Somewhere in time

Sunday at 11 a.m., Jim and I settled into the car for a six-hour drive home from South Dakota. We spent the the first half of that drive, nearly three hours, without conversing, listening only to the iPod on the stereo. Mile after mile, we spoke barely a word to one another, both of us lost in thought, considering the weekend, absorbing what we'd learned.

We had left for South Dakota early Saturday morning, arriving that afternoon at the nursing home where Jim's mom resides. She was propped up in her wheelchair watching "Giant" on the tiny television on her nightstand.

We said our hellos, hugged her fragile body, taped together her broken glasses that had the lens inserted upside down, commenced a visit. "Giant" served as the primary focal point, fodder for filling awkward moments as Jim and I attempted normal conversation with his once vibrant, talkative, normal mother.

Our attempts were met with stories from Mom about her outings to various places from her past -- visits she believed had happened just days before, despite not having left the nursing home for about a year. She talked of how grand it was to have attended and be escorted down the aisle in her wheelchair at her brother's wedding, a wedding that took place more than 50 years before -- 50 years before the amputation that took part of a gangrene leg and committed her to a wheelchair earlier this year.

She talked about recently attending church at the church she and I attended together 20 years ago, when the girls were young and Jim worked on Sundays and couldn't go with us.

She talked about phone calls and visits from relatives who, in reality, rarely call, never visit.

She talked of how beautiful Elizabeth Taylor was in "Giant."

We wrapped up with a promise to return in the morning, to spend more time with her before heading back home after the quick trip. Then we went to Jim's sister's house. His oldest sister, his medically trained sister, his sister who visits their mother each and every day, his sister who best knows what to do about Mom.

My first question to her as we unpacked our bags was, "Do we go along with Mom living in the past?" Or do we call her out on such things, try to jog her memory, try to bring her back to reality? The latter was the original tack when Mom first suffered a stroke and mental impairment from violently hitting her head during the associated seizures. It no longer felt like the right tack.

Sue assured us it's not. "She's too far gone and that part of her brain will never return," she said. We learned it's best to play along, to not frustrate and confuse Mom. We learned it's best to let her reminisce about days when she felt happy, content and whole. Days now lost somewhere in time.

That's not all we learned during our too-short weekend trip. From the last boxes of Mom's personal items, the final remnants to divvy up between siblings, we learned of a few of Mom's prized possessions, things that mattered most to her.

We learned of hundreds and hundreds of photos Mom had saved in her cedar chest, many of them photos she rarely shared with the family. Treasured photos of her grandparents, her parents, her siblings, herself. Beautiful decades-old renderings of lives well-lived: births, parties, communions, weddings, new homes, new babies, new starts on life.

We learned teenaged Mom was an avid fan of the glamorous movie stars of the '40s, collecting -- and keeping -- old-time studio shots, postcards, autographs, from Dorothy Lamour, Lana Turner, Spencer Tracy, Humphrey Bogart, Gene Kelly and more.

We learned she still had Jim's baby book, achievement records, locks of hair.

We learned she had carefully tucked away the newspapers containing my very first published articles.

We learned she kept in a manilla folder in her desk every card, every letter, every thank-you note that Brianna, Megan and Andrea ever sent their beloved Granny.

We learned of these and many other things Mom held on to in hopes she'd never forget.

Mostly we learned -- during those hours of silence as Jim and I reclaimed the miles between South Dakota and home -- that we're not yet ready to fully consider the loss of Mom, of Granny. We learned we're not yet ready say the words that open the floodgates.

As we got closer and closer to Denver, we made comments here and there, turned up the radio a little louder. Jim sang. I whistled. Soon we were discussing the girls, the coming week, the never-ending to-do list.

We didn't discuss Mom.

Eventually we will.

Eventually we'll talk. Eventually we'll cry. Eventually we'll mourn.

Somewhere. Sometime.

Today's question:

What is among the treasured photos and papers you're saving?

Guest post: Becoming Grand Aunt

Today I'm hosting my very first guest post on Grandma's Briefs. My new bloggy buddy Ridgely and I have teamed up to try out guest posting as part of a "tribe building" activity on SITS. Ridgely usually waxes humorous about midlife; I, as you know, write primarily about grandma-related topics. Today we take turns trying out each other's niches. Read Ridgely's sweet story below, then head over to her place to see my take on midlife in my guest post on her site.

Dear readers, I'm honored to present to you Ridgely:

Becoming Grand Aunt by Ridgely of Savor the Ride

The phone rings. Recognizing the number, I see it's D, my best friend as well as a fellow middle-aged crony. I grab a Diet Coke, looking forward to a phone call packed full of giggles and squeals of hysteria.

I say hello and the screaming begins. D is ecstatic about something. I’m sure of this. Why? That, I have not established yet.

Possibilities flash through my mind. She got a raise? No, she doesn’t work. She got engaged?  No, she just celebrated her 30th wedding anniversary. One of the twins is getting married? No, S got married last summer, and L is in med school.

I can't think of anything else, unless she has the winning Powerball lottery ticket.

She pauses to breathe. I tell her to slow down, quit yelling and explain what is going on. I cannot understand one word she is saying. Pulling back on her throttle of words, she declares, “I‘m going to be a grandmother.”

Grandmother, I exclaim to myself.  She’s only fifty-one. I ask, “Don’t you have to be 65, sport gray hair and wear hushpuppies to be a grandmother?”

She laughs, and then quickly tells me she is on her way to my house. She has a full day of baby shopping laid out for us. We’re going to begin at Koo Koo Bear Baby & Kids’ Store, work our way through BabiesRUs, Baby Gap and end up at Gymboree.

I get off the phone, dazed. Shopping for the baby? Don’t we have nine months? What do I know, I am only the … D’s children have called me Aunt R since they were born.

What do I wear to go shopping for baby stuff? I settle on my pink corduroy pants with a tailored pink shirt with ruffles. I mean, she is going to have a girl, right? I would be clueless around a little boy. I have no brothers or no boy cousins.

Hearing her screaming my name, I grab my pink Vera bag and run to meet her in my kitchen. She runs up, hugs me repeatedly crying, “I’m going to be a grandmother!”

Suddenly, the information sinks in, D is going to be a grandmother; S is pregnant. I helped potty train S. I have been Aunt R since she was born.  I realize I’m going to be a Grand Aunt. I burst into tears of joy.

Here we are in my kitchen: two best friends sobbing over the greatest news a mother can receive; she is going to be a grandmother.

My excitement grows. Visions of birthday parties, cookies for Santa, dance recitals and skinned knees fill my thoughts. I understand clearly how grandmothers love their grandchildren unconditionally before they are even born.

Grand Aunts do, too.

We better get going.

We don’t have much time before the baby gets here.

Photo credits: baby, crib

Today's question:

What new title has most recently been bestowed upon you? Grandma? Grand aunt? Mom? A new job title?

Mom 2.0: Better than Mom 1.0

I've always considered it a parent's duty to create a better life for their children than the one they had themselves, to improve the family's lot with each generation. Regardless of how grand -- or not -- a person's life may be, there's always room for improvement, and their kids should be the beneficiaries of such.

With that in mind, I've worked hard to ensure my daughters are more content, better educated, more financially secure than I was at their age, along with myriad other upgrades in comparision to how things were for me. Now that they're all adults, I'm seeing the fruits of my labor in all of them, in numerous ways.

But as Megan is the only one of my daughters to become a mother so far, in her I see that not only is she better educated and more financially secure than I was in my mid-20s, she is a much better mom than I was at her age.

Here are nine reasons why I say that:

1. Megan has tricks and techniques for discipline, character building, motor-skill encouraging and more that I never dreamed of when my kids were Bubby's age. Most come by way of her early childhood education training and her work as a pre-K teacher, but that simply means there was a two-fold payoff from my "better educated" goal for my girls.

2. Megan is better at spacing her children than I was. I wouldn't give anything in the world for the way my babies came in rapid succession, as things really do (and did) happen for a reason. But allowing Bubby some time as an only child, with his own room and gads of attention before Baby No. 2 comes along, seems a much better plan than my non-plan nearly 30 years ago.

3. Megan swims. And hikes. And runs. And engages Bubby in outdoorsy pursuits that keep him healthy and happy. I'm a rather sedate, indoorsy kind of mom. I think outdoorsy is better.

4. Megan looks forward to Bubby playing football. I'm just thankful I never had boys and had to endure years of watching my child get knocked around on the field. I honestly don't know that I could have -- or would have -- done it. I may have ended up not allowing a son to play football ... and that son likely would have hated me for that.

5. Megan is more fearless than I ever was. She allows Bubby to find his own footing on play structures, lets him figure out how to get up and down stairs on his own at an early age, lives in the desert where rattlesnakes and scorpions roam, lets Bubby ride Roxy like a horse until Roxy gently decides enough is enough. I'm overprotective to a fault. (Brianna, Andrea, Megan: You never heard me admit that!)

6. Megan let Bubby take the lead in his potty training, making it a non-issue -- and completely accomplished in less than a week. I, on the other hand, scarred Brianna for life, I'm sure, by adherence to the idiotic ideas in a book called "Toilet Training In A Day." A day which was marked by tears, not success.

7. Megan chose godparents according to what was best for Bubby. I (along with Jim) chose godparents with the intent of honoring those chosen.

8. Megan tries new recipes for dinner every night in hopes of widening her family's culinary horizon. Well, not every night, she says, but nearly every night ... and far more often than this mother who tended to go with the tried and true far too often.

9. Last but not least, Megan taught Bubby from a very early age how to make good choices -- something I'm still trying to teach my daughters.

Megan has only one child at this point, whereas when I was her age, I had three. So the real test of my assertion that she's a better mom than I will come when babies No. 2 and No. 3 come along.

Do I question whether she'll pass? Not at all.

I have no doubt whatsoever Megan will pass with flying colors -- colors I likely would never have even dreamt of.

ARE the kids all right?

Over the weekend, I finished reading The Kids Are All Right by Diana and Liz Welch, with Amanda and Dan Welch. The memoir, in which the four Welch siblings take turns writing chapters, tells the poignant, often heartbreaking story of their once-normal childhood turned upside down by the deaths of their beloved parents: first their father in a car accident, then their mother of cancer.

Many of the chapters scrunched up my heart and made me wonder, as The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls did, how children come through such things and grow into seemingly whole, functional, successful adults.

One chapter in particular gave me pause, stopped my heart, brought tears to my eyes. Not wholly out of sympathy for the Welch kids, though, but because it rang eerily similar to an incident from my childhood.

Soon after the death of their father, the Welch children's mother encouraged a relationship between Amanda, the eldest daughter, and a young man named Duncan. Mom hoped a masculine presence would be good for her son, Dan, so she was pleased with the progression of the budding romance between Amanda and Duncan as it led to Duncan's regular visits to their home.

One night while Amanda, Duncan and Liz, the second oldest sibling, shopped for groceries, Duncan shockingly professed to Liz his love for her while Amanda was in another aisle. Once home with the groceries, he continued elaborating on the inappropriate confession to Liz, cornering the young girl in the pantry and asking her to make it "their secret." Instead, the scared Liz told Mom. Mom immediately banished Duncan from the family, leaving Liz to worry that Amanda would blame her, hate her.

When Amanda learned of Duncan's come-on to her sister, though, all she said was, "What a jerk." No anger, no disappointment ... at least not toward Liz. She renounced Duncan. She stood by her sister.

When I was 13 years old, my parents were divorced and I occasionally stayed with my dad. My younger siblings did the same; my older sister much more sporadically.

Once when I spent the weekend at Dad's, my older sister and her even older boyfriend returned from a night of partying and climbed the stairs to where our bedrooms and a bathroom were. My sister headed into the bathroom; her boyfriend headed into my bed. He aggressively snuggled up to me, trying to climb on top of me.

As I woke from my deep sleep and grasped what was going on and the danger I was in, I pushed and kicked at the boyfriend, trying to get him away from me and out of my bed. My sister emerged from the bathroom, heard the rustling and came into my dark room. She turned on the light, saw her creepy boyfriend in my bed and started screaming and screaming -- at me. In her drunkenness and insecurity, my older sister thought I had somehow lured her boyfriend into the compromising position, was somehow trying to steal him away from her. The vitriol spewed from her drunken mouth ... and continued for weeks.

My sister was mad at me -- stayed mad at me -- instead of being mad at the jerk she'd unknowingly stopped just short of molesting her little sister.

I often wonder how different things might have been if my sister hadn't come into the room just in the nick of time.

And I often wonder how different things might have been -- for both of us -- if my sister had done like Amanda in The Kids Are All Right, if she had renounced the inappropriate lout and stood by her scared little sister.

Disclosure: I received a FREE copy of The Kids Are All Right from the publisher for participation in the From Left To Write book club.

Today's question:

How would you describe your relationship with your siblings?

Are you there God? It's me, Grandma

The past two weeks have been filled with distress over a situation with one of my (to remain unnamed) daughters. I go to sleep praying about the mess, wake up praying about the mess, have prayers about the mess taking up lots of space in my brain, my heart.

I keep praying and praying without seeing much in terms of answers ... yet (I hope). I told the daughter in question that all the praying is wracking my brain and it sure would be nice if I could simply send God an e-mail with a "READ Receipt" attached so I'd at least know the prayers were under consideration.

I told Jim the same thing. To which he replied, "Yeah, just like in Bruce Almighty."

I'd forgotten about Bruce Almighty. Maybe it's another example of my memory fritzing out here and there, or maybe it's because I don't really care much for Jim Carrey. Once Jim mentioned it, though, I remembered. And I couldn't help but search for a clip of exactly how the e-mail to God thing worked ... at least in the movies.

This video -- for which I have only a link because it's copyrighted and embedding is disabled -- is what I found, what I remembered, what I kinda sorta long for. So go ahead: Take a look at this Bruce Almighty answers e-mailed prayers scene. I'll wait the minute-and-a-half it takes to watch it.

Ya back? Good. See, that is what would be oh-so wonderful, oh-so helpful.

Well, except for one thing. In the video, God/Bruce/Jim Carrey simply says "Yes" to all the requests in one fell click of the mouse. But that would never work in reality. For most things -- including the situation causing me such distress -- not everyone praying about it is praying for the same outcome. Even when it comes to praying for world peace, I'm pretty darn sure there's some folks somewhere wishing only to be the ones to win. When it comes to ending pain and suffering in the world, well, we all have different theories on how to do that, what to pray for, and some of those theories likely conflict with the theories of others. Even when it comes to praying to win the lotto (not that anyone I know does that), it obviously wouldn't work to say "Yes" to all those praying for the big bucks.

Bottom line: Bruce Almighty's simple "Yes" simply won't work.

The real God, though, I'm pretty sure he could figure out a way to make it work. Which is why I want a direct connection, a valid e-mail address to the real God. I could zap out my concerns and send them on their way.

Of course, if such a thing did exist, there'd naturally be a "READ receipt requested" option. I would choose that option, and upon receiving the receipt, then I'd know my request was under consideration.

Then I'd know I could stop praying about it, stop worrying about it.

If only things worked like they do in the movies.

Photo courtesy stock.xchng

Today's question:

What is your favorite Jim Carrey movie? (HA! And you thought I was going to ask something about God, didn't you!?)

9 things grandmas should never do

1. Never disrespect the choices of your grandbaby's parents. Questionable bedtimes, meals, discipline and more? Sure, you can disagree with the choices, just do so respectfully. As long as you ...

2. Never voice your disagreement or disapproval with the parents in front of your grandchild. Mommy and Daddy are the last word. Grandchildren don't need more ammunition in their battle for getting their way, and repeating words of disagreement from Grandma would be sure-fire ammunition.

3. Never secretly break Mom and Dad's rules. If tantrums mean Junior gets a time-out, give him a time-out. If 8 p.m. is bedtime, tuck him in when the clock chimes eight times. If Mom says only one popsicle, don't you dare offer a second. What? Grandmas are meant to break rules, you say? Notice I said never secretly break the rules. The key is to do it loud and proud and let everyone know in advance the rules will likely be bent a smidgen -- possibly even smashed to pieces -- when Grandma's in charge. Simply be upfront, not underhanded.

4. Never talk bad about your grandchild's other grandparents. Even if you're clearly the very, very best grandma ever, your grandchild still loves his or her other grandma and grandpa. Accept it, deal with it, and don't act like a jealous 12-year-old girl about it.

5. Never try to buy your grandchild's love. Any kid will smile, maybe even squeal with delight, over toys, gadgets, games and other goodies. But things shouldn't make up your PDAs (primary displays of affection). It's time and attention the kiddos want -- and what they'll most love you for.

6. Never ply your grandchild for information about Mom and Dad. Maybe they're going through rough financial times, maybe the marital bliss isn't so blissful, maybe they won the lottery and don't want to share the dough. Whatever the case causing you to be Nosy Nelly, it really is none of your business. Don't recruit your grandchildren for special ops in attempts to make it your business.

7. Never think your bad habits go unnoticed. Swearing, smoking, sipping too much of the sauce, double-dipping, overeating, complaining about your looks, your size, your big butt in the mirror. Little pitchers have big ears ... and eyes ... and impressionable hearts and minds on which such things are etched, things that can be detrimental to his or her physical and psychological well-being. Yeah, even grandmas have issues; just do your best to not pass them along to your grandchildren. They'll undoubtedly have plenty of issues of their own.

8. Never forget that you're a mother, too, not just a grandmother. Love on and brag about the grandchildrens' parents any chance you get. This goes a long way in maintaining the bond with your adult children ... and increases your grandchild's ever-important pride in his or her parents.

9. Never take the time with your grandchildren for granted. Every single minute with the little ones -- whether those minutes include stinky diapers and equally stinky attitudes or giggles and grins and big squeezes around Grandma's neck -- is a gift. Graciously accept it. Sincerely appreciate it. Heartily give thanks for it.

This post is featured in the About.com: Grandparents September Blog Carnival: Grandparents and Grandparenting.

Today's question:

What would you add to the list of things grandmas should never do?

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Off to Grandma's

In a final fling with Southwest Airlines, I have a four-legged trip on the docket: fly to the desert; fly home with Bubby so he can spend a few days with Gramma and PawDad; fly Bubby back to the desert; then fly home alone.

The first leg went off without a hitch, with me arriving in the desert early last Thursday. After a few days of fun in the sun, er, a few days of playing in the house with Bubby because the oppressive heat prevented any living thing from being outside longer than 42 seconds at a time, Bubby and I left for the mountains yesterday morning. It was his first plane ride with Grandma -- and without Mom or Dad.

Because I didn't know how long it would take for this Grandma to get through the airport with a little boy holding one hand and a car seat in the other -- Bubby is now two and gets his own seat on the plane, thus needs to bring along his own car seat for maximum protection in the air -- we arrived with plenty of time to kill.

Which meant there was a lot of waiting. 

And waiting.

And waiting.

And still more waiting.

Then finally ... we got to get on the plane ...

... and head for the mountains.

Nothing but clear skies, happy talk from Bubby, and -- most thankfully -- no poopy diapers mid-flight.

Once we landed, there was nothing but grins all around when we met up with PawDad and his surprise companions welcoming Bubby to the mountains: Auntie Andie ...

... and Aunt B! 

Now the real fun begins!

Today's question:

What's one summer-like thing you've not yet done or accomplished this summer that you are determined to do before fall arrives?