Grandma, again

My daughter had another baby - her last. She's forty, so that's a good thing. We had a girl, Amelia Catherine. Her 104-year-old great-grandmother's name is Catherine, and Amelia is the ninth great-grandchild, and the first namesake. That's a wonderful thing. I've been a grandmother for two years now, so I probably have a handle on it, you might think. But with each new stage of development of my grandson, I have to learn new skills, so no, I don't. Besides, I'm a terrible pushover. I never was any good at boundaries and sticking to the rules. It's a wonder my kids survived me, and I'm probably worse with my grandson, and will be even worse with my granddaughter, no doubt. But this isn't about that (although maybe I should give all that some thought and write about it). It's about this:

Here’s what I perceive to be the difference between philosophy about child rearing today and yesterday: Formerly, doctors encouraged mothers to take care of themselves first over their newborns, believing that a rested, well-fed mother was the best mother. It mirrored the oxygen mask over your face first, THEN take care of others. It wasn’t that babies were ignored, it was just that their needs came second in the knowledge that babies will often get what they need, if not always what they want, because they are pretty demanding. And cute.

Today, so much science has gone into child development and so much is known about infants and their needs in order to provide the baby with the optimum experience in order to give it all the advantages it can have, keep it safe from any health hazards, and nurture it into an extraordinary being with superior brain power. In the meantime, Mom has been put on the back burner. She is supposed to do everything to give her baby every advantage. If she doesn’t she’s a bad mother.

There has to be a happy medium. We don’t know yet if these extremely well-cared for, 24/7 monitored, climate controlled, organically diapered, sufficiently stimulated infants and toddlers with just the right amount of play dates and educational toys are going to be happier, more well-adjusted people or if they are going to wonder what the hell happened when all the focus is no longer on them. Would a little benign neglect help them to get a glimpse of the real world and allow them to become a little more resourceful? But more to the point, would Mom taking some time for herself, maybe briefly ignoring the optimum experience for the baby/toddler, and settling for “good enough” help her to be a less-stressed person? How is all this anxiety caused by trying to do everything perfectly so as to not fail your baby helping either one of you? There's so much focus on the child now, I'm wondering about Mom. How is she doing? Maybe we need to ask.

I see I haven't entered a blog post this year, and it's almost half over! 

I signed up for a college online class on writing - free - from the University of Iowa, and the assignments are coming hot ant heavy, and I'm writing fiction, but this last assignment was to write about immigration - really just moving from one place (physically or psychologically) to another - perhaps to a place of awareness, greater understanding, more acceptance, or actually to a new place and all that implies. I've done that - several times, and I don't know whether to just pull out one of the pieces I wrote about moving or to tackle something heavier. Still debating. In the meantime, I wrote one article about being a grandma:

We had waited so long, and it didn’t seem like it was going to happen, so I decided to adjust to the reality facing me. Driving to work one morning, I just let the tears roll down my cheeks; I wasn’t going to be a grandmother. It wasn’t the end of the world; I had two amazing grown kids and they were happily married to people who loved them to death, so they would be fine. So would I, I assured myself.

“But I would have been so good at it!” I wailed to my disinterested windshield.

So, it was settled; move on. Count your blessings. So what if most of the people you know have already had grandchildren? Some of them, I might add, had great-grandchildren; such was the plight of a couple who marries in their late twenties and has their last baby in their late thirties, eight years after their first. As it was, we were asked at a PTA meeting when our “baby” girl was in elementary school, “Oh, are you Corey’s grandparents?” The woman had the good grace to apologize when we set her straight, but we had a reminder that we were very late to the party. Lateness catches up with all of us.

The older one, the boy child, made it perfectly clear from day one, he was not having children. Sorry Mom, sorry Dad, no kids for this one. Too selfish, too much wander lust. We had put pins in all the places he had been all over the world; we believed him.

But our girl? She loved being in charge, loved playing school, and then loved being a teacher and always seemed that she would be the one to have children. It wasn’t that she was saying she wouldn’t, she was pretty tight lipped about that stuff. But there was the miscarriage earlier in her marriage, and I figured she didn’t want to put herself through the emotional roller coaster again. Besides, they were in debt and kept talking about wanting to owe no one. I’m familiar with the concept, but never managed to accomplish that goal myself, and I was in my seventies at that point. Seventy-five, to be exact.

So Christmas came and we went to spend it with our children in north-central Florida since their coming to us was impossible; we were in a one-bedroom apartment in a senior citizen community. We had fun, of course; both of my kids and their spouses are uniquely delightful people, their friends are nice, and we felt welcome in our daughter’s home. We even had our own bedroom.

Fairly late on Christmas night we were settled down ready to go to sleep when we heard a light tapping on the door. I got up and answered it and my daughter and her husband were standing there with a gift bag.

“We forgot to give you this,” Doug said. Corey flipped on the overhead light.

“It can wait until tomorrow,” I said, squinting into the now lighted room, “You don’t have to do it now.”

“Mom.” I know that tone, very well, so I acquiesced.

I peered into the gift bag and pulled out a very, very tiny onesie that was emblazoned with the words, “Our family makes cute babies.” Not as quick on the uptake as I wish I was, I was confused for a second or two before the synapses kicked in and I got it. We WERE going to be grandparents, after all.

We scrambled. No way, after all the fussing I had done about not being a grandma, was I going to not be nearby for every minute of it. And she wanted us there. She made that very clear. As it was, she went into labor when we had but a week to go to move lock, stock, and barrel after selling our place, all our furniture and packing up our U-Haul. So we abandoned our nearly finished project and took off to be there for his birth. They hadn’t wanted to know the baby’s gender, so it was a surprise to everyone, and he was glorious and perfect and my daughter was a trooper and looked like she was going to be the most amazing mom with a very involved dad.

We rushed back to south Florida, gathered up our U-Haul, said good-bye to our friends a second time, and moved into a place our son rented for us to be close. Seven minutes from her house to our house.

So began my life as a grandmother.

Can I back up?

My mother and father lived near me, too, when I had my first, and I went to her for...everything. When she would take our son, I handed him over with relief. He’s yours, now. Do with him what you like; I trust you to know what’s best. All I wanted was some time to myself, and all she wanted was time with her grandson; it was a perfect fit. I had Doctor Spock, dog-eared, and my mother. I wasn’t confident, actually, but I wasn’t terribly anxious. If others had done it, so could I, right? Made sense to me.

It was before the Internet, you get that, right? My mother knew everything, since she knew more than I did, and what she didn’t know, we relied on Dr. Spock and the pediatrician to know. Somehow we made it more or less intact. Cloth diapers and rubber pants, Tide detergent, slept on his tummy, took a bottle with him to bed, slept when he was sleepy, ate when he was hungry, and played on his own or with neighbor kids. He didn’t even go to regular kindergarten.

No arranged play dates, no special activities sessions, no parks with chopped up rubber tires as a bed, no sleep science, no organic food, no child restraint car seats, no organic diapers, no sensitive skin detergent, no sun block. Probably watched too much TV, unmonitored for age-appropriate material. His sister, our new mother, fared not a whole lot better. Pampers were available by then, but mostly everything else was the same, except my mother got sick when I was pregnant with her, and by the time my little girl was almost five years old, her grandmother died—cancer.

I never spent enough time telling my mother that no way could I have done it without her and how scared I was to finish raising this little girl without her. I hated it that she would not be there for her grandson, the apple of her eye (I understand now) who was just 12 at the time and would go on to do all kinds of amazing things that would have lit up her eyes with joy. Maybe remembering how I felt when she died was part of my sadness when I thought I would never be a grandmother, who knows?

Anyway, fast forward. Like I said, he is amazing, my grandbaby, and at 22 months he loves his Nana and she is over the moon about him.

So, I’m having a conversation with a friend.

“How’s it going with you and Corey?”

“Good...”

“Do I hear some hesitation in there?”

“Well, you know, everything is different now. I’m not the authority ... on anything, actually. It’s as if I didn’t raise her brother and her and keep them from certain death and dismemberment. Now I know nothing.”

“Seriously?”

“Well, it feels that way.”

I am a retired psycho-therapist. I listened to people talking just like I was talking. My comments were feelings of inadequacy, of powerlessness. I felt shoved aside, stupid. My feeling was valid, if unsupported by facts.

That night I went to bed remembering a particular session I had with a young woman going through some feelings of inadequacy herself. Her insecurity had to do with her job. She felt unappreciated; she stepped up and filled in where needed, she stayed late when someone was needed because she didn’t have children at home and her co-workers did. No one seemed to notice. I had a sign on my desk, “Start where the client is.” We all have a tendency to get a person to where we want them to be—to help them see that there is a way to take action that will help them to feel in control that will alleviate those feeling of being overlooked and undervalued. We want to offer reasonable, but perfectly meaningless, platitudes when what we have to do is validate the person’s feelings in the moment and help them move forward when they are ready.

I imagined that my daughter was in a therapist’s office telling the professional that her mother was snarky with her because she, the baby’s mother, wanted things done a certain way, based on all the new science available about parenting and sleep patterns and screen time and sugar and, and, and. Oh, and KNOWING HER BABY. So, maybe she wanted to not hurt her mother’s feelings; she depended on her after all, and her baby, now growing into a little boy, loved his nana. And it was clear his nana would throw herself in front of a speeding train to save this child. But Nana was prickly about “the schedule,” looked askance at the rules about no screen time before naptime, got a bemused look on her face when she heard complaints that he only got nine hours sleep last night and he needed to have twelve.

“I know she thinks it’s no big deal,” I can hear her saying; “I know things were different for her, but I feel like I need to try to use all the expert advice I can. People spend a lot of time working all this stuff out; there’s science behind it, and she dismisses it.”

I’m imagining she’s saying these things, but I have a good imagination.

Then I realize: I need to meet my daughter where she is. I need to join her in this parenting thing. I need to get online and read what she reads; it will be a way we can connect and stop being at odds. Just because I may think some of it is overdone and silly, and honestly I may still think that, but I owe her the effort. Who knows, I may learn something.
Wish me luck.

Bryn Donovan - A New Blog I'm Reading

I am reading a blogger/writer, Bryn Donovan - "tell your stories, love your life."  I hope you will check her out, maybe even especially if you need some motivation to get busy and write.

Her latest blog was about how she confronted someone who was being offensive with a racist comment.  To confront is the courageous thing, the right thing, to do in order to be true to one's own values. To not confront that kind of rudeness, especially when the comment is so blatantly racist or misogynistic is cowardly, but for sure I've walked away from horrible comments from people who were being a jerk. Keeping the peace, I tell myself.

But then I realized, I can be a jerk, too.  And this is what I told Bryn:

Thank you for your candid reveal.  Your piece spoke to me, for sure, because I try really hard to be aware of when I'm caring too much what other people think and working hard to make sure they think the best of me.  One of my incidents happened when I hosted a book club/luncheon meeting at my house.  We had only met once before, so none of these ladies were friends yet, which probably made it worse - a friend would have told me to not try so hard.  But I did try - I made everything from scratch and worried that it would be great, and when I put it out for the five or six of them to come fill their plates, I said, "It's all homemade, you can be sure of that!"   No one commented on my stupid statement, and I realized in the silence that in fact we had met, as I said, at one other person's home and she had served quiches - two of them, and I'm sure they were supermarket quiches, and honestly very good.  I was being a jerk.  Who cares whether you make everything "homemade?"  How did that make the other hostess of book club feel?  When I think about it, I still feel ashamed of myself.  No matter how many times I have defended someone (President Obama comes to mind - the jokes that I heard about him made me seethe, and all I could say is that I didn't appreciate them, thank you) or  defended a race or an ethnicity or sexual orientation, I lost a point on this one. Sometimes being a jerk is just an off-hand comment you wish you hadn't said in your rush to impress or be accepted and liked.  It could mean we haven't let go of basing too much of our self-confidence upon what we imagine others think of us. I hope your locker room person really is  "working on herself," and I commend you for your part in her growth.

If anyone is reading this and you were either the jerk or in the company of the jerk who was being offensive, why don't you tell me how you handled the situation and how you feel about how you handled it.  It may not be an everyday event, but it happens, and usually we feel unprepared to know what to say.  Or, if you were the perpetrator, did you catch yourself?  Did you grow from what you did?  

Death of a friend Part 2

Scroll down and Read Part I first or this won't make sense.
So, let me “finish” my girlfriend story.

When Kevin died, Caroline and I weren’t speaking, hadn’t in fact for about three years.  We had gotten into something by email and when she went into a rage she could be so destructive and abusive, I let her go.  Kevin wanted to get us back together and after all that time and hardly even remembering what we had argued about, we were in tentative talks to maybe do that.  Then he died.  I didn’t know it, of course, and we were in Gainesville that summer that we rented a little house near the campus for six weeks.  I don’t answer calls from unidentified numbers and I had gotten one from an unknown number, and then I got a call from someone asking me to call Caroline, which I wasn’t too keen to do without talking to Kevin first.  Somehow I ended up hearing from her neighbor I think that he had been killed, and I was so stunned and bereft that I wailed and cried and felt sorry for myself and then realized that she must be lost completely.  She was estranged from her oldest son (for all those reasons that we weren’t speaking), and Kevin wasn’t just her beloved son, he was her lifeline.  He lived about a half hour away and visited her weekly, picked up her medication for her, smoked a little pot with her, and talked with her in a way few people would believe.  They were so honest with each other! 

So, I went to the funeral.  She actually sent me the ticket and paid for my hotel room and bought me a tire when I blew mine out on the highway.  She could be so generous and loving and effusively lavish with praise as well.  No one in the world could tell you how wonderful and special you were better than she, and no one could cut you off at the knees and find your most vulnerable spot and exploit it like she could. I would believe her assessment:  I was wonderful and talented and brilliant and funny, and  I also took to heart when she told me I was narcissistic and insensitive, that she hated me and never wanted me in her life and to drop dead.  It was horrendous, her wrath.  Eventually, not only forgiving me (for what, I’m not sure, never was sure but decided to let it go for Kevin’s sake) she involved me in her life – she had no one else, remember?  I was a co-signer on her bank account and it was substantial because of Kevin’s life insurance monies, she consulted me on everything and finally came to south Florida and stayed in a nearby motel for two weeks before deciding to move to south Florida in spite of the fact that she had a son in Atlanta who had encouraged her to move near him, which made a lot more sense to me.  I didn’t want to be responsible for her and most of all, I didn’t want what I would get if she decided she was angry with me again, which of course happened in fairly short order.  And I was just so done.  She had told me to drop dead one time too many and I told her if she ended up in the hospital she could call me, but nothing short of absolute emergency.  And she angrily agreed and assured me she had “friends.”  People I could see would take advantage of her.  For all her brilliance, (genius I.Q.) she was so naïve about people.  If they told her they liked her, well they must, right? God.  

So time passed; I wrote my novels she had so strongly encouraged me to write and I even thought about taking them to her and leaving them on her door stoop but never did.  Then she called one day; I saw on my cell phone that it was her number and I just couldn’t bring myself to answer it and she left no message.  I got home and she had called the house, too and left no message.  A few months later Chris called me to tell me she had moved back to South Carolina – Greenville, where Kevin had lived – and that she had committed suicide.  Something about smothering.  I imagine a plastic bag but I can’t figure out what she did with her hands to keep them from trying to save herself.  She had always threatened suicide and even made a few attempts (at least that what she told me).  Finally, she had succeeded.  Her landlord found her and called Chris and he called me.  I will always regret my spinelessness at not picking up the damn phone.  Maybe she was saying she was leaving to go back to where she had been close to Kevin, maybe she was telling me she forgave me, maybe she was going to tell me to come get whatever I wanted of hers, maybe she was calling to tell me to go to hell, but I could have survived that,  couldn’t I?  Now I’ll never know what she was calling about.  Her silence is deafening.  In my whole life I have had wonderful friends, stable, some not so stable, sweet, concerned, encouraging friends.  But I never had a friend like her.  She just didn’t let me get away with anything.  Not a single, tiny  rationalization.  No chance to deceive myself with self-talk as long as she was around.  No lame excuses. We wrote long, long letters to each other as well as even using a tape recorder to “talk” letters that she had in a box that all went wherever her stuff, an entire apartment full of it, went because she “hired” some neighbors to bring it to her and of course they didn’t.  Just didn’t – everything she owned except what she must have been able to get into her car.  I don’t even know what happened to her cat, Missy.  She must have sat in that apartment in South Carolina feeling so lost and betrayed and alone.  She needed very strong medication for a severe back injury – narcotic strong – and apparently she couldn’t get it because she needed to get a new doctor, etc. etc.  Bureaucracy. 

 I ducked out.  I was a coward.  Just because I didn’t want her to hurt me again – as only she could do.  When someone you believe loves you and they turn on you and say horrible, hurtful things – things designed to hit in all your soft places, it’s hard to turn the other cheek and consider the source – she really was ill; I know that.  Probably Borderline Personality Disorder.  I had a few of them as clients when I was in practice and they were impossible.  They either loved you – you were the best – or they couldn’t believe you were supposed to be their therapist, you were so vile.  That was her to a tee.  So, I know.  I know.  But still.  Come on, what would it have cost me to answer the fucking phone?  Apparently whatever it was, I wasn’t willing to pay it.  Several people have encouraged me to let myself off the hook – you took enough, you had no reason to believe it wouldn’t have been more of the same, blah blah blah.  They are all well-meaning, I know.  They love me, after all.  But she would tell me the truth – I was a coward.  And she would be right.  I regret most the things I didn’t do over the things I actually did.  And that goes to the top of the list.  I ignored her call, and I don’t get another chance.  She died horribly, my friend.  I don’t believe in God or in heaven.  She did – she was sure she would see Kevin again.  I hope she was right.

Political angst

My high school graduating class has a dedicated person who will forward along to all of the over 200 graduates anything class members choose to share - except when one of us is soliciting funds for a charity or trying to sell something.  I think that's appropriate.  And most of us know not to get "political" even though some of the snarky comments are borderline.  

Anyway, someone posts a story from 1985, mind you, about a hometown ball field, (one he grew up playing on, and he's 75 years old now!) Seems it was in such bad shape, county commissioners were proposing it be closed. Thirty years ago! And my former classmate goes on a mini-rant about when the government gets involved in "anything dealing with kids they really mess it up."  I just wanted to scream.  Who the hell does he think builds, maintains, and staffs parks (for kids)? The government!  City, County, State, National government. When was the last time big business built a park for kids?  Are we living in alternate universes?  And besides, that park has been absorbed by a nearby school athletic association.  Not exactly unavailable to kids.  Arghhhh.

My dad was a disinterested worker bee for the U.S. Government for thirty years, and he retired to be continuously taken care of by the government for the rest of his life.  Multiple surgeries, hospital stays, etc. etc.  Not one thin dime out of his pocket.  

I walk into a doctor's office and get essentially free care; my husband's last surgery probably was over a hundred thousand dollars - not a penny from us.  Who do all the government haters think is taking care of them/going to take care of them forever?  Not capitalism, not free market economics, not major corporations. The government. 

Medicare was supposed to run out of money by 2016 - wait that's now, right? And the Affordable Care Act along with lower healthcare costs (lowest since 1960) allowed the trust fund to stabilize until 2030.  Hmmm.  But isn't that "Obama Care?" Give me strength.  

Who makes sure the air we breathe, the food we eat, the roads we drive on, and the water we drink are safe? Who employs law enforcement?  Does anyone really believe that private enterprise would do that?  I know there is waste, I know there is corruption, I know the system is fraught with problems and bloat, etc. but I would hate to try to exist watching  the lowest bidder provide all those services.

But that's just me.

Good stress. Bad Stress. All still stressful.

Stress level charts rate life events that cause stress and say that if one has several of these at one time, it exacerbates the stress considerably.  No one died, but I’ve had so many life changes lately that I have whiplash from trying to adjust to them all:
1. We moved from a one bedroom apartment in a senior citizen complex in south Florida within five minutes of every commercial establishment one could name, including good restaurants and conveniences galore to north-central Florida into a modest home on five acres of land in a small town with one restaurant and several antique stores.
2. We adopted a dog – very sweet but with some anxiety issues from former owners’ less than compassionate care.  A dog.  Nervous and insecure.  Haven’t had a dog for probably 15 years.
3. I’m getting fat.  At “home” I walked in a nearby park most mornings for twenty minutes or I swam in the heated condo pool, so I got exercise at least four days a week.  Now I stomp around on the five acres hoping to avoid a limb to trip on looking for snakes.  No cardio is involved.  
4. I quit my job (12 years at this one, but it was at the same place I had a 20 year career – that’s over 30 years in one location). I had money coming in from that job – “pin money” I spent without thinking about it.  I’m still doing that, but I don’t have the money coming in any longer.  I worry about that but don’t change my behavior.
5. I live 24-7 with my husband now.  I cook for him – and myself – and I eat too much. (See number 3).
6. I left the social contacts and friends from both the job and from being born and raised there.
7. I became a grandmother - a hands-on grandmother, babysitting two days a week.
8. I went from being four hours away from my grown kids to having them within minutes away.

The stress scale admits that some of the stressors in one’s life can be good things, happy things, and certainly some of mine are – actually most of them are, but they still create stress.  Change is difficult.

My life goal remains the same: Be kind, be engaged, and make a difference.

Or: No complaining, no criticizing, and no condemning.

We did it!

Deciding whether to move to Gainesville was easier when our daughter decided to have a baby; that was a true deal breaker.  Then our son, who is now in Dubai as the director of a new royal project, "Deep Dive Dubai," decided to sweeten the deal by purchasing a piece of rental property that he wanted us to live in - a red ranch house on five acres of land in High Springs, about six to seven minutes from our daughter and her husband and the new baby.  He was born on July 31, and as he grows and changes daily, I cannot imagine not being here.  When we go "home" for a week to catch up on people there (Ed's mother is 102 and in a nursing home there), I am amazed that he has changed so much when we come back.  And now, what is "home?" Is it here or is it there?  South Florida, I suppose, will always feel like home to me, but this place in the woods is so homey and comfortable and lovely.  There is quiet, and solitude and birds and trees and an owl family and cows next door and it is beginning to get cool and there is a front porch with a swing to die for.  I love it here and I love being near the baby and his mommy.  My daughter and I are getting closer; I think it helps that her consciousness has been raised by becoming a mother.  One can never know love like the love of a mother for her child until one has a child, so now she knows how I felt about her brother and her.  If I could earn some money, if I could be inspired to write regularly, if I had just a couple of peers here to hang out with and be "Pat" instead of "Mom," all would be perfect.  Maybe in time.

And I will get to "the rest of the story" with my friend's death, I promise.  I think about her every day.