just because I don't want to doesn't mean I'm not brave," Oliver said emphatically.

"Of course not," we said. 

"Because I am brave."

"You're a brave warrior," said Yeh Yeh. "Like me."

We all peeked inside the entrance of the Bread and Puppet Museum which was housed in a large old barn with a wide-planked wooden floor. An elderly woman, her long white hair pulled back, wearing an apron, long skirt, faded lavender blouse and black shoes greeted us and suggested we might particularly like to see a flying pig puppet. She had wisely deduced that some of us might be feeling a bit timid.

"See?" she said, as she rapped gently on a large puppet face. "They're all made of papier mache - paper. There are some interesting ones down this aisle," she smiled at Oliver.

The puppets were thrilling and frightening and brilliant. The Bread and Puppet troupe, which performed in New York City during the Vietnam Era, travels throughout New York and Vermont, participating in parades and performing live theatre. We found the flying pink pig and then Ollie and Yeh Yeh waited while Maggie and I tiptoed upstairs to where the truly GINORMOUS puppets were.

"It's okay, Ollie," Maggie called down to her brother. "They're not too scary. You can come up."

So, Ollie and his grandfather joined us, Ollie safely ensconced in his grandfather's arms, and we explored and touched cautiously and imagined what it all might mean, and told stories. We spied George Washington and Benjamin Franklin and the Devil.

"Let's go now," Ollie said.

"We were all brave," said Maggie.

"We were all brave warriors," Yeh Yeh echoed.