What's New For Grandparents - or Thank God I'm Not A Millennial

So. The What's New For Grandparents class turned out to be something else. Of course, I'm interested in all things new baby, but when I was expecting I just figured the grandparents would kiss and spoil my baby and I would take care of the rest. Baby would sleep, eat, get bathed, be snuggled and grow bigger, stronger, and more fun.  I hadn't planned on asking them advice. I already thought I knew most everything and I had a book that told me the rest. Still and all - I'm enough of a woman - and librarian - to be curious about all the juicy details of reproduction. BD, otoh, is squeamish even about his own body - He giggled and shied away like a nervous colt and I mercifully released him from participation. Instead I sent him out to pick a new dishwasher for me. I don't have an opinion - I just want one that works with the fewest digital components. 

It turned out that, of us first time grandparents, all but one were parents of the father-to-be and, except for me, they were all having 'issues' with their D-i-Ls. It ended up being more of a counseling class for grandparents who felt rejected. I understand rejection. Once upon a time - long ago - with someone else - I was an unwelcomce MiL. If you know my story you know I felt sympathetic. But I hope I would not have read out a detailed list (including the make, model and mileage of the car) of ThingsIHadGivenThoseUngratefulChildren. Mind now - I felt plenty of resentment and hurt once upon a different time - but I hope I wouldn't have shared it with strangers. 

Then again - strangers are the safe people to share grousing with. Friends stick around to remind you of what you said. Ha! so I can share it with y'all now. 

Psyche. Just kidding. 

Even the more decorous paternal grandparents hinted at the sense of being second class GPs around their DiL and that weakling son of theirs who was obviously UnderHerThumb. It made me doubly grateful for my DiL and also for how much love poured all over LD from every direction, all those years ago. Both Grandma and Grandmother were too busy loving him to compete with each other - or if they felt competitive - they never ever showed it to me. We just all adored that little cutie-pie and everybody shared. 

But ya know - even as I am typing this I can remember the covetousness exhibited by my mother when my sister had her little boy .... and so it's good to remember that family dynamics, while similar, are always unique to the individuals involved. Mama would never have been covetous around me because a. I shared and b. BD would have frozen her out with his aura - unintentionally, I am sure, but ... no way. No way would Mama have presumed anything around my husband. Whereas my sister's husband? He was always a child to her. A pretty child, but still a child. 

To repeat what my oft' quoted cousin KP says "If ya want ta know the EFF word I'll tell ya! It's FAMILY!" 

Most of all, it would never occur to me that my 40 year old son and his very serious, strong and smart wife need unsolicited advice from me. Even when I tell them stories about TheOldDays - they're just intended to be stories - and I made sure to tell them that, when we had dinner last night, just to be sure. Besides. What do I know about raising babies. I had a free range baby who was sick only twice before he started school. The first time was my fault - at 4 weeks, on the hottest day of the hottest summer in the whole decade of the 1970s I sat on the riverbank dipping my little month old baby's toes in the warm water. Suddenly a wave slapped him in the face - he took a huge gulp of Rappahannock River Water (think "swamp water" from the old Debbie Reynolds movie "Tammy") and there began the worst 24 hours I ever had to sweat through. Of course his fever went through the roof. Of course we didn't have telephone. It was a Saturday night and his little body fought it off in 24 hours. Obviously God had other plans for him than that of Victim Of Stoopid Mother. He was't sick again till he was three, when I could explain to him that pretty soon he would throw up and then he'd feel better. Which he did. But I stayed up all night anyway just so I could talk like the other mothers about how hard it was to be a mother. How demanding. How much it took out of me. Which it never was and never did. Of course, even as I was doing that I knew it was all a pose and what I ended up bragging about was what a big fake I was. He was never sick. And the accidents he had were all things we could fix - except, of course, the ones he didn't tell me about - like - the broken nose he got jumping off the highway bridge with his older cousins who I would have killed had I known. He was smart to not tell me. 

The rest of the class was about SIDS (so durn scary who'd even chose to have children nowadays?) and other ailments - so I was doubly glad BD wasn't there. I never had to syringe mucus out of a tiny nostril. Thank you, merciful heavens. He only had that one fever and it was gone in 24 hours so I never had to take his temperature. I can't remember if there was a big deal about bathing him when he was new - I'm sure I did. When he got bigger he took a bath with me. And he was mostly naked anyway because he was a summer baby. He slept on his tummy because I worried if he spit up he'd drown. Turns out that's a big no-no. Breast feeding was a no-brainer. I don't think there even was a pediatrician in the county back then and we were too poor to drive to the city for one - besides he was never sick - but the old-timey family doctor who gave him his immunization shots told me "Hmmm. Bright eyes. Good skin. Growing nicely. Keep it up". He also charged me $10 a visit when I told him we didn't have insurance - in fact, every doctor we ever had did that - cut the bill to what I could pay. 

So - ya know - I couldn't give advice if I was asked for it. Like Topsy - my baby just growed. 

But it was still fun to look at baby things and dream about a baby to love and be reminded that if I just ask the parents what they'd like, they're going to tell me. And I don't have any problem asking. Which I did at dinner. Yes. We are wanted at the hospital after they've had a little time to themselves. No we don't need to come stay after she comes home. (wasn't planning on it anyway) Son has paternity leave. What does she need me for? Except to come agree with her that this is the most beautiful baby that ever graced the earth and of course I see the sunbeams shooting out from the golden halo around her head and hear the heavenly chorus singing in the background - and then go home so they can both have a nap. 

Dr.'s tell her the due date is today but she tells me she thinks it's closer to the 20th. Baby gave me a little kick last night and we are all just full of joy and anticipation. I've never seen my son look so happy. Life is good. 

Glad I am an old lady. 

An Anniversary I Never Forget

  is the sum of   +      Yes my friends - it is that time again. The anniversary of the day, the very moment, when TheQueen knew her future and it was good. I missed posting this last year and it was a different sort of celebration anyway. This year I'm more on top of my game. This year so many new happinesses have piled on top of each other I am sure Mama must be up there in heaven, picking the best stuff off the shelve and showering it down on top of me. Thank you, Mama. I feel your presence all the time.  So - for the 43rd time I'm gong to remember that special day by posting the story of how TheQueen found ThePrince: 

Long long ago there was a cheeky teenager, just past her 19th birthday, who was studying music at

big city university. One Friday, as she walked into the orchestra room, the flute player spun around in his chair, looked straight at her and asked her if she wanted to drive to North Carolina with him the next day.

“Sure” she said, desperate for anything to do on the weekend, when most of her friends split for home, leaving her to rattle all alone in a monolithical cement dormitory. Besides, he was one of the really good looking guys she and Robyn had decided were “cute enough to take us out”. And he had such a voice - deep sonorous basso profundo with the most delicious country southern drawl - not hick, in fact, very cultured, but oh so Southern. And startlingly blue eyes. Blue like autumn skies. And he was big - not fat or anything - just big with a big aura, a big presence. Nothing hesitant or shy or self-effacing. This was a man, not a boy, and he was inviting her to spend all day with him.

“Right.” he said. "Meet me at my house tomorrow at 10 a.m." and he gave directions to a row house in the Fan district, a few blocks from school.

Poor thing. Little did he know that he’d just arranged a date with his exact opposite in the GreatClockUniverse. She was no ditherer. No lingerer. No procrastinating late comer. She was an EarlyBird - always 15 minutes before hand, sometimes more. For this important assignation she was a full 30 minutes early, knocking on the dark and silent door of his first floor apartment.

“Stood up!” she thought. “Impossible” Nobody stood up this girl, no siree. And she stomped the four blocks back to school, snatched her fiddle out of her locker, slammed the practice room door shut and began to saw away, muttering imprecations, curses, indignant affronted descriptions of what is expected in this world, and other dark and damning words. But ...

She was also innately fair and as she scraped away at Kreutzer, she had to admit that the man had said come at 10. Perhaps he was out filling up the gas tank. Or perhaps he was renting a trailer. After all, the purpose of the trip was to retrieve his piano, waiting for him in his old place in Chapel Hill, NC. And so, at 10 o’clock for sure, she rounded the corner of Lombardy and Floyd and there he was, waving an arm, smiling happily and calling out “Hey Baby!”

She crossed the street and he invited her into his apartment. He offered her a beer, and though she hated the stuff - still does, in fact - she was also aware of what is cool and for a still-teenage girl at college, drinking beer at 10 a.m. was truly cool, so she said yes. He was back in a flash with a mason jar full of the most delicate, most mellow drink she’d ever tasted. His own home brew. There were gallons of it in his little bachelor kitchen. Now, be it gallons or pints, this stuff was potent and it was only moments before she was definitely in the mood to be entertained. And entertained she was, with music, books, ideas, and talk talk talk, tumbling out of this delightful man with his shelves full of books, boxes full of sheet music, head full of poetry in three different languages and kitchen full of nectar. Best of all, he was happy. Neither cynical, sarcastic nor jealous of another’s musical ability or progress, he was ready to share, to learn, to listen and to admire. In the highly competitive world of performing arts, here was someone with a blend of such innocence and courage there was nothing to do but laugh with pure pleasure and maybe fall in love a bit.

After a while the two of them tooled off in search of a U-haul place. Across the Lee Bridge at an Esso Station on Cowardan Ave., where Caravatti’s Junk Yard used to be, he stopped and went in to arrange a rental. Minutes passed and when he returned he stood right in front of the car and grinned at her through the windshield; one of those beaming, sunshiny “Ain’t this Grand?” grins. And as she stared up at him, suddenly he turned into an old man, still standing there, still grinning. She blinked; gawped; stared again. She looked down at her own hands and they had turned into an old lady's hands, the skin papery and spotted with large brown freckles, sunk down between the tendons. They were her grandmother’s hands. And she thought “My god. I’m going to be riding around in a car with this man when I’m an old lady.”

For some reason he had decided to rent the trailer in NC. Probably the Richmond outfit didn’t have what he was looking for. They motored on down I95, past the tobacco plant and warehouse district of south Richmond, past Petersburg, through Emporia. They talked the whole time, chattering, discovering, opening, sharing. At one point he said “well, there’s a lot you don’t know about me” and she thought “oh boy, there’s a lot you don’t know either”. And at that, there were some surprising points of contact. He had graduated from the same high school her dad had gone to. She had played a concert in Chapel Hill that he had gone to hear. He had taken lessons in Winston Salem while she had been a student at the School of the Arts. At Herndon, NC they stopped for lunch at a Kentucky Fried Chicken place. She had never been to one. In fact, fast food then consisted almost entirely of hamburgers, cheeseburgers, milkshakes and fries. Fried chicken was a real treat and, of course, to a 19-year old, it didn’t foretell the diet doom it was to present later on.

The October skies had been gray all day but they grew heavier and more threatening as evening approached. Rain began to fall. At a Carolina gas station he picked up a small box trailer and two ice cream sandwiches. “How did you know ice cream is my all time favorite treat?” she cried and to his question of “Then don’t I deserve a reward” she answered with a resounding kiss. Of course, this was in the days when, first off, girls worried about being thought forward or even worse; fast! It was also at a time when she was very wary of anything that would cause boys to sidle away from a touchy feely woman. Of course, this was no boy. 28, he’d told her. But when it’s the right guy, with the right gift, only a kiss will do.

It was harder to be chatty on the long dark wet drive home. Especially when the passenger was one of those Superior Morning Persons. For an SMP, darkness means it’s time to close one’s eyes. She still didn’t realize she was dealing with one of those Stubborn Night Owls. SNO’s think SMP’s are silly, especially the types who creep out of cozy warm beds before the sun is actually above the roof tops of the houses across the street. All those delightful discoveries were waiting up ahead for them. On that day, in the hypnotic glare of headlights on raindrops, she grew pretty drowsy. “I like to drive. Go to sleep” he told her and eventually she did.

It was too late to get back into the dorm when they reached Richmond. She’d known it would be and had signed out for the weekend. He gallantly put her up for the night. She was there the next day when other friends came around to help shove the piano down the narrow hallway and into the apartment. It was well into the afternoon before she made her way back to her place, to pace the dormitory halls till her girlfriend should show up and she could tell her the exciting news about the upcoming nuptials.

There have been many more rambles, in half a dozen different cars, since that October 16, thirty nine forty two forty four years ago. In 1991 the two of them took the trip to North Carolina all over again, even to starting at 1617 Floyd and to looking for some sort of U-haul place on the south side. They found the KFC in Herndon had moved a block but it was still serving up the original 11 herbs and spices recipe. They'll probably go off on a ramble today, the two of them, getting older, but not yet quite as old as the geezers in her vision.

But that is the story of my anniversary. We also celebrate a lovely wedding anniversary in April. It’s important, but not more important than October 16, when my favorite cute couple started out on life’s journey. Sometimes it’s hard to believe I even had a life before that day, although I can tell stories from that Mesozoic Era. It’s as if 10/16 were my real birthday; the day I began living my grown up life. BD, who had a head start on me, says he feels the same way.

There are a lot of stories in my bag of tales, but this one is my favorite.

Missing Mama in the Springtime

On Easter Sunday we drove to the city to spend it with precious cousins. The day was beautiful, the temperature just right, and the winding drive through Virginia back roads was long enough that once we were into the second hour, Mr and Mrs Chatty ran out of things to say.  This might not have happened had we not just taken a somewhat shorter drive down these same back roads the day before, but once we were nestled in the car-cocoon of silence, the tiny emotional crack in my heart had a chance to split wide open and I began to yearn for my mama.

Easter Sunday was one of the days I would drive to the city to visit with Mama. Last year I took her daffodils. Every year I took her daffodils. Daffodils were her favorite flower and for some reason she never had very many. I, otoh, have thousands of them so I can be ... not just generous ... but lavish.  In the spring I would snip a cluster of them, wrap them in wet paper towels, pop them in a zip-lock bag, and head west - first to her home on the other side of the city, in later years to her assisted living apartment, and finally to the nursing home.

How her eyes would light up when I'd step through the door with my golden sunshine bouquet. Each enthusiastic greeting was completely sincere - as if it were the first time anybody had ever given her daffodils. I understand that. Every year, when they begin to open up along my lane, I feel like there has never been a flower before and now there is this swath of gold. There really is no flower quite like the daffodil.

She and I would sit with the bouquet between us and sniff its Easter scent. We'd touch each outer petal - the perianth - and praise it. We'd run fingers around the rim of the cups. We would discuss the color, the fleshy texture, the vivid eyes of the small flat ones. We would sigh.  One of us would say "Oh how I love daffodils."  The other would say "Oh, me too. They're my favorite flower."

Which is not exactly true since when the roses are in bloom, they are my favorite  flower, and the pansy! oh my - who doesn't love a pansy? And stocks, with their clove scent.  And gladiolas! Be Glad! And the snapdragon! How fruity they smell. They were the ubiquitous cut flower in bouquets sent to mothers of new babies back in my childhood, in my southern town. I can still remember Mama, in bed with the new baby in one arm and me, snuggled up close, beneath her other arm as she showed me how to pinch the sides of the blossom and make the dragon open and close its mouth.  Imagine that! A puppet flower!

It's odd that Mama didn't grow many daffodils since she had the greenest of green thumbs and could push a stick in the ground and a few weeks later it would blossom.  She was country born and bred - but at a time when country was actually within walking distance of town. She grew up in the tenant house down the slope from her grandmother's farm - not 2 miles outside of Johnstown PA - and walked to school all her life - in town.  Her dad was not a farmer - he was a mechanic - and an inventor - but her mother certainly had many farm girl skills.  According to Mama, her own mother didn't want anybody in the kitchen so Mama didn't learn to cook.  I say "according" because Mama wasn't at all above inventing a better story than the real one if it suited her. Neither did my utterly delightful mother-in-law. In fact, I once caught Grandma (M-i-L) in an outright fabrication and called her on it - to which she replied, "I know it's not true but it makes the story so much better!"

Well. I utterly adored both of those women - Grandma running a close second only to Mama - who really was the pinnacle, the shining star, the most beloved woman in my life.  I was doubly blessed.  Come to think of it - neither of them ever bragged about their cooking - and Mama would go so far as to look up with tears in her eyes when Daddy complained about one of her odd meals and say "You knew I wasn't a cook when you married me!"

I don't actually know if she really was barred from the kitchen as a girl or if her sisters did learn from their mother to become good cooks or if she just hated cooking or if she was too busy dreaming of her next painting to pay attention to cooking. We always had free reign in the kitchen so long as we cleaned up after ourselves. She assigned meal preparation to her daughters as quickly as they grew interested in it and by the time the last one had moved out, Daddy had retired and they ate reheated canned stuff in front of the nightly news.

Springtime memories of Mama all seem to pivot around naughty girl experiences: Skipping church to walk along the James River, where, she declared, "I'm sure God can hear our prayers just as easily as in church."   Or maybe taking a day off from school just to go walk the paths of Maymont Park.  Or a lunch in a restaurant - an extravagance in those days when restaurant meals were for special occasions only.

For all that Mama grew up in the country - she wasn't much of an outdoors girl. What she loved to do was paint - and draw - and mold things with clay. My house is full of her artwork and I have only a tiny sampling.  That was her life when she wasn't ferrying around 4 girls; to music lessons, school functions, rehearsals or interesting sites around the city. As only a come-here can - she explored her city constantly, tracking down parks and tiny museums and finding tours of local industries that gave away free samples. She honored where she lived more than anyone I ever knew.

But the most precious springtime memory I have of Mama is of the day we planted gladiolas - a day I wrote down years ago in an essay called Love in the Garden - and here is the important part - the bit about Mama and how much she wrapped me in love in the springtime in the garden:

... when I seek love, and not just romance, in the garden I harden back to an afternoon - probably April, likely I was 8, and home from school on one of those oh, so precious and rare days when Mama would let me skip school for a time-out day. Mama was planting gladiolas. “GLAD- iolas” I thought. Glad to be out of school. Glad to be digging in the dirt. Glad to have Mama all to myself. In my memory there are no other people on earth.  The flat round corms, like turbans or the crown on one of the kings in the Christmas crèche, some of them with last year’s ghost shape still on top. The new ones that were a little more golden colored than the ones who had spent time in the ground in August, fattening for the following spring, feeling smooth against my fingertips.  But most of all I remember how loved I felt as we talked quietly, easily, unhurriedly, and prepared, as gardeners have done since the beginning of time, for summer’s bounty. When I plant gladiolas now, I always feel that warmth of Mama’s love washing around me. 

It Gets Better

I heart Tim Gunn and I seriously heart the message of the It Gets Better Campaign. In fact - the message need not only be applied to sexual orientation. It's a message of hope for all the world in all its troubles - packed with the power of acknowledgement, patience, bravery and perseverance.

For TheQueen, for this past month, it is one of the lifelines I've clung to - that certain and sure knowledge that no matter how black the time feels, "It Gets Better". And it has.  Yesterday I heard Mama call down from heaven and say "Alright now. You've cried enough."

This is not the first time she's said that to me. I am reminded of a black bleak evil time in 1994 when I was summarily fired by Time. No recourse. No unemployment. No 2 weeks severance. My son grew up and went off to college. How I hated that. How angry I was and how sad. Being LD's mom was without a doubt the happiest must fun super rewarding joy filled creative love infested job in the whole wide world.

You say I'm still his mom? Well, of course I am. But I'm talking about the 'you are responsible for a growing-up child' part of being a mom and my god that was fun. But when it was over - it was truly over. I'd finished my part in his development and he was off to pick up all those responsibility threads himself. I did have the good grace to tell him to Pay No Attention To The Nutcase Behind The Curtain. I didn't want to ruin his fun - I just hated it that my routine, my duties, my world was changing.


The day he left for college I  sat at the bottom of the staircase and wept the copious sobs of the inconsolable. For hours. With dogs licking my tears away only to prompt a fresh wave of them. After a while the telephone rang and when I picked it up it was Mama. Her first words were "Alright now. You've cried long enough."

Note - she did not say I wouldn't cry more. She just knew it was time for me to give over to the rest of my life. It took me 2 years to do that and in that time the most perfect Big Darling in the world did not divorce me. He is a saint. I would have divorced myself if I could have. She also didn't say "It gets better" which would have been trite and cruel at that moment, coming from that Important Person. But she could have. I believe that if Tim Gunn had been standing by me he could have said it and it would have comforted me.

But she did say "Enough". That was the message I needed to hear from her then - and yesterday, a lightness of being filled my body sometime around 3:30 or 4 o'clock and I heard her say those inimitable words. And on light feet, with a dancing heart, I finished out a monumentally difficult work week with a perfect score of problem solving and went home to a loving BD, some great cheese and a really good bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

So trust me. Or at least, trust Tim Gunn. It Gets Better.