A Hundred and One

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Her grandmother served as midwife when she was born in 1906.  Yesterday, she turned a hundred and one years old, so I baked up forty-eight cupcakes, loaded my daughter into the van and headed over for a celebratory Open House.  I left my boys at home with my husband because this has been a week full of mysterious illnesses and I didn’t want to take a chance of contaminating my grandmother with germs that might ultimately kill her. 

(Last year, I had to leave behind my two youngest children when I went to her 100th birthday party because they had the flu.  March 10th is apparently not a healthy day for my children.)

I intended to stop in with my daughter and leave after, oh, say fifteen minutes because I figured that would be all she could manage before the urge to redecorate Grandma’s house or pound on Grandma’s piano would hit.  As it turned out, a 5-year old boy was already there and the two of them headed off to the back yard to play (in the mud).  Hey, it was only raining a tiny bit and we’re not made of brown sugar!  We won’t melt!

A neighbor boy on the other side of the fence chatted to the two of them and they came in to ask if he could climb the fence and play.

My grandmother is a woman of obsessive order and inflexibility.  These traits have served her well and so the thought of a neighbor boy climbing her chain-link fence would mortify her.  I said, “No, just talk to him through the fence.”

A bit later, a knock at the door.  I rose to answer it and there stood a woman lingering on the sidewalk and a boy on the front step.  One of them said, “The children wanted him to come over and play.”  And I, being taken by surprise and yet being unable to be rude, said, “Oh.  Okay.”  I said to the mother, “What is his name?” and that’s about the time I realized she didn’t actually speak English.  I don’t speak Spanish, so we nodded and smiled at each other.  And I let him walk through my grandmother’s pristine house and onto her back deck.  He carried a little Rubbermaid-type container full of sticks, rocks and “potato bugs.”  (That’s what we call them.  To you, they might be roly-polies?)  “Oh,” I said, “Potato bugs!” and then I told them to have fun.

You should know that my grandmother is essentially blind, otherwise I would never have dared to sneak a stranger through her house.  She is private and guarded.  But what she couldn’t see couldn’t hurt her.  And Armando seemed like a very nice eight-year old.  

Awhile later (after digging in the muddy side yard, I think), they decided to come inside . . . they all took off their shoes, including Armando, and I said brightly, “Well, let’s wash our hands!” and that’s about the time my cousin said, “Um, I think Grandmother might be okay with him in the backyard, but, um, since we have no toys and we don’t really know him, probably not in the house.”  And I agreed and so I sent him off with a cupcake and a cheery “good-bye!”

A bit later, I found my daughter and her cousins (ages 5 and 3) jumping on my grandmother’s bed.  My grandmother never even sat on the edge of her bed because she believed that doing so would ruin the mattress.  My grandmother folded her underwear into tidy squares her whole life.  She keeps her folding table in its original box.  She has curtains in her garage, separating her storage items from the rest of the garage . . . which features a large square of carpet.  I’ve never in my lifetime seen my grandmother wearing anything but a dress with nylons and shoes.  (Oh wait, once when I spent the night, I saw her bare feet because she was wearing a nightgown.)

My grandmother is a little obsessive about her belongings, which is what you’d expect from someone her age who lived through the tumultuous century from 1906 until now.

We didn’t tell her that the children were jumping on her bed, but I somehow think she might know, even though she is blind and moves in ultra-slow motion as she inches across her house, clutching her walker.

My daughter and I ended up staying until all the other relatives left . . . after her first playmate disappeared, two other cousins (the bed-jumpers) arrived, so she stayed busy running through the house, hiding under Grandma’s desk, and licking cupcakes.  We had arrived at 12:30 p.m. and left at nearly 5 p.m.  I thoroughly enjoyed seeing a variety of my cousins and uncles and an aunt (some of who are now aware of this blog:  “hello! Natalie and Dan!”) . . . but that was one long afternoon in my grandmother’s well-heated house.  (She is frail and has thin skin and no longer retains heat whatsoever, so she is always about twenty degrees colder than the rest of us, so we all sweat while we visit her.)

I had hoped to create a sweet, meaningful post that would make me cry, but instead, this is all I’ve got. 

So, happy birthday, Grandma!  Sorry I let a stranger track mud through your house and that I only laughed when I saw the little kids jumping on your blue-flowered bedspread.  But thanks for answering my questions–how did I only now realize that your mother arrived here directly from Ireland?  (I say all this as if my grandmother will read this, but if she were to read this, I would never have admitted the whole bed-jumping fiasco.)

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Balance

What’s fun is waking up in the darkest of dark nights and realizing two things:

1)  You are still cold, even though you’ve been huddled under the covers since 11:00 p.m.

2)  That sound you heard was the sound of someone coughing and vomiting.

But, good news!  Although she’s only 4, I found her standing over toilet, retching and vomiting into the toilet bowl.  Hooray.

But, bad news.  “Did you throw up anywhere else?” I asked. 

“On the floor,” she said.

And then I stepped in it.

But, good news!  She settled back into bed and went right to sleep.

But, bad news!  She woke up a few hours later, thus waking me up.

But, good news!  She did not throw up again!

And more good news:  I went back to bed after my 8-year old left for school.  

But, bad news!  One of my 13-year old twins woke up in the dark hours of the night and threw up.

More bad news:  he threw up on the bathroom floor.

But, good news!  He cleaned it up!

But, bad news!  He did not flush.

More bad news:  The toilet was clogged.

But, good news!  I plunged it and the water receded.

But, bad news!  The bathroom stunk.  (Stank?  Stunk?  Stank?  Huh.  I can’t decide.)

But, good news!  Now it smells better because I bought a new mop the other day and a quick mopping and toilet cleaning worked a miracle.

And more good news!  I declared this a sick day.  And worked on taxes.

But, bad news:  My 13-year old felt ill all day.

But, good news!  My daughter felt much better and begged me for Cheetos.  (Uh, no.)

But, bad news!  My 8-year old complains that his stomach hurts.

But, good news!  Soon, I get to drop into bed and sleep, hopefully all night long.  And I feel great!

My life is so balanced, is it not?

Now, pass the hand sanitizer and spray every surface in your house with Lysol, just in case.

March

I’m living with a daily sense of being slightly overwhelmed by my schedule, my life and my laundry pile.  Oh, and the moldy edges in the shower stall.  I wonder sometimes just exactly when I’m supposed to fit in doing the meaningful things like, oh, painting my toenails flaming red and writing a book.  Or an article.  I’d settle for an article!  And I need to caulk the tub. 

I did put up a feeble wire fence around my little square garden.  I hope that fence will say to the boys roaming through my backyard, “HEY, DO NOT STOMP ON ME!”  I transplanted some perennials from a neglected flowerbed in the front yard.  The other day, our temperatures reached almost 70 degrees, which was a delight and reminded me that one day, my nose will not be a cold knob on my face and I will stop wearing slippers day and night.  Dirt gathered under my fingernails as I dreamed of flowers and buzzing bumblebees.  It was a fine afternoon, indeed.

Followed by a rainy morning and another sunny afternoon, though admittedly cooler.  The crocuses bloom, the kids stay outdoors all afternoon and spring rushes toward us.  Funny how time doesn’t care that I already have my hands full.  Onward, onward, march, march, march.

 

 

Movie Review: Zodiac

Dear Guy in the faded FX Toughman shirt,

What in the name of all good sense are you doing taking a young girl (was she eight?!) to a rated R movie like “Zodiac”?  Are you insane?  Or just selfish?  Or stupid?

The previews alone for half a dozen gory horror films would have given me lifelong nightmares had I seen them when I was an eight year old girl.  What were you thinking?  Do you think?

And furthermore, Tuesday night is a SCHOOL NIGHT, dude!  The movie ended at 10 p.m. . . . isn’t that way past an 8-year old child’s bedtime?  Plan ahead, pal!  Get a babysitter!

What an idiot you are.  When I saw that child ALONE in the bathroom, I wanted to casually ask her if she liked the movie, but I was afraid she might talk to a stranger (ME!), thus giving her the idea that it’s completely fine to talk to strangers in the bathroom at the movie theater.

Honestly.  What is wrong with you? 

Signed,

Mel

p.s.  I liked the movie.  But I would NEVER in a MILLION years take a child to see it. 

Hair Today

Saturday night I noticed that my 9-year old’s bangs looked odd, as if he’d sawed at them with scissors.  I said, “Did you cut your hair?”  He said, “Oh, uh, no.”  I said, “You did, too!  Why did you cut your hair?”  He said, “Oh, that.  Well, uh, I was feeling uncomfortable and I had something in my hair and so I cut it.”   (He was outside.  Came inside, found scissors, took them outside and cut his hair.)

What?  So I got my sheers and trimmed up his bangs, leaving him with a hairstyle which can only be described as Little Dutch Boy.  nod_dutchboy.jpg 

I heard vague rumors about one of my 13-year old sons getting gum in his hair (“It was not my fault!  I cut it out!  It was here in the back!”) as we drove to church on Sunday morning.  Why am I not even consulted in these matters?

Today, there I was minding my own business and the same 13-year old said, “Hey, why does Gracie have gum in her hair?” And I scoffed.  “She doesn’t have gum in her hair!”

Only, she did have gum in her hair.  She had four evenly spaced wads of reddish gum along the left side of her head.  This was not good because she is hair-deficient.  While her hair is curly, it is sparse and in almost four and a half years of living, she’s managed only to grow a short curly mop.  100_0134.jpg 

Without alarming her, I asked, “Why did you put gum in your hair?”

She denied it.  I said, “You have gum in your hair!  How did it get there?”

And she said, “It just fell into my hair!”

I used cooking oil to ease it out of her hair, thus avoiding scissors entirely.  We were lucky this time.  I just hope she doesn’t decide to use her expert scissors skills to cut her curls off because if I’ve learned anything in 13 years of mothering, it’s that a bad idea masquerades as a good idea when it presents itself to a 4-year old.  (Also, I’ve learned never to walk around the house in socks.  You never know what puddle or piddle you might step in.)

About my funeral

My teenagers have a teenage boy over spending the night. No matter what I threaten, they are unable to maintain any sense of quiet. And their room smells like a can of onion-flavored Pringles, though I am certain we do not have any Pringles in the house.

I want to write a lovely little tribute to my kids (something like this), but instead, I’m obsessed with mentally planning my funeral. I know! What is wrong with me? Well, I attended a funeral a few weeks ago which made me realize that I have some definite ideas about my own funeral and how it ought to be planned. And then this week, a local man died at home quite suddenly . . . as in, his daughter found him dead when she returned home from school. He was fifty.

So, instead of thinking up cute ideas to write here, I think about what songs I want played at my funeral.

Okay, how about this, instead?

My boxwood hedge has a boy-shaped hole in it. All the boys were playing some kind of shoving-tackling game (I believe called “Kill Me”) and someone landed in the hedge right by my front door. I’m not sure my hedge can recover from this sort of abuse.

Tomorrow I’m going to spend the morning scrap-booking. And I hope to eat lunch in a restaurant. Maybe I’ll return my overdue library books. These are my dreams.

(Also, tell me that I’m not the only not-quite-middle-aged woman planning pondering her own funeral.)

What I’m Reading

The problem with library books is that you have to read them within three weeks or pay fines. I’m paying fines on two books because I just couldn’t finish them in time.

I read P.D. James’ A Time to Be In Earnest: A Fragment of Autobiography recently. I really enjoyed it. I sought out this autobiography after wondering what P.D. James thought about having her book, Children of Men, made into a movie which hardly resembled the novel at all. Unfortunately, P.D. James has no real Internet presence (no blog for her!) and so I turned to her other writings. (I’m guessing now that she hates hates hate when they did to her novel.)

I’ve never read a P.D. James murder mystery, but after reading her autobiography, I look forward to reading her body of work, starting from the beginning.

Meanwhile, here are some quotes from the autobiography which struck me:

I began writing Cover Her Face when I was in my mid-thirties. It was a late beginning for someone who knew from early childhood that she wanted to be a novelist and, looking back, I can’t help regretting what I now see as some wasted years. In the war there was always the uncertainty of survival and one needed more determination and dedication than I possessed to embark on an 80,000-word work when the bombs were falling and lack of paper made it difficult for anyone new to get published. There is also in my nature that streak of indolence which made it more agreeable to contemplate the first book than actually to begin writing it. It was easier, too, to see the war years as a preparation for future endeavor rather than an appropriate time to begin. I can remember the moment, but not the date, when I finally realized that there would never be a convenient time to write my first book and that, unless I did make a start, I would eventually be saying to my grandchildren that what I had wanted to be was a novelist. Even to think of speaking these words was a realization of potential failure.

And this:

There is no point in regretting any part of the past. The past can’t now be altered, the future has yet to be lived, and consciously to experience every moment of the present is the only way to gain at least the illusion of immortality.

I also read a biography called Anne Morrow Lindbergh: First Lady of the Air. I knew nothing about Anne Morrow Lindbergh other than the fact that she wrote the classic, Gift from the Sea (which I read immediately after finishing the biography.) What an interesting life she led–she and her husband, Charles, flew many exploratory routes in the early days of aviation–back in the day when they flew by sight, not by instruments. And then, of course, there is the tragedy of the kidnapping of their firstborn son when he was less than two years old. (The baby was murdered.) Back in their day, Anne and Charles were hounded by the press, much like celebrities of today. So much has changed in the world, yet so much has stayed the same.

Now, I’m finished with the library books, ready to start reading something new. Fiction, I think. I have literally hundreds of books on my shelves waiting to be read . . . a glut of reading material, an overabundance, too many choices.

What are you reading?

Why that spot between my shoulder blades aches.

I’ve talked about this before, but . . . oh, how I hate trying to teach my children composition.  Writing comes as naturally to me as breathing.  I compose sentences and paragraphs in my head.  I sit down at the keyboard and phrases appear as if by magic on the screen, directly from my brain without even pausing in my fingertips.  I can’t stop writing and my boys can’t begin. 

I wonder if they really think in the limited vocabulary that appears on the page when I ask them to write something.  Do they notice any details as they careen through life?  Do they have an interior life in which they actually contemplate things and consider ideas? 

For this assignment, they were to write a “compare and contrast” essay.  I suggested the topic: comparing school at home with public school (because they couldn’t even come up with a topic–they acted as if I demanded that they come up with a solution to the unrest in the Middle East or solve the mystery of orphan socks or to create a new color for Crayola).  Doesn’t that topic I suggested sound easy?  

They did all the pre-writing, had their points lined up in columns.  Then, they committed words to paper and again, the question came up:  does one sentence make a paragraph?  Oh no, it does not, if you are a 13-year old boy.  (You must know the rules and be able to follow the rules before you are allowed to break the rules.)  Today they were to proofread and polish their work. 

Here are the final two sentences as written by my Reluctant Student:

“Woke up time what you eat and how fast you go but.  You learn in both and accomplish in both.”

That was after he proofread and polished.  Oh, my aching head.  And how about this paragraph/sentence by my other student:

“For example when I went to public school I had to get up really early to get ready now I can sleep in to a later time.”

When I suggest that details would, perhaps, be required, my students react with astonishment and horror.  When I point out that a sentence fragment is, perhaps, nonsensical at best, my students respond with the defensiveness of a politician caught with a mouthful of lies.  By the time I am frothing at the mouth, shouting, declaring my superior writing skills and yanking at my hair, they are falling to the floor and crawling under the table to escape my frustration.  Really, one prone on the floor and one hiding under the table. 

Oh, yes, I am a very effective teacher of composition.  And Mother of the Year.  Ha ha ha.

So, what a day full of frustration.  Tomorrow, no more composition.  I’m going to have to work up the courage (and possibly get a prescription for muscle-relaxers or hallucinogenics or both) before we tackle the next composition assignment, a persuasive essay dealing with United States history after the Civil War but before the Great War.  Tomorrow, we focus on reaching our required percentages of completion for all subjects before February ends (lots of grammar, a little science, some history and a touch more literature). 

Or die trying.

Note to self:  Never become a junior high composition teacher.

Nine Years Ago

Nine years ago tonight, I floated in a rented birthing tub in northern Michigan, trying to relax and breathe.  My husband hovered near the tub, along with my midwives.  The Amish midwife held my hand, squeezing it tightly.  The “English” midwife listened to the baby’s heart-tones with her stethoscope.  My labor support people stood around, watching.  (I felt like I had an audience, but my mind was so disconnected that I didn’t care.)  By this time, darkness had fallen and I’d asked that the overhead light be turned off, but Lonnie pointed out that she needed the light for the video camera.

So, I squeezed my eyes tight and concentrated on not fighting my body.

And what do you know?  At 10:42 p.m., my third son was born.  He was the pregnancy the doctors said was “unlikely” to happen, the baby I was eight weeks pregnant with before I even took a pregnancy test.  Weeks before I took the test, I told a close friend that I was either pregnant or dying from a terrible disease.  And yet, after nine years of assuming the doctors were right and five years after adopting twins, the lines on the pregnancy test assured me that I was, indeed, pregnant.

I planned a home-birth.  In our previous church, I’d met a midwife.  We were waiting to adopt at the time and this lovely woman answered all my questions about birthing at home.  Then, her grown daughter invited me to be at her home-birth.  Witnessing the peaceful birth changed how I thought about birth forever.  So, I never even contemplated a routine hospital birth when I became pregnant myself.

I labored for forty-three hours, most of them not difficult.  The first twenty-four hours were humdrum, though at the time, I regarded the contractions with the serious contemplation of a first-time mother.  I breathed.  I knelt.  I concentrated.  Only toward the end when I struggled did I realize that the earlier contractions were nothing, mere blips on the pain scale.

The baby was born under water at 10:42 p.m.  An hour later, I was tucked beneath my flannel sheets, my sweet baby boy inches from my face.  We slept all night in the king-sized bed my husband and I had purchased in anticipation of the birth.  In the morning, my 4-year old twins came rushing in to see their baby brother.

When a friend of mine came to see the new baby, she exclaimed, “Look at his crooked pinkies!” and sure enough, I noticed for the first time that my baby boy had inherited his daddy’s hands and feet.  As the years have passed, this boy of ours resembles his father more and more and I finally understand why tear sprang to my mother-in-law’s eyes when she told me that my husband had been a joy to her all his life.  My husband’s son, this “unlikely” baby boy has brought me undiluted joy from the day I knew he was snuggled into my womb.

And he makes me laugh.  When he was about four years old, he once told me, “I know why they call it duct tape.”  “Why?” I said.  “Because,” he said, “It’s sticky and it smells like a duck.”

One whole summer, we had to call him “Thunder.”

Before he went to kindergarten, he insisted his middle name was “Dayba,” and only his kindergarten teacher could convince him that it was really “Davis.”

When he was three, he instructed me to make a hopscotch, numbered from negative 11 to 3.  He has always had a thing for numbers.  He knows his multiplication tables better than his 13-year old twin brothers do.

I love my boy.  He has a soft heart, a goofy sense of humor and a sharp mind.  I want to keep him here at home forever so he’ll be safe and secure and sweet.  Today he is nine.  Tomorrow, he’ll be nineteen and I already miss him.

Won’t you be my neighbor?

I wish Judy were my neighbor.  Read this and you’ll understand: 

Another book idea. This one is for children. It’s to be called “This Is Mom”. In it, the child will follow what ‘mom’ does all day. I’m getting sick and tired of books about what the child does all day. One page will be “This is mom eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with you. She loves you, but she hates peanut butter and jelly and can’t wait for you to take your nap so she can eat the M&M’s she has hidden away. Although, she has to eat them on the run, or she will not have the dishes washed, laundry going or dinner started before you wake up, requiring a diaper change.” That particular page COULD have an element of ‘scratch and sniff’, I’m not sure about that yet…

That just cracked me up!

In other news, today I was sitting at my computer “working” (or reading blogs or checking email, who knows?) and I heard my 4-year old daughter screaming upstairs:  “I DO NOT HAVE A BRAIN!  I DO NOT HAVE A BRAIN!”  She repeated this several times which could only mean one thing:  one of her 13-year old brothers had wandered upstairs and was torturing her by telling her she has a brain.  For several months, she has insisted that boys have brains and girls have hearts.  (Leading to the inverse truth:  boys do not have hearts; girls do not have brains.)  We cannot tell her otherwise and so, this particular brother delights in teasing her by saying (out of the blue), “Hey, Gracie, do you have a brain?” and then she yells, “I DO NOT HAVE A BRAIN!” 

He finds this funny.

I find this annoying because I am in dire need of peace and quiet and deliberately provoking a four-year old to shriek does not promote household harmony. 

(And now, 3 p.m. on the dot and doorbell rings.  The first neighborhood kid of the day has arrived.  I can’t wait until summer gets here and I can shoo all the kids outdoors all afternoon.  I’ll even throw in two dozen popsicles, a small price to pay for silence.)