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.” 

 

Overdue Visits and Scary People

Can you believe it, fall is just around the corner. The nights are getting cooler and the sidewalk chalk art is fading around the neighborhood. I guess all the kids got the memo that it’s time to redirect their energy into back-to-school mode…however that will look this year during the pandemic.  

For the first time in nearly a year I took an overdue trip to my niece’s cottage, wanting to get it in before her daughter goes back to school. My great niece teaches honors English to kids who really want to learn while her two sons are cared for by my niece turned-granny-nanny and her husband who are both retired teachers. I asked Niece #1 (I have two) how her daughter feels about going back to school, given the Covid-19 pandemic we’re living in, does the school she teaches in and where her son was supposed to start 1st grade have plans that feels safe and comfortable? "No! Not at all,” she answered. It seems the powers that be in their school district is a Republican who either doesn’t think the virus is a real threat or he don’t care. They aren't taking many of the same precautions other schools in the state doing. So Niece #1 will be doing online classes with her grandson and, she says, if her daughter so much as has the sniffles coming home from the high school she’ll keeping her two grandsons at her house instead of sending them home. Last January they all got extremely sick---my niece with a confirmed case of Covid-19---and she says they’re not going through that again!

Like all states in our union there is at least one county that is a hot bed for hate groups and both my nieces lives in one. Niece #1 was telling me about the local chapter of the Proud Boys which make themselves very visible. Look them up on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website, where they track hate groups, and you'll find this introduction: “The Proud Boys are self-described ‘western chauvinists’ who adamantly deny any connection to the racist ‘alt-right,’ insisting they are simply a fraternal group spreading an ‘anti-political correctness’ and an ‘anti-white guilt’ agenda.”

My niece says they run around the area in groups of 12-14 pickup trucks that are decked out in gun racks and large American, Confederate and Trump flags, generally trying to intimidate others by the mire sight of them. They made the news last year when a black family was having a birthday party for little kids and the Proud Boys were racing back and forth in front of the house while the party was going on. And just last week they made the news again when they gathered in a college town causing counter-protesters to gather. A local news media wrote: “The group is listed as a hate group because of its frequent denigration of Muslims and Islam, misogynistic rhetoric, and its role as a gateway to other extremist groups.” You know where this is going, don’t you. Yes, our president thinks the Proud Boys have “some very fine people” in their numbers. And if you think that's the most outrageous endorsement he's made then you didn't see him at a press briefing this week saying nice things about QAnon, a group that spreads conspiracy crap and believes the Democratic party is full satanic pedophile cannibals. Yup, we literally eat aborted babies for breakfast. It would be funny if Jo Rae Perkins, a proud card-carrying QAnon member hadn't just won the Oregon Republican U.S. Senate primary and was praised by Trump.

Back to normalcy: My nieces have both grown into wonderful women, both have very different personalities and interests but they are close friends as well as sisters. They talk on the phone every day and hearing that made me long for the days when I had daily phone contact with someone I loved and who knew me as well as I know myself. It’s been years since I've had that kind of relationship in my life. Niece #2 was on vacation up north or she would have been at the cottage too. She's cornered the market on humor in our family and it's always fun to be around her.

I hate driving the expressway I have to take to get out to get to either niece’s home in the boondocks and as I was going through the infamous S-Curve through town it occurred to me that the number of times I’ll have to get on that expressway for the rest of my life can be counted on the fingers of one hand. Once I move I’ll never have to do it again and good riddance to that route out of the city because I don’t want to be one of those old people who drives thirty miles an hour under the speed limit while cursing drivers dart around me with their middle fingers in the air. As I told my niece, one of the things I like about moving is that when the time comes for me to give up driving, I’ll have a built-in back up plan in place. The continuum care campus will have a mini bus that will go to the grocery store weekly and a concierge service to help us arrange rides to doctor appointments. 

With any luck, I won’t have to give up driving for 6-7 years. But from the first time I sat behind the wheel of a car, I’ve hated driving so giving it up will not be the traumatic 'benchmark' for me as it is for others. For my brother…now that will be a different story. His first wild driving stunt happened when he was four and he took his tricycle at full speed off the end of the porch to a six foot drop below to a cement driveway. Picture Fonzie and Happy Days and that was the brother I grew up with---the stereotypical teen aged boy of the mid-'50s trying to look cool with the help of a pocket comb and pomade-enhanced greaser hair. He pushed the envelope on everything he ever drove: bikes, boats, snowmobiles, dune-buggies, cars and pickup trucks. I don't envy my nieces if/when the times comes when they have to ask their dad to hand over his car keys. ©

* That's my brother on his bike at the top.  

My Second OFFICIAL Downsizing Report

If you’ve ever cleaned out a house of an elderly person and wondered why on earth they accumulated so many of a certain item when a couple of them would have been enough, you’ll know how shocked I was to discover that I had over 25 bird feeders tucked away in my Three stall garage. They were sent to the local auction house to sell in three lots. There were ones so big that once they were filled with seed, I couldn’t lift them, ones a good wind would dump all the seeds on the ground and ones the chipmunks could crawl right inside and make themselves at home. The feeder experiments/war was ongoing for a lot of years and it gave us great pleasure to think we could outsmart nature if only we had a different style bird feeder. Color me embarrassed to have kept them all.

I’m still making my self-imposed quota of ten e-Bay auctions a week which might not sound like much but do the math. Ten a week times 52 weeks amounts to 520 collectibles over the next year, 490 in my case because I don’t do e-Bay between the holidays. That should put me in super great shape in the collectibles department. Done. Gone. Off to their new homes with my blessings. Ten is also all I can handle and do it right. The research is time consuming, photographing and writing up descriptions is time consuming. Packing is time consuming. Life is time consuming. But in most cases I'm glad to pass the collector’s torch on to guys like the high bidder on my pair of 1899 Cobb Bean handcuffs. He was thrilled to find something he'd been looking for since he was a kid and saw Houdini put on a pair. He e-mailed me that he was able to pick the lock and get them open. How cool is that!

Speaking of passing the torch, I gave my oldest niece the original wallet and papers that my grandfather immigrated with and carried on him every day of his life in America. She was properly in awe holding them in her hands. She’d seen copies of them in the family history book I wrote, but it’s different seeing an actual Italian Army discharge paper dated 1896, a U.S. Citizenship paper from 1898 and a Coal Miner’s License from 1916 and knowing that the five generations between my grandfather and my great-great nieces and nephews are all here because he had the guts to travel the ocean with one wicker suitcase and a dream of a better life. I gave that suitcase to my niece last summer and the papers will go inside where she has it displayed on top of a china cabinet. Once a teacher, always a teacher; she will make sure the little ones in the family hear the story of one of their ancestors when they visit the cottage in the years to come. 

I even gave away my geode rock that I've been carrying around since I was fifteen. My niece is giving it a place of honor in with her collection of travel rocks. The poor thing hasn't 'lived' outside since I brought it home from Indiana. It's going to miss my sun porch come winter. At least I have visiting rights and my niece has my blessings if she wants to crack it open to expose the crystals within.

This morning I dropped off a trunk load of stuff at hazardous waste recycling---paints and gardening chemicals that the son-I-wish-I-had helped me bring up from the basement yesterday. Last time he was here I dropped off three huge boxes of my husband's slides at media recycling. (Have I mentioned how much I hate going to media recycling? It's in the same smelly, busy building where people dump trash off their trailers and pickup trucks, and a frontend loader picks it up and puts it in to their large hauler trucks. It's a good place to pick up nails in your tires, too.) Several years before Don died we went through the slides and picked out the 100 best of the best---he was a prolific, amateur photographer. I had planned to convert those slides into a format to use in a photo frame slide show and recycle the others. But my husband pitched a fit about doing the latter so I never got around to doing the former. I've still got the 100 slides set aside and will drop them off to a place that can put them on a memory stick for me. Just another one of those side trips you take when you're on the Downsizing Turnpike. 

The-son-I-wish-I-had also brought up all my old artwork and art supplies for me to sort in the garage. Sorting that batch will be a long walk down Memory Lane that will fill up my trash bin a few times. There's a bunch of drawing of naked guys in that batch, just sayn'. The basement is nearly finished---just some teddy bear making supplies left that I'm not ready to part with yet and a couple of boxes of political memorabilia that I won't sell until closer to the election and, of course, we'll have to vacuum down there but not until I'm closer to listing the house. 

And for my last story from the Downsizing Front, I unpacked a box that hadn’t been unpacked since I move here nearly two decades ago and I found a framed one dollar bill, the first one I made from my bridal bouquets business. My husband’s doing. He was so supportive. He insisted that I sell him a boutonniere, then after he paid me the dollar he took it back and put it in that frame. How could you not love a guy like that? Now the dilemma. Do I sell it on e-Bay where I can get three or four bucks for that 1957 silver certificate one dollar bill or what? Maybe someday…. For now the frame got donated and the bill got tucked away where the next time I see it, it will make me feel loved all over again.  

I probably should consider renaming my blog The Downsizing Saga since they'll be more posts like this as the downsizing decisions move into the house and get more complicated, and I can hardly wait to see what makes the cut at the end of all this.  ©

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. ©

The Mini Christmas Trip

My brother had three kids and those three nearly perfect human beings (in my eyes, anyway) had five children between them. As it happens in all families, my brother’s grandchildren grew up, got married and started having babies. Now, our family has eleven little ones under four plus one ready to greet the world any minute now. Counting all the spouses that brings my family up to a grand total of twenty-nine going on thirty. With all those little “activity machines” running around, my nieces have been renting the community hall in a small village for our Christmas Eve parties. Due to Michigan’s snowy weather, the distance and me not driving at night, I don’t always make it out to the party. This year, however, Levi the Mighty Schnauzer and I got an invitation to stay overnight at my oldest niece’s so my drive out of town and back home again could be in the daylight. And with no snow in the forecast, I accepted the invitation, thrilled that I’d actually wake up Christmas morning to a tree standing next to a cut stone fireplace in a log cabin that could easily be featured on the cover of Holiday Magic Magazine. 

Let me tell you, Levi getting invited was a big deal and I wanted to be sure he was on his best behavior with all the comforts he enjoys demands at home. I’d use the same packing list for Levi whether it was for an overnight or a month's stay: a crate, crate pad, blanket, old towel (to clean his feet when coming inside), brush, anti-itch pills, food, water and their dishes, leash, treats, winter coat and microchip information. Sounds simple, doesn’t it, to pack for a dog and it would have been if when I got his travel crate up from the basement I hadn’t discovered that Levi no longer fits unless I could teach him how to imitate a headless sardine in a tin can. (I haven’t used the crate since before my husband died and Levi was still a growing boy.) That crate wasn’t a good option so I made a mad dash to three pet stores in the area and none of them had what he needed. 

Amazon had a soft-sided folding crate in a color I could live with, in a size that I thought would be perfect for him. I ordered it, paid extra for two day shipping and Amazon got it to my door at 9:30 PM the day before I was to leave. I unpacked and set it up, loved the style but it was big enough to hold a whole litter of Levi’s which would have been okay-ish except it didn’t fit in my car which kind of defeated the whole purpose of having a travel crate. Oops. When I called my niece to explain my problem she said she had a baby gate we could use to confine Levi in bathroom while we went to the party. I was pretty sure he wouldn’t push it over trying to escape if not for the fact that my niece has a cat. Worry wart that I am, I had visions of coming back to the log cabin after the party to find out that Levi had busted out of lockdown, chased the cat up the Christmas tree, tipping it over into the fireplace and fire department was just putting out the fire as we drove in. 

Thankfully, the cat---bless her heart---hid out in the basement the entire time we were there and Levi amused himself by letting his nose track the “mythical” cat around the house. But he’s afraid of steps and the cat’s afraid of dogs so it was a match made in heaven. As a house guest, Levi was a model of doggie decorum. He didn’t bark at anything, didn't beg at the table. He didn’t jump on the rich, brown leather furniture grouped in front of the fireplace. And he didn’t pee on the Christmas tree or anything else in or outside the house that wasn’t his designated porta-potty area. 

The photo at the top is of the two youngest babies in the family. They’re not twins but their mom’s accidentally bought them the same party dresses. I don’t believe in putting photos of kids online without parental permission---and I’d never ask---but you can’t really see their sweet little faces and, of course, no one knows who Santa is but one of my niece’s is rumored to sleep with this one. At one point or another both these babies were nursed while their mom’s sat in the mayor’s chair on the dais at the front of the hall.

You’re not supposed to have favorites in a group of babies and toddlers, but one little girl who hasn't been walking very long captured my heart. In my younger days, I would have been down on the floor with my camera following her every move. She has black hair that was caught up into a Peddles from the Flintstones topknot and when she wanted to pick something up from the floor she’d do a sumo wrestler pose that cracked me up. She could hold that pose for the longest time, her dark eyes laughing while her red dress hiked up over her outstretched knees and her diapered bottom nearly touched the floor. Oh course, any toddler who isn't afraid of me is a winner in my book and this year there was quite a few at the party.

Except for the dog crate I have to exchange, it was a wonderful Christmas mini trip. ©