N is for Nieces and Nephews—The Long Arc of Family

This is probably going to be the hardest post I’ll write for the A to Z blog Challenge. Hard partly because I want to protect their privacy and not reveal details they haven’t shared publicly. And that’s not my natural style. I have a tendency to beat small observations to death.

So I started by asking AI to define nieces, and I laughed out loud when it told me: “Nieces are cherished family members who bring joy, sunshine, and love, often described as angels or little princesses who rule the heart.” My brother’s daughters (and son and step‑sons) are cherished family members who have brought joy, sunshine, and love into my life. But “little princesses”? Not even close. Growing up, tomboys probably would have been far more accurate. I’d be shocked if there were any glitter‑covered tiaras or net tutus in their box of memories. I’ll have to ask.

AI had this to say about nephews: They “celebrate the unique bond between aunts/uncles and their nephews, often highlighting joy, mentorship, and unconditional love.” The unconditional love part is certainly true for me, and I’m pretty sure my nephew would agree my husband could claim a spot on the team that mentored him—considering Don taught him how to plow snow, and Jesse went on to start his own lawn‑care and plow service.

But even before Don came into my life, Jesse and the girls brought joy. I didn’t see them as often as my folks did when they were growing up, but when I did, it was always playtime. And yes, I apologized to my sister‑in‑law and my mother’s ghosts for leaving all the cooking and cleanup to them at family dinners and holidays while I played with the kids. I was deep into photography back then, and those years are well documented. There’s no denying I was the fun aunt.

My two step‑nephews came into our lives with my brother’s second marriage, and by then the “golden years” of bonding had passed, so I’m not as close to them as the others. But they turned into a solid, caring and productive human beings anyone would be proud to call family.

All five of them did, and the bond between them is warm and full of love, once you scratch through the surface-stress left behind from caring for my brother during his dementia years. Those of us who've been through that know there is a period of healing that has to take place after adult kids buries their parent. And they seem to be right on schedule in the healing process.

Their growing up years: My heart still smiles at the memories of building forts, swimming, walking in the woods, and doing crafts with my “three musketeers.” In their teen years the girls even worked for me. I had a business making flowers for weddings, and in the summers—when I was busiest—they each spent week days with me in the city. As we sat making corsages and bouquets, I introduced them to Young and the Restless. Or was it As the World Turns? I’m too old to recall the details of long-ago habits and secret pleasures.

If nothing else, I taught the girls that when you have a clean house, you treat yourself to fresh flowers. Both have mentioned that to me recently. I need to revise that directive for myself, though, to: Anytime I go to the store, buy flowers, because my opportunities to do so are getting farther apart as I age.

I’ve watched my brother’s kids grow, learn and weather hard times when their parents divorced. I’ve watched them settle down, raise children of their own, and become productive human beings anyone would be proud to have in their family tree. And I’m pretty sure they’d agree that in addition to being kin, we’ve made the transition to being friends on equal footing. They grew up, and so did I, in all the best ways.

To paraphrase a Hallmark card, “I may not be their mom, but I’m definitely their biggest fan and cheerleader.” 

 

When Good People Die

My favorite sister-in-law passed away this week. Her lungs had been compromised for the past few years, but recently she’d spend ten days in ICU and she died when they took her off a ventilator. An all too common story lately although I kind of doubt Covid was in the picture because her whole family was with her when they pulled the plug. Dianna didn’t smoke, ate healthy, exercised religiously and didn’t have an ounce of fat on her body. She was that person who took care of family or friends when their spouse or child was in the hospital. She’d bring her picnic basket fulled with fruits and healthy snacks and water bottles. She didn't just give you the line, "If I can do anything, let me know..." She'd follow that up with suggestions like letting your dog out or feeding your cat or bringing your mail inside, picking your kids up from school or doing your laundry. One time after Don’s massive stroke, she even showed up with her PJ's to stay overnight in the hospital with him and told me to go home and sleep in my own bed. He was in the hospital an entire month and she was my angel hovering in my peripheral, stopping by every 2-3 days to check on us. She was a pre-school teacher for over 25 years and she was also a Trump supporter, an enigma I’ve never been able to figure out. I didn’t try very hard because, well, she was such good person to her core and sometimes you have to accept the dark differences in those you love.

Don had three older brothers. The second oldest never understood or even pretended to have much respect for his kid brother. He was all about tennis shorts and cashmere sweaters and Don was all about denim jeans and cowboy boots. His oldest brother took on more of a mentor role who clashed heads with his sons and Don equally but their two-way love and respect always came through. The brother closest to Don’s age was still ten years older than Don and he was married to Dianna. They were also in the tennis shorts and cashmere stratosphere of life but they never forgot where they came from---lovely, classy people who didn’t judge Don for his blue collar life. And you could always count on them for certain things: gourmet dishes to pass at family parties, always looking like they stepped off the pages of a fashion magazine and sending Christmas cards with photos of the whole family dressed alike. Even after their grandchildren were college graduates, they still did the cards with the matchy-matchy outfits---ten people all lined up for a photo taken on a summer vacation. I didn’t get their Christmas card this year which sounded the first alarm bell that something serious was going on at their house.

I’m at that time in life when the lack of a Christmas card becomes a clue to something we’re really not ready to face. My best friend since kindergarten also didn’t send out cards this year. To make matters more ominous her email had been recently hacked and I didn’t have a current replacement address which has been our chief way of communicating. I tried calling but I kept getting a message that her voice box had not been set up and my text messages went unanswered. I’d even googled for her and her husband for obituaries that I gratefully I didn’t find.

For our entire adult lives Nancy and I touched bases every four to six weeks but I’d always get a sense when something was going on in her life and sure enough, we both have the same thoughts in the same time frame. Back when we did snail mail our letters often crossed at the post office. Explanations for Nancy’s missing Christmas card turned out better than for Dianna’s. This past week we finally were able to communicate after her husband contacted me with a new email address. They’d both had health issues over the holidays that included a hospitalization and they were just now getting back to normal. 

I’ve only had two blood-brothers-close friends in my life: Nancy and Don. Sometimes I think my lack of close friends has been because I haven’t been as good of a friend as others have been to me. I’ve never been that person, for example, who brings a picnic basket to the hospital. Other times I know it’s normal to have just a couple of people in a lifetime who you’re willing to bare your soul to, who you know will love you and you them no matter what. Or like the young people say today, a friend who if you asked them to help you bury a body would bring a shovel and not ask questions. (Nancy, if you're reading please note that the last sentence is a euphemism. Unless it's a small animal's body I won't literally help you bury a body. I will, however help you go to the police to confess a murder and empty out my bank account to get you a good lawyer.)

Back on topic: What do you do when good people die during a pandemic? The last time that happened in my family they had the funeral virtually. It was strange and cold and the equipment they live-streamed it on was so poor that it was impossible to view without feeling like a voyeur watching something on a hidden camera that I wasn’t meant to see. Who would have ever guessed a pandemic would have us wishing we could go to memorial services to dispense hugs and kind words! No matter what Dianna's daughters and husband plan, I’ll do what I always do and that’s to write…the personalized sympathy cards, the Facebook messages…and this blog post. She was such a good person and she will be missed.   

I just got word that my husband's second oldest brother also died this week. I'll be writing a lot of those cards and messages in the coming days....©

Handy Tools, Chickens and Family Visits

Do you know what a chicken catcher is? I didn’t until last Saturday and now I’m the proud owner of my very own poultry catcher leg hook and, no, I don’t have any chickens to go with it. It’s a 4 1/2 foot long pole with a rubber handle at one end and a hook at the other, a fancy model compared to some I’ve since seen online. My niece and her husband live in a county south of me and they drove up to present me with my new prize. I’m pretty sure he made it, judging by the wood burnt label on the smooth wood because it matches the work on the walking canes that he makes and sells. They don’t keep chickens anymore but at one point in time they used to have a dozen chickens---each a different, fancy breed that laid various colors and sizes of eggs. But at least three of my brother’s grandchildren keep chickens. Chicken talk in the family amuses the heck out of me but we have the best deviled eggs and potato salads at parties. They didn’t grow up on farms but they are prime examples of a growing phenomenon of backyard and urban chicken hobbyists in their generation. There are five magazine publications on the market now devoted to raising backyard chickens!

So what am I going to do with my new tool? Hope I’ll never, ever have a need to use it but if I experience another power outage, the chicken catcher hook is the perfect tool to pull the manual override cord on my garage door. It’s such a simple concept and a solid solution for those of us with bad bones who don’t get on ladders. I got curious about how the tool works for the purpose it was invented and all the videos I found online are so quick you can’t really see what’s happening. But this description from UIUC Poultry Farms explains it: “What this tool does is it catches a chicken by its leg and because their legs bend forward (and not backwards like ours) their leg gets stuck. From there, I lifted it up and grabbed it by both of its legs. I was then told that the proper way to hold a chicken is by splitting my fingers into a live-long-and-prosper sign, then sliding that along the chicken's stomach. This allowed me to hold both of the chicken's feet as well as support its entire weight in my hand.” The guy who wrote that was learning how to catch and band chickens but I assume other people catch chickens to cook for dinner. That was one of my husband’s job as a kid growing up on a farm. I can’t even buy and prepare whole chickens from the grocery store without them remaining me of a living creature and that turns me off to eating them. I can’t imagine killing dinner with my bare hands. 

My niece is a grannie-nanny to her a four-and-a-half year old and a newborn. She, her husband and their daughter are all teachers---two of them retired, of course, but once a teacher always a teacher. They genuinely enjoy interacting with young people and I’ve come to believe that it’s also an art form that if I ever had it, I’ve lost it along the way to sprouting gray hair on my head. When I try to make conversation with little ones or pre-teens I feel like a sea lion preforming for a fish they never deliver. I didn't had that trouble relating to my nieces and nephew when they were growing up. Heck, I was still half kid myself. I was only twelve when the first one came into the family. 

Playing in my nieces and nephew’s fort in the woods, swimming, boating and fishing at the family cottage, snowmobiling, raking leaves, sleep-overs, planting gardens, walking country roads and me bugging them with my camera are some of my best memories. My brother thought I was spoiled because I wasn’t in the kitchen doing ‘women’s work’ before and after meals. Instead I was in charge of entertaining the kids. But who was I to question the wisdom of my mom who wanted us out from underfoot when serious meal preparation and clean up was under way? My mom and dad set great examples for how loving grandparents should interact with their grandkids and I like to think I set a good example for how aunts interact. However, I’m the official godmother to my oldest niece---and maybe my other niece, too, I can’t remember---I fell down on that job. Do godparents take that of roll of spiritual guide seriously? If so, I'm not dead yet. There's still time for that conversation. I'd probably quote something cryptic like Echart Tolle's, "You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself." Ya, I know what you're thinking. What was my brother and sister-in-law thinking when they picked me to be a godmother?

My niece and her husband and I had a wonderful, long visit. They helped me track down a problem I was having with my hot water return line since last week when all my pipes were drained during the power outage, then we went out for brunch and came back here to look through old photos. And, of course, I had a show-and-tell with the stuff I’ve bought for my upcoming bedroom redecorating project. Show-and-tells have always been one of my favorite activities and when you think about it, the blog world is full of writers and readers who also love them. ©

From Ding-Bat Relatives to Ocean’s 8 and Penny Lane

I have a couple of niece-in-laws who I don’t see often since my husband died. It’s not just the lost connection of my husband/their uncle but their mother passing away as well and I still miss her living close by. After Don died I’d stop by often when I didn’t want to go home to an empty house. I could always count on my sister-in-law’s ‘ding-battiness’ to make me laugh. She was a terrible gossip, too, and I guess I like gossip because now I have no clue what’s going on in her large Catholic family. We all fall victim to the seasons of other people’s lives. With her gone, the family parties have all ended. She was the one who’d rent a cottage for Fourth of July get-togethers and a banquet room for Christmas parties and who hosted all the Easter and Thanksgiving dinners. She loved to cook, hated leftovers and we'd go home with enough food to keep us eating for a week. Even stopping by for coffee, would earn you a half a honey ham or roast when you left.

Since my sister-in-law died, one of my niece-in-laws has moved into a nursing home and her older sister does daycare for her grandchildren and grand-dogs. She’s over committed and not in the best of health herself, but the three of us managed to have lunch together recently. It was great to be around people I’ve known and loved for decades! So different than trying to build new friendships, no matter how nice your new friends are. There’s nothing to prove, no Litmus Test, no wondering when you’ll reveal something that will stop a budding friendship in its track. Growing older sucks! Lost connections suck! And I really hate the word ‘suck’ but I’m not in the mood to work at finding a more lady-like word to use in its place. Why did it take putting a phone call on my job list to make getting together happen? Even doing that, I moved the phone call from list to list for weeks before I finally followed through. Calling someone we love shouldn’t get relegated to a job, like calling a plumber to get a leaky faucet fixed.

In my younger days---and probably yours---I could throw together my social life on the spur of the moment. “Want to go clubbing tonight?” “Sure, let’s meet at Oscar’s at---what time is it now? I can be there at 8:00.” But septuagenarians and octogenarians are different. We have a basket full of complications that have to be factored into having a social life. Things like we have to pace our physical endurance or the medical community has us jumping through hoops. Some of us can’t do mornings or can’t do afternoons and many of us don’t drive after dark. And then there are money issues for some who have to make sure a social engagement won’t result in having to eat cat food for the rest of the month. My Movie and Lunch Club, right now, is voting on whether or not to move from going on the 3rd Friday of the month to a Tuesday when the theaters offers a three dollar discount. With nearly fifty of us on the email list, my in box is getting flooded with pros and cons but no one has yet suggested splitting the group into two clubs. Duh! Sometimes the easiest solution is the hardest to come by because people get so intent on having things their own way that they forget about looking for compromises or logical solutions.

Speaking of movies, I saw Ocean’s 8 with my Gather Girls pals. IMDb condenses the storyline like this: “Debbie Ocean gathers an all-female crew to attempt an impossible heist at New York City's yearly Met Gala.” I’ve never been a fan of the Ocean’s franchise or the ‘heist’ genre, but this one is riding the new wave of movies targeting women and if we want them to keep making chic-flicks-on-steroids we have to support them. Did I like it? More than I thought I would but not enough to give it more than a 3 ½ star rating. The five of us had lunch afterward and some of the comments made were: “You couldn’t let your mind wander even a minute or you’d be lost” and “it kept us on our toes, especially with the twists near the end” and “I loved all the dresses and jewelry” and “Sandra Bullock and Anne Hathaway are great actresses!” James Corden plays an insurance investigator in the movie and I don’t mind telling you that I’m developing a mini crush on that guy, solidified all the more after a blogger friend over at My View from Here posted his Carpool Karaoke video with Paul McCartney. I’m “borrowing” her link because it’s such a feel-good experience to watch---well worth the 23 minutes it takes to go back to Penny Lane and other places special to the Beatles. ©