A happy birthday, 1992

Throw Back Thursday

This Saturday, Jim will celebrate his birthday with the same cake — his favorite — and the same girls, all grown up (minus Megan, on the right).

Today's question:

What is your favorite cake flavor?

Our first family computer, 1994

Throw Back Thursday

It was 1994 — nearly 20 years ago — that Jim managed to land a used computer from work, one to bring home for the family to marvel over and use on a daily basis.

Andrea plays solitaire like a modern girl, Sept. 1994We felt so modern, so plugged in — literally plugged in, with a dial-up modem and all. And oh, the options! We had not only the ability to use 5-1/4-inch floppy disks, our high-tech hand-me-down featured the more up-to-date drive for the not-quite-as-floppy 3-1/2-inch disks, too.

At the start we could access only the public library. Even then, though — months before we signed up for Prodigy — the FTP access to more information than I ever imagined possible absolutely blew. my. mind.

No more Smith Corona word processor for me. I had a computer!

Today's question:

When did you get your first computer and what was your first Internet service?

Back when pie was P.I.E.

One of my favorite times of the year is here: It's pie season!

The weeks surrounding Thanksgiving are when pies take center stage. Christmas time is for cookies; Thanksgiving time is for pies. The planning for them. The baking of them. The eating of them. This is when the traditional Thanksgiving favorites top dessert menus.

I'm talking pumpkin pies, of course, but apple pies, pecan pies, sweet potato pies and mincemeat pies, too. Though I admit I've never tried the last three on the list, as traditional Thanksgiving pies at my place are pumpkin, cherry and chocolate cream. (Pecans, sweet potatoes and mincemeat aren't something I have a hankering for any time of the year, in pies or otherwise.)

Then there are the fancy-pants kinds of Thanksgiving pies seen on magazine covers and Pinterest boards, the pies I hope to one day bake, hope to one day taste. Caramel apple pie. Pumpkin ice cream pie. Peanut butter pie. Strawberry-raspberry pie and cranberry pies of all sorts, too.

I love pie.

But Thanksgiving time is the only time I make pie, the only time I eat pie.

That wasn't always the case.

For a brief period of time when my daughters still lived at home, I proposed pie as our all-time — meaning All. The. Time — dessert of choice. Not for dessert though, but for breakfast. On Saturdays. Saturdays far removed from Thanksgiving.

For several months, I offered my then-teenage girls (and my husband, too) pie on Saturday mornings. A time or two I baked a pie, but more often than not it was a perfect pastry picked up from the nearest Village Inn or Perkins, those 24/7 restaurants featuring display cases filled with full-sized pies of the most luscious sorts. Our favorite was the silky smooth French Silk topped with rich, thick, real whipped cream and chunky chocolate shavings. Runner up? A cookies and cream concoction that was to die for, at least for those who'd die for more than their share of Oreo cookies.

On very ordinary Saturdays, I'd set out on the kitchen counter the perfect pie for the family to serve themselves a piece as they woke on Saturday mornings. Alongside the delectable pie and the dessert plates on which pieces were to be placed, I set a note card on which I'd written the following:

May you always have P.I.E.

Peace, Inspiration and Enthusiasm

Those three things — peace, inspiration and enthusiasm — were what I considered essential ingredients for a fullfilled life. I wanted fulfilling lives for my girls. I wanted them to always have peace, always find inspiration, always be enthusiastic about their world and their place in it.

I wanted them to always have P.I.E.

I thought pie was the perfect way to serve up regular reminders to pursue exactly those things.

My pie-serving quest took place during my oldest daughter's senior year of high school. When the opportunity arose for parents to purchase ad space in the yearbook, space in which they could publish a farewell to their graduating children, I bought space, noted a few niceties for Brianna from Mom and Dad, and ended it with "And remember to always have P.I.E."

I wanted Brianna, as well as Megan and Andrea, to place firmly in their hearts and minds my efforts at impressing upon them the importance of P.I.E.... and pie. I wanted those pie-serving Saturdays to be added to their lists of Cool Things Mom Used to Do and become cool things they would one day do with their own children. I wanted them to always remember to have P.I.E. and to always remember Mom's serving up of such slices of wisdom.

That didn't happen.

I asked one of my daughters not long ago if she remembered all the pie we used to eat. My question sparked not even the slightest glimmer of remembrance. More recently, when the proliferation of pie pins on Pinterest reminded me of our P.I.E. eating days and I considered writing a post such as this, I asked Jim if he remembered those pies I hoped had meant so much to my family. He didn't.

Sometimes our attempts at making an impression on our children, on our families, fail. My earnest efforts at making P.I.E. an important part of our Saturdays and each and every day to come were one such failure. It was good at the time. No, it was delicious at the time. But, as is the case with all things related to growing babies into adults, that time didn't last. Our prime pie season, for reasons of which I'm not quite sure, lasted a shorter period than most other seasons of childrearing.

No matter, though. The return of pie season brings with it my hope that peace, inspiration and enthusiasm abound in the hearts and lives of my daughters — even without me foisting upon them oversized servings of French Silk Pie.

And despite being unable to share oversized servings of French Silk Pie with you, my friends, I hope that during this Thanksgiving season and beyond, you, too, will remember to always have pie. Not only the pie that satisfies your stomach, but the P.I.E. that satisfies your soul, too.

Today's question:

What are your favorite kinds of pie?

Wherein Grandma rethinks the family bed

Our kids climb into bed with Jim and me each morning. Their sole goal? To get us to rise and shine, get up and give them breakfast.

Now, that may seem strange considering our three daughters are adults and don't live in our house. But it's not our human kids I'm talking about, it's our cat kids.

Early each morning, Abby and Isabel hop onto the foot of the bed and meow their way all the way up to our heads, demanding we notice them, love them, and, most importantly, get out of the freakin' bed and feed them. Abby in particular is the alarm kitty. If I ignore her pleas, she heads on over to my iPhone cord on the night stand and starts chewing on it, for she knows darn well that will have me up and at her in a split second.

Yesterday morning when "the girls" got into bed with us, I mentioned to Jim how crazy it would be if we let our dogs into the bed with us, too. Mickey and Lyla have their own bedroom, though, with a baby gate put up each night so they can't get out — which means they can't climb into our bed in the morning, like the cats do.

"Just think if they did," I said to Jim. "We'd have all our kids in bed with us."

Which led me to immediately mention that our real kids — our human kids, our daughters — never climbed into bed with us in the mornings. Never.

Why is that? I wondered out loud. It's not like the girls weren't allowed in our bedroom, weren't welcome to join us if they felt the need.

I remember one night in particular when Andrea definitely felt the need. It was during the summer between her fifth- and sixth-grade years at school, a scary transitional time that caused her to have nightmares. After several failed attempts to calm her fears in her own bed one night, she took me up on the offer to sleep in a makeshift bed on the floor beside ours.

That didn't work. Andie still couldn't sleep, still was afraid.

So I told her we'd turn on the television in our bedroom to the Cartoon Network — at a very low volume — to take her mind off scary things.

Regardless of volume level, though, the George of the Jungle Marathon running on the network that night was the stuff of nightmares, at least for Jim and me. ♪George, George, George of the Jungle, watch out for that tree!♪ kept us awake — and unhappy — for hours.

After a several episodes, we'd had enough. Andie apparently had, too, for she didn't balk too much when I led her back to her own bed. Where she did finally fall asleep.

Jim and I, though, couldn't fall asleep for we couldn't get ♪George, George, George of the Jungle♪ out of our heads, out of our dreams.

Never again, we told ourselves... and our girls. To this day, mentions of George of the Jungle elicit groans and grins from Jim, Andrea and myself as we recall the nightmarish marathon.

Back in those childrearing years, I was thankful the girls rarely asked to sleep in our bed and that they never woke us in the mornings by crawling under the covers with us. But now it saddens me.

It saddens me because as a grandma, I realize what Jim and I missed. The mornings when I'm visiting my grandsons and they crawl into bed with me — which is every morning when I'm at their house... and usually before the sun even considers creeping up over the horizon — are some of the sweetest moments shared with my beloved boys.

Which is one of the more important things Jim and I failed to learn when our girls were little.

There's no going back, though, no way to remedy that error we made with our children. But we can, as grandparents, make the most of the moments when our grandchildren crawl into bed with us.

I will do exactly that with open arms next week, when I'll be sleeping one room away from Bubby and Mac.

Next week I'll have four mornings to relish the slow creaking open of Gramma's bedroom door as the boys together peek in at me, then the pitter-patter of little feet scampering over to my bed while I pretend I'm asleep. Then I'll lift the covers, make room for Bubby on one side, Mac on the other. We'll snuggle for just a bit, and once they've done all the snuggling their wiggly little boy bodies can handle, we'll discuss our dreams from the night, recite our plans for the day.

I didn't get it with my girls, but I now realize with my boys that such times truly are the best part of waking up when there are children in the house.

As a parent, the family bed was never my thing, for I didn't want to be continually awakened by little kids.

As a grandparent, I can't imagine any better wake-up call.

Today's question:

Did your kids climb into bed with you in the mornings? Do your grandkids?

Celebrating no celebrations

For my oldest daughter's first birthday, I went all out. I recruited my mom to make a fancy birthday cake with adorable clowns o' frosting a la the Wilton Cake Decorating Cookbook, invited everyone with even the slightest interest in my daughter, packed our tiny apartment with well wishers and gifts galore.

It was the very best birthday party ever.

Until the next year, that is. And until the next child, too — two more of which arrived in rapid succession. Followed by two more first birthdays in equally rapid succession.

With that very first first birthday party for my very first daughter more than 31 years ago, I had set a precedent: Birthday parties in my house would be a big deal. Not expensive, for money was tight as could be considering we were a young family with three children birthed in a three-year span. But the birthday parties would certainly be festive. Each and every time.

Birthdays for my daughters were celebrated at home — no parties at pizza places, skating spaces or swimming pools. Each party had a specific theme chosen by the honoree, with homemade cakes, homemade favors for guests to bring home, homemade fun packaged in such a manner my daughters (hopefully) never realized their special days were celebrated at home because we couldn't afford the party packages offered by the fancy-schmancy peddlers of commercialized fun.

Fun as they were for the birthday girls and guests, that homemade packaging was exhausting for Mom. That would be me — the family party planner bound and determined to make memorable birthday moments for my daughters, come hell or high water, heaven help us all.

One birthday season when I was knee-deep in pre-party prep and freak-out fare — at this point I can no longer recall whose birthday or what theme — my own mom, in hopes of assuaging my stress, advised me, "You don't have to make every single birthday special, Lisa."

I disagreed vehemently... but silently, as I had too much to do, no time to argue my point. But, yes, I did have to make every single birthday special. Because there are so very few that parents get to celebrate with a child. Sixteen or so, if we're lucky, if friends don't win out over family sooner than that.

So I did my best to make birthday celebrations special.

I did my best to make holiday celebrations special, too. Everything from Valentine's Day on through New Year's Day featured special traditions and rituals, special food, special decorations and sometimes even special music. As was the case with our birthday celebrations throughout the childrearing years, our holiday celebrations were never expensive but they were festive. And memorable. And the stuff our family was made of.

And they were exhausting for Mom. That would be me, the holiday planner bound and determined to make memorable holiday moments for my daughters, come hell or high water, heaven help us all.

Little did I realize then how very few holidays I'd have to celebrate with my entire clan. I thought that even once the nest emptied, every child-turned-adult would flock home to celebrate the seasons with Mom and Dad, spouses and offspring in tow.

I've since realized how wrong that idea. Thankfully, though, how right it turned out to be that I did do the best I could each and every holiday while my girls lived at home. Because there were so few of those, too.

The big shebangs had their place, their heyday, but now the celebrations are smaller, in scope and in attendance. Celebrations take less work, yet they still require work.

That required work for birthday and holiday celebrations — exhaustive overloads in the past, minor smidgens today —  is one reason fall has long been my favorite time of year. The months of September and October, to be exact. Because during the months of September and October there isn't a single birthday, a single holiday I'm expected to celebrate. Nothing to plan or purchase or poke-my-eye-out-with-a-hot-poker-because-I-need-a-freakin'-break-from-special-celebrations sort of nonsense. None.

See, as much as I love my family and would now indeed poke my eye out to have them around again for family celebrations and to occasionally fill my (occasionally heart achingly) empty nest, I also love down time. Quiet time. Uneventful time. Time such as September 1 through October 30. Time with no celebrations. No celebrations is, for me, reason enough to celebrate.

True to my character, my past, my family-party-planning-personality, of course, I plan to make that celebration of no celebrations as absolutely special and memorable as possible.

By doing ab-so-lute-ly nothing.*

Happy No-Celebration season to you and yours! May it be everything you hoped it would be. And everything you hoped it would not be, too.

*Well, nothing related to celebrations, that is. The need for speed in securing income remains.

Today's question:

When is the biggest span of time with no birthdays/holidays/celebrations in your family?

Seven days... and the language of love

Every family has a language all its own. Sure, the words may be common knowledge to those outside the family, but the manner in which some words are strung together — and, often, the tone in which they're said — have significance far beyond the basic for those privy to a special, familial meaning.

For example, how would you feel if I were to say to you any sentence containing the phrase "love pop-can chain?" Confused, I'd venture to say.

For my funky family of five, though, any mentions of "love pop-can chain" cause hearts to warm and smiles to form as we remember one long-ago camping trip.

None of us recall exactly how it started, but at some point in the weekend, we came across a small chain of pop-can tops, you know, the kind in which you pull back the ring to open your can of sugary carbonated goodness, and are left with a dangerous metal shard in your hand (yet another thing kids nowadays know nothing about).

One by one we added our pop-can tops to the chain and eventually, for reasons I can't recall and in fits of laughter that still define many of our family gatherings, we dubbed the chain our love pop-can chain. We brought home our love pop-can chain, displayed it proudly. I have it somewhere — and am now quite unsettled because I just this moment realized I can't remember where I hung the love pop-can chain when we moved to this house more than four years ago. Because I can't recall its location, I can't share a photo. But just know that it's a chain of connected pop-can tops, linked together with love and lots and lots of laughter. For reasons understood only by my family.

Another example is the phrase "in net, under monkey." That means nothing to anyone other than the five members of my family, all of us privy to the anal tendencies of Andrea. Those tendencies once proved Andie's downfall, as she chose to keep a written reminder to herself where she hid contraband from Mom and Dad — yet kept the note neatly on her bedroom desk in plain sight. Let's just say it was hard to mete out any meaningful disciplinary action when Jim and I were laughing so hard at how we discovered her hidden stash.

Those are phrases exclusive to our Carpenter clan. Others our family utters with grins and giggles are phrases millions of others have heard, possibly repeated themselves, because they're lines from movies. But they make us smile when stated with a certain tone, at appropriately perfect times.

A few family favorites:

"I'll be right back" from Scream (not "I'll be back" from Terminator!).

"What time I s'posed to be there?" from Bill Cosby: Himself. Jim says this. Often. Making the rest of us chuckle. Often.

"Time, Mr. Carter?" from Point Break.

Another related to time — funny how so many are — is "Seven days...". It's best said in a creepy whisper, and even more effective when said over the phone. Proof that such things are understood only by my immediate family came by way of a recent interaction with one of my sisters, when we were testing out a new phone system I had hooked up for our mom.

After getting all the handsets correctly set up, I called my sister from it to ensure all systems were go. "Seven days..." I whispered to her, in a creepy manner my daughters and husband would be proud of. Her response: "WHAAAT?" So I whispered it again... and got the same response again. It had nothing to do with the phone connection and everything to do with her not getting the reference.

So I groaned, then spent far longer than necessary explaining the creepy phone call from The Ring. You know, the one characters receive after watching a video (back in the days of VHS) that they so should not have watched and now had only seven days left to live, as the creepy caller so creepily informed them. She shrugged, didn't get it. (Maybe I should have just said to my sister, "Do you like scary movies?"... which is, um, from Scream.)

Yes, we find such things funny in our family. And it's the "Seven days..." phrase that ran through my head again and again yesterday as I kept telling myself "Seven days...". But yesterday's seven days carried a far less creepy connotation, because it's, yes, a mere seven days, until I finally get to see Bubby and Mac again.

Seven days... until I get to see in person my grandsons doing Harlem Shake moves that were featured in a gut-busting video Megan recently texted to me, prefaced with a strong warning that, "This is not appropriate for sharing anwhere online."

Seven days... until I get to see in person the equally inappropriate-for-posting-online Mac as he models big-boy briefs instead of diapers. Megan shared with me the other day a sweet picture of Mac posing in his new undies, accompanied by his giggle-infused comments of "I nakey!"

Seven days... until I get to spend ten days with the lights of my life, my favorite boys ever.

Thing is, because I wrote this post yesterday, the key phrase is now "Six days...".

Only six days until I get to hug my adorable and goofy grandsons.

And that is a phrase everyone reading this likely understands and appreciates — family members or not.

Today's question:

What phrases make your family giggle though others may not know why?

Photo replay: Reminiscing

Though his history is far shorter, Bubby enjoyed reminiscing about ornaments from his previous years—this one featuring his handprint—just as much as I did reminiscing about those from mine.

Today's question:

What is the oldest ornament on your tree?

Ornaments of Christmases past

At tree-trimming time every Christmas, I gave each of my three daughters a new ornament, beginning when they were all still quite small. Some years the ornaments given reflected a passion or hobby of each individual girl; other years, all three received similar ornaments with only a slight variation on a common theme. Every year, all were dated and hung upon the family tree.

With three new ornaments added for the girls each year plus a new one for Jim and myself annually, too, our Christmas tree became jam-packed with ornaments by the time the girls were ready to leave the nest. The paring down of the baubles was far more abrupt than the collecting. First it was Megan's collection that we wrapped up and sent with her once she became a newlywed. Next, Andrea moved up and out and on, taking her ornaments with her. Then, just a few years ago, Brianna and her seasonal stash found a new home, as well.

Now that Jim and I decorate our tree with many old ornaments of our own, plus nearly just as many new ornaments to take the place of those relocated to our daughters' Christmas trees, it's been especially heartwarming this past week while visiting my grandsons to see many of the familiar ornaments of Christmases past hanging on Megan's tree. Not only those I had given her through the years, but ones she had made herself or received from others, too.

 

Equally heartwarming to see hung in a place of prominence at Megan's house was an advent calendar I had made for my daughters many years ago, now providing a chocolate-y countdown to Christmas for my grandsons.

It's bittersweet to see old, familiar seasonal decor adorning a home so far removed from mine, in years and in geography. Every once in a while during this visit, I've been hit with the overwhelming realization that things will never go back to what they were, that time has indeed ticked along, those days are gone, and this is where we as a family are, what we will be from now on. Not that I didn't realize that—or be okay with that—already, but the confirmation of such sometimes comes in unexpected and occasionally uncomfortable waves. No more kids' ornaments hanging on the tree was and is just the beginning...and the end.

That serves as the bitter. The sweet? Seeing the enjoyment my grandsons now get pulling foiled Santas and chocolate balls from the very same crudely numbered pockets their mom and aunts once did, counting the days until Santa's arrival. Days that to a child move far too slowly. Days that to a mom—and now a grandma— moved far too fast and somehow, without proper notice, became years.

Today's question:

What holiday ornaments have you passed down to your children?