Fair game

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Forty or so years ago, I went to the Minnesota State Fair. All I remember is that my younger sister and my dad were hurt by an errant cable that took them for an unintended and dangerous ride. To be honest, I remember the stories of the incident at the fair more than I remember the actual incident itself. Or the fair.

I've not been to a state fair since, except for when a has-been band or two (Jefferson Starship and .38 Special anyone?) headlined at the fairgrounds. I'm not sure if the horrible events of forty years ago scarred me forever, squelching my desire for fried foods at fantastically obscene prices and unregulated (or seemingly so to a paranoid such as myself) amusement rides at similarly obscene prices, or if there's some other deep-seated reason why I've never attended the state fair as an adult.

Becoming a grandma changes much, though, and one of the most recent changes has been my state fair attendance record. Yes, folks, my desert visit in October included a trip to the state fair.

I must admit, it was a far better occasion than my first fair visit, possibly because I steered clear of fried foods and flying cables. More probably, though, because I attended it with Bubby, Megan and Preston.

Being a grandma who likes to participate in my grandson's "firsts," the day was one for the history baby books as I got to ride with Bubby on his first-ever state fair ride. Here's a quick look at the fun we had at the fair:

In addition to typical fair attractions, there also was a life-size, animatronics dinosaur exhibit we enjoyed. Well, mostly enjoyed. Bubby was rather hesitant at first, but by the time we reached the end and he got to dig in the massive sandbox for fossils, I think he'd become a fan of dinosaurs. Pretty much. As long as they were nothing but bones. And didn't make noises. Or move.

It was perfect timing for introducing Bubby to the Hatch-n-Grow dinosaur egg, but, alas, the egg I carried in my Grandma Bag didn't survive the trip uncracked.

But that's okay. I have more eggs and will surely pack one in my Grandma Bag for another try during my visit at Thanksgiving. And after having the bejeezus scared out of him by the life-size T. Rex and its cousins, I'm pretty sure Bubby won't be frightened by an itsy-bitsy hatching baby dino.

Assuming, that is, that I can cushion the egg well enough in my suitcase this time to survive the wild and wacky airport baggage handlers, who are far scarier than hatching baby dino eggs. And errant amusement-ride cables, too.

Today's question:

What's most memorable about your past visits to the state fair?

Hungry heart

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I mentioned earlier this week Bubby's momentary thrill upon hearing his tummy growl. "Did you hear that, Gramma?" he said to me. "The baby in my tummy went RAAAAR!" Such a sweet sound of confusion coming from my grandson who thought there was a baby in his tummy, not realizing he was just hungry.

Bubby's empty stomach was a source of amusement, not pain. Other than crying as an infant when he was hungry or simply stating "I want something," as he often does now when he wants to snack, I think it was the first time Bubby was aware of his stomach growling.

I distinctly recall the first time I knew what it felt like to be so hungry it hurt. It was the early '70s and my family was packed in the station wagon, driving from Minnesota to Florida. We were on our way to Disneyworld, the one and only time all seven kids and both parents went on a true family vacation. Across several state lines. To a place every kid dreams of going. Just like normal families do.

My dad was -- still is -- a "drive straight through" kind of traveler. So with all seven of us kids making the most of the limited space allotted each, our pale green station wagon with seating for nine ticked off the miles. "Delta Dawn" and "The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia" played on the AM radio, and visions of Mickey Mouse, Haunted Mansion and Cinderella's castle danced in our heads as we headed south, paying no heed to the national gas shortage.

Restaurant stops were few and far between, due equally to the desire to knock out miles as well as my parents dreading the logistics of seating nine -- and paying for nine -- in a dining establishment. At one point, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I recall waking from having dozed off in the backseat. My arm on which I'd slept was drenched in drool, my stomach clenched and uncomfortable. When I complained about the sensation and voiced worries that I was going to throw up, my sister snarled that it's nothing, that I was just hungry, to be quiet.

So I was quiet. And waited. And marveled that this, my aching gut, was what all those hungry kids in Africa must feel and why they'd be happy to have the food my siblings and I often picked at instead of eating.

Eventually a restaurant appeared on the horizon and all was soon right with the world in general and my growling stomach in particular.

I was blessed to not know true hunger, to not feel such pangs and worse on a regular basis. I was fortunate that the discomfort of not having enough food was so rare that I can recall one specific incident, not a childhood marked by it. I was lucky that the lack of food was due to traveling -- going to Disneyworld, for heaven's sake -- not poverty.

The same goes for Bubby. He's fortunate that the only reason the baby in his tummy "raaaared" was because he had refused to eat what he'd been given for lunch. A lunch that included many options from which to choose, many morsels to fill his tiny tummy. He had made a conscious choice to not partake.

Not all children are as lucky as Bubby is. Or I was. Not all children giggle at the noises from their tummies; many cry as their tummies gurgle and groan.

Thoughts of those gurgles and groans make my heart hurt.

Today's question:

With the holidays -- and requests for holiday donations -- bearing down upon us, what charities do you typically help out this time of year?

Sibling revelry

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Going through my mother-in-law's old photos of her and her siblings has me considering my own siblings and the few photos I have of us.

I'm pretty sure the center photo below, now 11 years old, is the last one there will ever be of all seven of us together. Funny thing I just realized: It might be the only photo there ever was of all of us together.

"Our siblings. They resemble us just enough to make all their differences confusing, and no matter what we choose to make of this, we are cast in relation to them our whole lives long."

~Susan Scarf Merrell

Today's question:

When were you and all your siblings last together?

Somewhere in time

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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?

ARE the kids all right?

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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?

Never again

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I recently put a few items for sale on Craigslist, things I no longer want, need or use. Surprisingly, one of the "no longer used" items -- something I've been eager to get out of the garage -- has me waxing misty-eyed and melancholic.

Just what may that item be, you ask? Maybe a crib, signifying the end of babies in the house? A student desk, signifying no more students doing homework the last possible moment before it's due? A dinosaur of a VHS video camera signifying the end of recorded pumpkin carvings, Christmas programs and luau-themed birthday parties?

No, no, and no.

It's our cartop carrier. And selling it signifies the end of an era. The end of family vacations. The end of some of my all-time favorite moments with my tribe.

Never again will Jim and I, along with three crabby as cuss sleepy little girls, get up before the crack of dawn to hit the open road with suitcases, swim gear and more balanced above our heads.

Never again will our family of five load up sleeping bags, tents, camp stoves and a homemade camping shower then head up to the mountains for a long weekend of roasted weenies, s'mores and love-pop-can-chain moments around the fire.

Never again will Jim and I and a nervous college freshman load up new bedding, table lamps, extension cords, closet organizers, posters, first-aid kits, nightlights and family photos and drive off into the sunrise to drop off at college yet another baby girl ... who was no longer a baby.

Never again. Selling the cartop carrier punctuates that.

Never again!

The title of the Craigslist listing should have been "Memories for sale: $60." But that's not what I wrote; I figured not many clamoring for a good deal would understand.

But maybe you do.

 

Today's question:

What in your life will likely happen never again?