Grandma's House

Another year passes!

I remember thinking how fortunate I was to be born right in the middle of the century, exactly fifty years after my grandma.  She went from riding a pony to school to seeing men on the moon and as far as I know she never blinked an eye when it came to change.

My grandma was a thoroughly modern woman.  She learned to drive a car, a Pierce Arrow one of her older brothers brought home from California, when she was twelve years old!  She put her hair up under a hat, put on a man’s uniform and delivered milk as a young mother who needed a job.  Later on in life, when she was widowed, she maintained the family home and finished rearing four children, putting her two youngest sons through college.  I never knew her to be less than energetic and eager to learn about what was new.

She always worked and she made hockey puck hamburgers that were so well fried it was a challenge to cut them with a fork, but she used to make me a butterscotch meringue pie from scratch that was to die for!  And she made it just for me!

She did laundry on Monday morning before work and let me tail along behind her holding the clothespins while she hung it on the clothesline to dry.  And sometimes I was allowed to catch butterflies in her garden while she cut flowers for her vase shaped like a glass basket.

Grandma and I would cuddle up in her big blue chair and she would tell me about the city mouse and the country mouse, one of my favorite stories.  I loved the list of things he packed up to take with him.

My earliest years are full of memories from Grandma’s house and today I’m thinking of her.

Grammie

What’s in a name?

I’ve always sort of been of the opinion that a duck is a duck no matter what you call it.  Of course Donald duck is cuter than Igor duck, but that is more a matter of preferences.

Last night I had the chance to spend time with my youngest granddaughter, a real treat since she lives in Denver and I only see her a few times a year.  We did all those extraordinary things an eighteen month old likes to do.

We ate cheesy rice and I made over her extraordinary skill with a spoon!  We put together puzzles that were real fire engines and ambulances and then raced them down an incline to see them roll and then fall apart so we could reassemble them!  We built Picasso like creations with our new Twig blocks and I was so impressed with my little genius!  Then we had a tea party and she poured!

In short, I played the part of a grandmother, totally in love and impressed, and she played the adorable grandchild.  It was a glorious night that ended with her falling asleep in my arms.

So why did I bring up names?  Well, she understands everything I say and communicates mostly in looks, gestures and one word sentences, but she did two things last night that made this Christmas perfect.

She said, “I love you.”    And she called me Grammie!   I have been named!

Unthinking unconscious

In this season of love and charity I am often given nightmares by the news.  Perhaps because of the violent contrast between the ideal and the real, or perhaps because sensationalized news sells better than other stories.

I am a cynic when it comes to any kind of so-called, “news.”  I know much of it is produced to sway unthinking people to a particular viewpoint. 

Good, bad, or indifferent, almost everyone has a pet point and they will go to all sorts of unimaginable, except they are imagined, lengths to make their pet the star of the moment.

A certain amount of bad press is obviously better than no press and the best way to counteract ugly truth seems to be to inundate the world with vague promises and lots of hype after some unintentional reveal.

The underlying truth behind it all is what gives me the nightmares.  That people are willing to be duped into believing the so-called solutions to today’s perceived problems are even acceptable goes beyond my understanding.

I have no idea how many people, organizations, charities, religions, schools, whatever have an agenda based first on money (and justified because without that they would fold?) and secondly power, or their need to impose their beliefs on as many people as possible (to the exclusion of an unbelievable number of other people.) 

Sacrificial lambs fall like rain from the sky so that this can continue and everyone just covers their heads with big smiles as they continue on, nodding and shaking hands. 

Around the clock

Time is so relevant and so sensitive.

The world took forever when I was a child.  Nights were infinite, days long and full of adventures.   I thought we went to school half the year and had summer the other half!

My world pretty much stayed that way until I had children.  Oh, I knew summer wasn’t six months long, but I managed to play tennis from April to October most years so it didn’t matter what it was called.

My daughter was my first child.  She was nearly four when she came to live with us and started school the next year.  I remember thinking that things would slow down once school started and I could get back into my old routines of ambling through life playing.

I didn’t realize I had just stepped out of the gate and begun the great race!  Maybe it was my first tentative step out of childhood into the adult world.  I’m not sure about that, because I’m still hanging onto the line that attaches me to my toys.  It doesn’t seem to be slowing me down any though.

I am retired!  How can that be? 

Years slip by faster than the nights when I was three!  Decades pass more quickly than my first semester of first grade! 

I still dream the same dreams, still love most of the same things, still want many of the same basics and honestly am often as overwhelmed as I ever was by the diversity and magnificence and joy that swirls around me in any given moment.

I’m taller and have a sixty-year head start, but other than that I can relate to the children in this world so easily because we still have a lot in common.  It’s just that my battery is running down now, but the clock works in our minds and hearts are closer than you might think.

I am the hurdle

My need to share my joy often exceeds my ability. 

I find that by defining things I limit them, set artificial boundaries that might be misunderstood, or even wrong.

It is habit and up bringing and cultural expectations that create these desires. 

I leap into the same river every day, but one day I see the whale and suddenly I am terrified.

The whale has always been there.  I often float on the waves his tail creates.  It is only my self-consciousness that dredges up the fear.

I am the hurdle I must over come, again and again.

Don't bomb Aunt Mary

So many people to connect with! 

What a blessing that is!

My favorite part of the Christmas season is hearing from everyone.  Whether it is by Christmas card, or email, telephone, or in person, this time of the year makes me feel so much closer to the individuals that make up this huge family we call humans!

I have spent a good part of today on the telephone and there is more to come.  I can’t imagine what it was like when people set off on sailing ships, or covered wagons and never spoke to their families again, or had long years in between communications.

Our bodies may be scattered around the world, but our hearts and voices, or at least pictures and words, are often only seconds apart.

I almost never meet a real live human being that I don’t relate to in some way, so I have to believe that the closer we all become, the more real we will all seem to each other and that is the secret.

Grandma and Aunt Mary may get on our nerves after a week of visiting in one small house.  Uncle George may be so gruff we avoid him like the plague, but we would never think of bombing these people.  They are family! 

It’s time to extend that family.

The sweetness of now

I keep pinching myself to see if I am sleeping, but even if I am this is the sweetest dream I could ever imagine.

Everywhere I turn my dreams come true. 

I don’t know how, or why, or even it if is only my perspective.  I only know that it is breath takingly sweet.

If I could make one wish upon this Christmas, it would be that I would always be able to look through the chaos to see what is so precious in the here and now.

If all the world could do that, there would be peace on earth.

Christmas miracles

Christmas miracles are wonderful.  I can’t imagine anything warming a parent’s heart more than having their child returned from a coma, or from being captured, or kidnapped. 

Still, it doesn’t take a miracle to warm my heart.

I look at my life and know that as awesome as a miracle could be, there is not much that could really add to the everyday joy and love that hovers around me in the faces of my family and friends, who are really just part of one huge family.

My miracle is you, that you exist at all, that you touch my life, that at the very root of everything…

We are.

A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck

What do these things have in common?

Fluttery eyelashes brushing against a soft cheek

Rubbing noses

A smacking peck on the forehead

They are all kisses!

A butterfly kiss, an Eskimo kiss, a duck kiss and now I’ve heard there is a bear kiss!

I wonder how that goes!

Maybe that’s the one where you grab the other person and madly kiss them all over while they giggle with glee!

In a nutshell

“Bring a torch, Jeanette Isabella” a sixteenth century French Christmas carol and the kind of music I adore more than almost anything else.  Just the tune conjures thoughts of gentle warmth and love for me.

It comes to me via the Internet, but it carries images of a young family; their own newborn sleeping quietly in his place nearby.  His big sister, only a baby herself, coos and giggles in the background.  His mother quietly plays the tune on the piano and his father carries it through on the guitar.

Gifts like this are ineffable and priceless, tiny moments that express the whole meaning of life without straining or striving, but simply by being; this is Christmas.

Hone your powers

Most of us have no idea the power we wield in this world.

Parents are often much more affected by their young children’s words and views than any toddler could ever imagine.  Good teachers put more emphasis on their student’s opinions than you might believe.  Co-workers, friends, seeming strangers on the street – all have the power to change the face of our days.

One smile, one slammed door, either one might conceivably alter the history of the world.

We are creatures filled with feelings, but the buttons that trigger these feelings are different for each of us.

Some are pits of emptiness that need to be constantly refilled in order to work properly.  Others need little more than the knowledge of their own self worth to do great things.  Most of us fall in between somewhere, but it really doesn’t matter where we are on the scale of things.  It only matters that someone, somewhere, understand and reach out.

It is amazing how much one phone call can do to a life.

A few words can turn the world upside down, or right it back up in a matter of seconds.

We’re all superheroes with the power to do amazing things.  Use that power for good and you will become stronger and stronger! 

What kind of superhero are you?

Mamma

I took my car in to be worked on this morning.  I almost took it yesterday, but like I told the man at the desk, if I had it would probably have fallen on someone.  Yesterday was one of those days!

My pneumatic desk chair kept inching downward, leaving thirty-one inches of leg curled into an eighteen-inch space.  I found myself trapped in the beauty salon between two harpees whose incessant ugly chatter drove me nearly screaming out of the place, in search of another place who would take in a woman who only wanted a slight trim.  The next place nearly lost me in its insane need to have some kind of customer care card before snipping the ends off my hair. 

The look on that girl’s face when I asked, probably none to kindly, “Are you telling me you can’t just cut my hair?”  My breaking with protocol had left her cowering behind the counter like some sort of dazed rabbit.  She had to think.

“Well yes, but you wouldn’t get credit for it.”

I didn’t want credit.  I only wanted a haircut!  In the end I got a fantastic haircut.  I’ll go back there!  I even apologized for being so short with her, but I could care less about their cards.  It was not a good day.

This morning, however, was wonderful and that says a lot from someone who is not a morning person.  I showed up at the garage before seven thirty and they had coffee waiting!  Good coffee!

My car was put on the rack and the man behind the counter entertained me with stories about his mother.  She would kill him if she had even an inkling of what he told me, but he had me in stitches for the next forty-five minutes.  I can relate to mama.  She’s a woman after my own heart.

Today is gonna be a great day!

Yellow Wallpaper and Tell-Tale Hearts

It has been nine days since I became ill last Friday.  Amazing how one minute I was happy and laughing, talking on the phone with a friend and a few minutes later confined to a rut that ran between my bed and the bathroom.  Chained so totally by commode and trashcan that I saw nothing else for the next two days.

Withered and drained by beasts as insidious as any dragon ever could have been, I found myself burned up and charred, a mere husk of myself unwilling to leave the apartment for nearly five days after returning from my sister’s.

It is amazing how my surroundings altered themselves to fit my state.  What had been a bright sunny set of rooms became surrounded by cold and rain, fog and chill.  Blinds drawn against the invasion of these things only forced the room to begin contracting as if it too wanted to get away.  Everything was murky, dim, uncomfortably cold unless I carried the portable heater around with me.

The electric baseboard heaters which made me sick last spring began insinuating themselves back into my lungs shortly after being revived this winter and the portable heater reaches out with its heavy sinuous cord trying to wrap itself around my ankles and trip me!

My knitting needles join the conspiracy, knotting up so that any work is impossible.  Today I sneaked out and went to the post office, but when I returned the closet did not want to accept my jacket and I had to hang it on the chair by the keyboard.  A few more inches of precious space gone and my heart begins to beat louder as the silence grows!

Tomorrow I am going to get my hair cut and then go to a Christmas party in the evening because I find myself starting to dream of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Yellow Wallpaper!

Time to untip the scales

Imagine a world….

I am often asking people to imagine.  Imagining is easy for me.  It is easy for children.  It is not always easy for grown-ups. 

When do people begin to lose that kind of freedom?  What builds the fences that lie between each human being and infinite possibilities? 

I suppose it is necessary to have some boundaries.  If I don’t know the difference between the edge of the table and the edge of my imagination, I can fall off and break my neck, but maybe the trick is to hang onto a few of those little scouts that discovered the edges.

That way some come back and say, “Uh oh!  Table edge!  Big boom!  Stop!”

While others say, “Cliff ahead!  Possible lost valley below!  Adventure!  Let’s go!”

Experience steps in and fleshes out the experience so that I can go forth and enjoy without maiming myself forever.

I suppose circumstances dictate how many scouts to kill and which ones go first.  It probably depends on our caretakers and the safety of the world we live in as children, but once you are old enough to read this, you are old enough to take back some control.

You need to resurrect some of the more fun loving scouts and do away with the zombies; those walking dead scouts whose purpose no longer serves your needs.  You know the ones, those guys who think if it doesn’t hurt it isn’t good and others like that.

Remember just because danger can lead to pain doesn’t mean pain leads to safety.  It’s all about balance!

Imagine a world based on love, not fear.

Love

It is important to love people for who they are.

You can like them for what they do.  Adore them for how they act.  Get a chuckle out of their antics, or shake your head in wonder that they can survive the way they are.

You can even put them up on pedestals as long as you understand that pedestals are man made things and things made by man eventually tumble down.

But love is sacred.  It is what flows through us and gives us life.   If it was possible to paint love, graven images might have been allowed.

Loving someone does not imply that what they do is okay, or how they do it is right. 

Love is one of those things that only exists as a reflection and who it reflects is complicated.

That it does exist is all I know for sure.

Open your mind

Once upon a time I had a dream.

And then I grew up a little and everyone told me how impossible most of my dreams were!

I lived a lot of my life believing that, except I never really believed it.  If I had?  I would never have had half the life I’ve had.

But even so, it wasn’t until the last year that I discovered just how impossibly wonderful impossible dreams can be when they do come true!

Once upon a time exists.  But I have to be willing to step into the picture and allow it to happen.  No one can read the real thing to me from the pages of a dusty storybook.  Those stories belong to someone else.  I have to write my own.

Or at least recognize them!

Lines of communication

Yesterday I went in search of the lost card!

After going to the post office to buy stamps and leaving my little stack of cards there in the outgoing mail slot, I heard from my sister that she never received a card from me.

First attempt:  email my sister-in-law and ask her if she received one, but she didn’t respond quickly enough for me in this day of instant communication so I phoned my son in Colorado.  After all I am a brand new grandmother and what better excuse to call and hear how my new grandson and ancient (eighteen month old) granddaughter are doing.  I had to leave a message.  Next came my brother down in Taylorville, but I only spoke to his answering machine too.

I went back online and left a message for my daughter on Facebook.  Yes, our family is large.  We communicate in whatever way is necessary!  No immediate response.  I also called my son in North Carolina.  He was the first human being I connected to!  Yes, he said, they received a Christmas card from me.  We talked for an hour or so with the added bonus of getting to talk to my six-year-old grandson who informed me that he thought J.K. Rowling should rename dementors, death eaters.  I told him he should write her a letter and he asked if it should be a letter on paper, or email? 

Before I went to bed I also received an email from my sister-in-law, a message from my daughter on Facebook, and a phone call from my brother, my sister, my son, where I also got to speak with my granddaughter, and even texted my friend in Louisiana!

I can’t remember the last time I connected with all of these people on one day!  An aside to this is that I received a box of Christmas presents from my friend in California and I sent her an email with a picture of them under my tree almost immediately!

Who could ever have guessed that a glitch in a custom as old as sending Christmas cards could result in so many other connections.   One missing card formed a line of communication that touched nearly everyone who is very important to me, in less than ten hours!

The flu flew

It isn’t often that I can tell you the minute I became ill, but this past Friday was one of those days.  I was talking to a friend at 11:15 PM and my stomach began hurting.  By midnight I was experiencing dry heaves.  Saturday morning brought on the real thing along with other less mentionable symptoms and I spent the next sixty hours as miserable as I have ever been in my entire life.

I ran out of sheets, towels and all my favorite pajamas and to make matters worse I knew they were coming to put in new windows at nine on Monday morning!  There was no way I could call them and our apartment office doesn’t open until 9:30.  Sunday night I took down all the blinds and drapes, gathered up my dirty laundry and dragged myself out to the car where I drove like a mad woman for my sister’s house, just hoping I got there before anything bad happened.

Once I was there, she took such good care of me.  Freezing 7Up and crushing it so I could munch on the chips, making me grilled cheese when I felt better last night and doing all my laundry for me while I lay in her extra bedroom or in her living room watching HGTV!  It might have been a world-class vacation if I hadn’t felt like I had been run over by a Mack truck.

I came home tonight and struggled up to my apartment with clean laundry and a heavy bag full of two-liter 7Up bottles.  I was dreading it.  I thought it was possible they hadn’t even put in the new windows and even if they had I knew I would have to replace the blinds and draperies.  I just didn’t have that kind of energy.

The windows did not bode well.  There were no new stickers on the glass as I approached the building, but when I stepped inside my apartment!  New windows with the shades and draperies replaced and even the grating on the electric radiator replaced!  I called to thank the office and they seemed surprised.  It seems maintenance came in and did all of this without asking or telling!  I am so touched!

I am also relieved, because today I was able to really eat real food for the first time since Friday.  There is nothing like feeling bad to make feeling good extra special.

Practically perfect people

Imagine a cloak made out of years.  Seasons of rain, snow, sleet and hail, tempered by days of burning sun and pouring rain, woven together along with the wisdom of experiences met along the way.

Wrapped inside this cloak is the soul of an eight-year-old, innocence intertwined with a basic understanding of love, fear, humor, and even empathy.

Fleshing out that soul is the heart of a lion and the body of a full grown human, enough power to do what it knows is right.

If I were Mary Shelley, this would be my Frankenstein.  If I were a wizard working for King Arthur, this would be my coup de grace.  If I had a crayon this would be my masterpiece.

All people are man made in some respect.

On Guard

Our neighbors had an Afghan hound they adopted from a shelter, a gorgeous dog, but it had some big problems.  If someone surprised it coming around a corner, the dog threw itself on the ground and screamed! If a man raised his hand or his voice, the dog peed all over itself.  It never got over these behaviors.  Its people just had to learn to work around them and keep a mop handy.

There ought to be some way of identifying love that is safe.  Some kind of scent, like roses, or maybe a secret word.  It can’t be smiling.  A lot of people smile just like the fox that ate the little gingerbread boy.

Real love is supposed to be organic, but there seem to an awful lot of rules people bring into that mix.  And nothing hurts more than tripping over rules when you are trying to be honest and real with someone.  If you have to be on guard all the time, eventually you become like that poor Afghan hound, neurotic and panicky.

Trusting that you can just be yourself, warts and all, and be okay is a huge step.  It takes a special person to reach out with a rose in one hand and a mop in the other!

The good actors

The stress of living in difficult situations is bad for children.  In fact, studies show that children living in homes where there is constant upheaval and fighting, or abuse, show many of the same symptoms as soldiers coming back from a war.

You can’t always spot these children in the classroom.  They’re often good actors.  They know how to diffuse situations with an adeptness that would amaze most adults.  It’s not being cute.  It’s survival.

Not all of these children pull their hair out, or throw temper tantrums.  Some of them just go about their lives doing what they might have done anyway, but carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders while they do it.  It makes everything harder.

As long as they get good grades and don’t rock the boat, no one pays any attention.  Until, one day, the dam breaks and all the defenses are washed away and then it’s too late.  And then their siblings blames themselves and their friends blame themselves, and their parents blame themselves and so do their teachers and doctors and everyone else – everyone except the person who caused the problem.

That person hardly ever has any idea that what they do is so destructive, not even if someone tries to tell them.  People seem to go on believing that however they grew up was the right way, the okay way, the only real way. 

It’s the dark side of the circle of life; one that needs to end.

Hold me

 
December skies look leaden behind the sleeping bones of trees.  Funny how one kind of plainness can highlight another making the combination appealing to the eye.

Of course there are other strange things that appeal to me:  The playground of my elementary school with its scraggly grass and gray metal monkey bars.  Big dated kitchens with white enamel sinks and tall cabinets flanking scarred wooden tables.  Old cars running rumbly on cold winter mornings with that warm, old-fashioned smell.

I think it is partly the memories of these places that add the coziness it takes to make them desirable, but it is also the strength of them.  There is something very appealing about strong, durable, functional objects.  They speak of lamplight and hot buttered toast, the staple of all childhoods. 

These are the laps I still go back to sit on when I don’t fit anywhere else.

The Macaroni Angel

Sometimes memories are just wishes that never came true.

After a while they become so vibrant, so rich and full of feelings that it seems they must have happened that way.

I didn’t understand that when I was younger, but I do now.

Yesterday I put up my tree.  I only have a few ornaments and they are all in the same place so there is no possibility that I missed any.

The macaroni angel is not there!  She is still back in North Carolina with all the other ornaments!  I must have dreamed I put her on last year, because when I pulled out the photos, she was not there.

I suppose she is there in my heart and that is all that really matters.

Lucky me

Why are some people so lucky and others not?

I consider myself to be a very lucky person.  For some reason things tend to work out for the best for me.  Most of the time.

It’s kind of like playing Scrabble.  No matter how many words I know, if the letters aren’t there, I can’t use them.

In my life I have known people who know all the words and have all the right letters, but instead of being happy they manage to ruin the day for everyone around them.  I try to avoid those people anymore, but it’s not always possible.

When I run into them it is a two-fold crash!  All the old negative feelings rush in, magnified by their long absence and the new ones join them to make it an extra specially bad experience.

I guess I’m just going to have to be a better driver!

Not just the good news, but the best news!

Yesterday I wrote of beginnings not having the slightest idea that it would be the day my newest grandson was born! 

Described as healthy and hairy, he is a much awaited, much wanted and an already long loved member of the family!

And whether he began yesterday, or when he was conceived, or when his parents were conceived, or way before that is really a moot point.

All that really matters is that he is here and healthy and this grandma is ecstatic!

Whence upon a time

In every beginning is an end, just as every ending once began and sometimes an ending is a beginning!

Separating these things is harder than it sounds.

It’s kind of like an echo.  I suppose with the right sort of sound equipment you can pinpoint the end points of something like that, but if you ask human beings, the answers are all over the place.

There is no equipment that can measure the really important things in life like the beginning of a person.  Was it when that person was born, or when their great great grandparents first laid eyes on each other?

Same thing goes for the end of a person.  Is it simply when they die, or when people forget them?

I like to think of my world as plaid with all sorts of things crisscrossing and running parallel to each other, all connected by that one basic color underneath.

We’re never as far apart as we think.

The hero's tale

There’s a little bit of truth in everything, but deep down inside of me in a very tiny place, is the absolute truth of me!

It is my essence and it is so small and so compact because I have been squishing it down since I can ever remember! 

Why do I do that?  Well, you see that part of me is so vulnerable and so honest and so open that it is sensitive beyond anything you can imagine!  It isn’t fragile.  Not at all.  It can’t change, because it is who I am.   But it can feel more acutely than other part of me so I have to keep it safe.

A lot of people have had tiny peeks, one some glancing looks, but only one has ever held it between his fingers and his heart and explored every nook and cranny.  No one else could possibly do that because you have to be an old old soul in a child’s mind in order to even find my key.

I think we all have a place like that inside of us and the search for the key is really the hero’s tale.