Two years ago I took my four grandkids to a rose garden. We smelled the roses, walked along Lake Superior, ate ice cream, and tossed rocks in the water. Then we did it again last year. So, of course, we had to do it again this year. It’s a tradition now. When my grandkids are grown up and old, they will say to each other, “Remember when Nana took us to the rose garden every summer, and we’d get ice cream then throw rocks in the lake?” Just like I recall my nana taking us to George Webb, Sherman Park, and Capital Drive, and letting us use her galvanized steel wash tubs as swimming pools on hot days.

We arrived at the rose garden, which also has other flowers. We spotted bees slurping nectar. My oldest grandchild took photos of the bees and roses. I took photos of the bees and roses. My other three grandkids watched the bees and smelled the roses. We all love the flowers and bees. I like to refer to bees as pollinators, like it’s a royal title and the bees belong to a noble class. Watching pollinators feed on flowers gives me hope for the world. If you want to help create hope, plant something pollinators like, and make sure it’s pesticide free.

As we smelled the roses, we took care to look for bees before sniffing. We didn’t want our noses stung, or egads, to inhale a bee. We visited the rose garden a couple of weeks later than we normally do, so we missed the peak bloom. But the roses that had waited for us didn’t disappoint.

My grandkids love the functioning water fountain, a focal point in the garden. I handed out pennies for wishes. They splashed their hands in the water. One of them found a small, round, flat stone painted with the message Make a Wish. I think more than one of them would have liked to climb into the fountain. Kids and water just go together. The summer I was twelve, my siblings and I spent three weeks with our grandma Olive. Every day we begged her to take us to Bluegill Lake so we could swim. The fountain in the rose garden was originally located in a different part of the city, where it supplied fresh water for horses in the days before automobiles. Everything changes.

After spending time with the roses, we headed down the Lakewalk, and enjoyed the views of Lake Superior. Later, on our way back, my youngest grandchild stopped at several of the park benches and assessed the views, commenting on each one. Perhaps, he is a budding travel writer.

On our walk from the gardens to the ice cream shop, we always stop at a large stone stage. Flanked with two stout turrets, it has a castle vibe. My grandkids ran across the stage and through the hidden passageways behind it, then suddenly appeared once again. Their laughter and excited shouts to one another rang through the air. I thought about Shakespeare’s famous line, “All the world’s a stage,” followed by his musings about the “seven ages” of life from infancy to old age. I stood on the stage with my grandkids, yet apart from them, separated by several “ages” of life.

The cooing sounds of pigeons who nest in the nooks of a stone wall along the railroad tracks captured the attention of my grandkids. One grandchild was impressed by the range of their colors and the variety of their markings. And the other three started a cooing conversation with the pigeons. I have to say, the cooing sounds my grandkids made were impressive, but finally I said, “What if the pigeons hear your coos as a battle cry and attack?” Yes, you got it, I was thinking about Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. I saw the movie once, years ago, and I’m still miffed Hitchcock killed off Suzanne Pleshette’s character in the movie! She was one of my favorite actors.

If you asked my grandkids what they liked best about our adventure, they would probably say the ice cream. It’s what I would have said when I was their age. The picnic tables at the ice cream shop were new and so was the chocolate mint ice cream used to make my malt. For thirty years I’ve been ordering chocolate mint malts, made with the same minty ice cream filled with thin, flat pieces of dark chocolate. This year the ice cream was a little too minty and the thin, flat pieces of chocolate were replaced by mini chocolate chips. It was good, but not as good as it used to be. Next year I’m going to order a different flavored malt. Maybe I will find a new favorite. The clerk at the shop said they could no longer get the same kind of chocolate mint ice cream. All things change. But don’t ask me to say change is good when it comes to my ice cream. Some wasps hung out with us while we ate our treats. None of us panicked, but neither did we share our ice cream with them.

Our next stop was the lakeshore filled with rocks waiting for my grandkids to toss them back into the water. Now that they are older, they try to skip the rocks across the water instead of just throwing them. I planned to let them stay ten minutes, maybe fifteen, but they were having so much fun with each other. I watched them toss rocks, look for agates and beach glass, and play with driftwood, and suddenly I could see my siblings and myself on the sandy shores of Bluegill Lake seining for minnows, building sand castles, and floating on inner tubes in the water. I marveled at how long ago that was and yet how quickly the years had passed — in the snap of a finger. We stayed for more than a half hour. This was the best part of my day. Because while my grandkids on the beach had no idea how quickly time would slip by, I did.