The Family Reunion and the Baby Sprinkle

It was a busy weekend here in the land of Jean of Sunny West Michigan where poor Levi was treated like Cinderella who had to stay home and keep the home fires burning while I partied---first at a family reunion on Saturday and then at a ‘Baby Sprinkle’ on Sunday. But don’t feel too sorry for Levi. Both days he got extra-long walks around the neighborhood as a trade-off for my guilt and I managed to bag up a huge amount of---well, dog poop and we stopped at a zillions places to mark where other canines had no doubt marked so I knew Levi wouldn’t suffer with his legs crossed while I was off in the boondocks seeing cousins I hadn’t seen in years one day, and toddlers the next.

I was not the oldest person at the reunion but I was the only one who has documented my mom’s side of the family in writing and as we sat on a porch overlooking a lake with the youngest generation playing in the water, questions were swirling around me. Ohmygod, that’s when I realized just how bad my memory has gotten! I couldn’t answer any of the dates, places and relationship type questions with any degree of certainty but, thankfully, my older niece had her copy of the family history book there where we could fact-checked older me against my younger self. I made a joke about how I research something, put it in writing and then kick the information out of my brain to make room for more. But apparently that’s more fact than fiction. I often joke that someday when I’m living in a nursing home visitors can read my self-published books to me to remind me of who I used to be. I’m going to cross-stitch that idea on a pillow so my nieces don’t forget because I sure will. But seriously, it’s scary to think that a day is coming sooner rather than later when I won’t remember to come in out of the rain.

Not all of my cousins were at the reunion but the ones I was the closest with growing up were there---the three girls from two sets of twins. And so was their mother who now lives in a nursing home. Boy, was she still sharp! I used to babysit the two sets of twins and what a workout that was. Another cousin who also babysat them from time to time said we got paid twenty-five cents an hour. You could have held a gun to my head and I couldn’t have come up with that detail. All around me was chit-chat about everyone's grandchildren and how they are on deck to babysit. I couldn’t add to that conversation having never had kids but I threw in the mantra I started saying in my mid-twenties. “I won’t babysit any kids who can’t say, ‘My stomach hurts, I need to go to the hospital.’”

Now, babies scare me but the feeling seems to be mutual. At the Baby Sprinkle only half of the babies and toddlers in attendance would smile at me without looking like they wanted to burst out crying. A Baby Sprinkle, in case you’re wondering, is a baby shower for a baby that isn’t a first. In this case, the mother-to-be is having a girl close on the heels of having two little boys. She says she’s going to do her best to not let her daughter turn into a tom-boy. I hope I'll still be around to see how that works out in ten-fifteen years. The mother-to-be has a degree in childhood development and has the mamma gig down pat. In fact, all of the young mothers in my family seem to be raising happy and well-adjusted kids. 

Being a good mother can’t be said of one of my older cousins who has passed away. She was the most sadistic and cruel person I’ve ever known and a couple of her husbands were sexually abusive to her 8-9 kids, all but one were girls. I babysat them, too---when there was only five---so it was interesting to see the oldest one at the reunion, to find out what happened to her and her siblings after decades of not knowing. But I made her cry when I told her the thing I remembered the most about her next-in-line sister is that she’d stop at our house on her the way home from grade school, climb into my mom’s lap to be rocked and then she’d cry when it was time for her to go home. Two of the siblings now live on the streets and have for years. So if you’ve ever wondered why some people choose that life style imagine how hard it would be to trust those who have tried to intervene, how hard it would be to overcome a childhood void of any kind of parental love or nurturing and in its place was the worst kind of mental and sexual abuse.

In my garage hangs a clock that my brother gave me in the seventies that has written on the face: “All the flowers of all our tomorrows are in the seeds of today.” Being part of the oldest generation at a family reunion, it was easy to see the truth in that Indian proverb. It was fully illustrated by the well-loved toddlers splashing in the water who will no doubt grow up to be well adjusted human beings like their parents, and by the one person there whose close-to-the-surface tears and bad memories represented the seeds of yesterday that never got watered or felt the warmth of the sun. ©

Taxes, Movies, Baby Showers, Strokes and God, Oh My!

I didn’t go to the Movie and Lunch Club this week. Normally I’ll go even if the chosen movie isn’t one that particularly excited me, but this time they picked Miracles from Heaven, a faith-based film that from all accounts is preaching to a choir of true believers. The trailer alone was enough for me to know I would hate the ‘lunch talk’ that would come after. Having grown up in The City of Churches that over the decades turned into The City of Parochial Colleges I can go along to get along with the best of them but I draw a line at paying to see a movie that, as one reviewer put it, has only one objective---to reiterate “that God exist, heaven is real and miracles happen.” Yes, I know the film is supposed to be based on a true story of a little girl with a mysterious disease who falls out of a tree and gets cured and in true Heaven is Real fashion she gets to sit in the lap of the Lord along the way. Call me cynical but I have a real aversion with the personification of God especially coming out of the mouths of children and along with that aversion comes a huge fear of voicing that in public. The little girl inside me who was rejected on the playground because my parents didn’t “have a church” is still there worrying that all threads of friendship will get cut if I let my non-Christian leanings show. I did find a bit of cuteness in one of the movie reviews, though, that made me smile: “The part of God was played by a fluffy cloud.”  

Thursday was a lead-gray day. The sky was working itself up to a good cry that never materialized except for just enough sprinkles to make it annoying and necessary to have the intermitting wipers on as I drove the expressway down to see my CPA. Income tax season is so much fun. I got behind an old foggy maybe a year or two younger than me who was driving 52 miles an hour. It’s dangerous to be so pokey! At the first opportunity I sped around him vowing I’ll never drive slower than my age on that highway. I could find someone closer to home to do my taxes but I have a history with my guy. Years ago, before Don and I started going to the man, Don got audited by the IRS resulting in him getting an unexpected tax refund of $7,000. Getting a big refund after an audit was a neon clue that it was time to change tax preparers.  

I sat down across from the CPA and the conversation got around to politics, Don and how much he would been engaged in the circus going on. “I miss that guy,” he said. “He used to stop sometimes when he was finished plowing snow and we’d give him a cup a cocoa.” Besides that nugget from the past the large jar of Tootsie Roll Pops sitting on the desk also churned up memories. Don would open the jar and search for a two chocolates before he'd sit down and in my silly mind that meant I couldn’t have a Tootsie Roll Pop. One per customer and he ate mine! Yes, I’m the kind of person who always buys something when I stop at a gas station to pee. Fair is fair. But I digress… When my taxes were done, the CPA made a remark about life changing and only God knows what comes next and I blurted out, “And sometimes even He doesn’t know.” Crap! Not only did I personify the God Power I gave my CPA the impression that this widow was having a crisis of faith. 

The crème-de-crème of my week was Saturday when I went to a baby shower where all of the women in my family and our five new babies---my great-great nieces and nephews---were in attendance. I’d say I was in seventh heaven but after what I wrote above I probably should come up with another platitude. Let’s just say I had a good time. There’s no one else in my or Don’s family left to have their first baby so this was likely the last baby shower I’ll ever attend, a bittersweet acknowledgement if there ever was one. 

The mother of the last baby born, who was the guest of honor, had a difficult birth and emergency surgery all in the same day. What little miracles babies are! Love plants the seed and a baby grows in mommy’s tummy; I read that in a where-did-I-come-from book. The guest of honor is also the most religious person in the family. She and her husband met at a Christian college and both work in a Christian conference center.  She’s a lovely young woman but every time I see her I’m reminded that Don had his massive stroke the day she got baptized. That week prior to the ceremony Don was trying every which way to get out of going so when we got to the church and he didn’t want to go inside---complaining of a headache---I really didn’t believe him. Still, I left him in the truck and went inside while he was out in the parking lot getting pulled into a ‘black hole’ that would change the trajectory of our lives. There's a lot of what-ifs attached to that day and even an on-going joke (?) made about the stroke being a punishment from God for not going inside the church. But the only what-if that counts now is the what-if we’d never met in the first place…what a dull life I would have led without Don. ©

The 'Widow' Who Wasn’t and the Knitter

For mid-February here in Michigan, the roads were as clear and dry as summertime and that’s rare where I had to go last weekend, which was 93 miles round trip out to the boondocks to a baby shower for my niece’s soon-to-be born first granddaughter. Along with a few store bought things, I had knitted a baby car-seat blanket, finishing it just in the nick of time. The parents picked gray and yellow for the baby’s “theme.” My niece’s other daughter-in-law picked brown and blue for her baby. Knitting for newborns isn’t cut-and-dry, pink or blue anymore. This past year I’ve even made a maroon and gold car-seat blanket. I didn’t like it but sports team colors apparently are all the rage with babies now, at least in my husband’s family. This last one was my eighth car-seat blanket in a year. Nine if I count the one I donated to the senior hall craft show last Christmas. I’ll need a couple more before all the potential new parents in this generation (Don’s side and my side) are covered plus I’ve got plans and yarn around to make more for the next craft sale.

I’ve decided I am a selfish person. A lady I don’t know from the senior hall, who also donated a car-seat blanket to the craft sale, tracked me down and asked me if she could have a copy of my pattern. It’s a basket weave and she uses a standard stocking stitch. I’m not sure where the original pattern is---I printed it off the internet---but I’ve made it so many times it’s in my head. I could probably write it out for her but here’s where my selfish side is coming in. I don’t want to! People rave over how pretty that basket weave pattern is and it’s the only claim to crafting fame I have down at the senior hall. If she starts making them, too, well, you know where this is going. I did tell her the name of the stitch so she could easily adapt her pattern but that wasn’t good enough. She wants it written out. So what do I do? Do I give it to her even though I’d rather not, or do I play the forgetful, old woman card the next time she asks? 

Knitting has been this week’s theme. My niece-in-law wants me to teach her how to read patterns, do increases and decreases, make mittens and do a cable stitch so I’ve been preparing samples and finding hand-outs for my mini class. I’ve never made a mitten in my life until this week, but she’s got a bunch of young grand-babies and years of mitten making ahead of her so the lesson will be time well spent. 

Christian author and speaker, Joyce Meyer, says, “If selfishness is the key to being miserable, then selflessness must be the key to being happy.” If that’s true---and I have no reason to believe it’s not---then what does it mean when we are selfish in one situation (like not giving patterns to strangers) but generous with others as in sharing my time and knowledge with someone I know and love? Am I two-faced or is it human to be inconsistent with a basic value of living in a complex society? Is there a little calculator in our heads that keeps track of the long-term and short-term consequences of our selfless and selfish actions? Author and political commentator, Alan Dershowitz seems to recognize selfishness isn’t a black and white issue. “Good character consists of recognizing selfishness that inheres in each of us” he says, “and trying to balance it against the altruism to which we should all aspire.” 

I started thinking about all this a few days ago when I was reading a blog written by a woman who calls herself a “widow” but the man she loved and who died was a married man. She told about how she had gone to a grief support meeting and left in tears because she thought the other women there would “judge her” if she told her story. Well, duh! She also said she felt all alone at the funeral because the man’s wife was “getting all the condolences.” Well, double duh, Sweetie! The woman who writes the check for the funeral usually does get that privilege. Call me crazy, but to me it would be an act of pure, audacious selfishness to expect widows at a support group to welcome her with an open heart and loving arms if she spills the beans about having affair with a dearly departed. But what do I know about selfishness and selflessness, I’m the woman who doesn’t even want to give a stranger a knitting pattern!

I couldn’t get her story out of my mind. Where does a non-widow like her go to find support? Is there an app for that? I consulted Google and guess what. What she is going through actually has a name. Its call ‘disenfranchised grief’---grief you can’t talk about because it’s considered unacceptable to others. I learn something new every day! And now I suppose I need to go Google how to atone for my judgmental, SNL church-lady persona. ©

Break From Winter

 

This has been a good week here in the land of too much snow. Saturday the gods of goodness shined down on Michigan and made the 82 miles of roads I had to travel to my great, great niece’s baby shower easy to drive. My niece was putting a lot of pressure on me to come out to the boondocks and even offered to send her husband to pick me up and deliver me back home if the roads were bad. And if the roads were really, really bad, she wanted me to stay at her house for a few days, “We’ll have a slumber party of shower guests,” she said. But Levi, my schnauzer, nixed that idea since his kennel is out in the County of Unplowed Roads and who would feed his rabbits if I wasn’t home to do it? He torments my niece’s cat so he couldn't have gone with me. What can I say, it’s in his genes to chase small ‘varmint’ and that instinct is making me nervous these days because the snow is so deep---and the rabbits so plentiful in my yard---it wouldn’t take much effort for him to crawl right out of his dog pen. Only 14 inches of his 3 foot tall fence is showing above the snow pack. My only saving grace is that he’s an agility course drop-out. When the jump bar gets set over five inches high, he chickens out.

It was bright and sunny when I arrived at the golf course where the shower was being held and the minute I pulled into the overcrowded parking lot I got excited. There were easily 100 snowmobiles in various states---some parked, some coming and going from the state trail, some circling the parking lot and others taking part in a vintage snowmobile show. The annual winter-fest was on and its sounds and sunshine was like taking a tonic! I was quite early for the shower and even though I felt half-dressed walking about in the sea of helmeted people wearing one-piece, playtime snowsuits I looked over the vintage machines, enjoying all the great memories they conjured up. I’d been on that trail, to that course golf, on machines like those in the vintage parking area many times. I was almost sad when I got inside and realized the shower was booked in a private room, and we wouldn’t be mixing it up with all the exhilarated snowmobilers in the main dining room.

The shower was a big one—55 of us---and my great-great niece got a mountain of gifts but mine was the only one that included handmade items. I guess knitting has gone out of style. This winter I’ve knitted up a pile of stuff---mostly hats, scarfs, cowls and baby car seat blankets. Most winters I usually knit just one or two things. I blame that darn cable upgrade I got 5-6 weeks ago and the unending snow because I’m spending more time in front of the TV set than usual. Is this how it starts? Pretty soon will the table next to my chair in the living room have that “old person” look? You know, an unruly pile containing things like a magnifier glass, a box of tissues, toenail clippers, paper and pen, maybe a crossword puzzle book, a bottle of liniment, and a few back issues of the TV guide---all overflowing and tempting the dog to steal stray candy wrappers and used Kleen-x. Will my next addition to the room be a TV tray where I can eat or do small jigsaw puzzles?

Thursday I went to a lecture at the senior hall titled, Warm Winter Reads. The librarian who puts on the program is so energetic and enthusiastic about the books she recommends that it’s hard not to get intrigued by some of those she features. I used to belong to the book club at the hall before my husband died and I never really got back into reading with the same pleasure and intensity. But when I got home from the lecture I downloaded one of her recommendations to my Kindle and so far I’m enjoying The Humans by Matt Haig. It’s probably the lightest read on her handout but I couldn’t resist the premise of an extraterrestrial who comes to earth to assume a man’s identity in order to carry out an important mission but he ends up falling in love with the man’s family and their dog. The book has some intriguing passages like the one below where the extraterrestrial is describing love to those on his home planet: "Two mirrors, opposite and facing each other at perfectly parallel angles, viewing themselves through the other, the view as deep as infinity. Yes, that is what love was for. Love was a way to live forever in a single moment, and it was also a way to see yourself as you had never actually seen yourself, and made you realize---having done so---that this view was a more meaningful one than any of your previous self-perceptions and self-deceptions.”

After Monday's storm, we are supposed to have a week of thawing here and with it will come fog and flooding but it’s a necessary evil in order for us to get rid of some of our massive snow piles. I can’t wait! I just hope my sump pump can keep up!  Our hundred year flood, last year, found my basement and I don’t need another disaster like that again.  ©