babysitting the grands...

holy.mother.of.how.did.I.ever.raise.kids.without.copious.amounts.of.drugs.and.alcohol?

a special week...

My grandson, Charlie, didn't know me. My other grandson, Will, was too little to care. I was asked to babysit this week and wondered how it would go considering, most of Charlie's life I've been very sick. Charlie knows me with zero energy and bald as a cue ball. I must have seemed awfully strange to him, but I didn't have much choice.

I feel energized this week and I'm not sure if it is a gift of nature or just dumb luck. It might be because I've gone to bed at 9:00 pm - an hour after I get Charlie and Will down, but I have to smile when I realize what a precious gift I'd received over the last few days. Most of it is that Charlie, who is a brilliant, adorable handful had a really good time with me. My kids will tell you that I am creative, and am so out-of-the-box that I'm pretty sure I don't even own one. I'm forgetful, leave dishes in the sink, ignore expiration labels on milk, don't care about rules so much, and am generally a loose cannon. With kids..I'm easy-going (too easy) and allow things that most parents wouldn't, like throwing balls in the house or taking apart the pillows from all the furniture, not making a bed for a week, building elaborate forts, leaving pajamas on all day, spending half of a summer morning playing airplane with their belly on my feet, or taking every pot and pan out on my kitchen floor and playing with with rice or flour. It may take hours to clean up but the memories are priceless jewels. I pride myself on fun and patience, but also *here it comes* I do not take one single ounce of three-year-old shenanigans. For a three year-old being fun but super strict is the recipe for happiness. I don't say no very often, but when I do it isn't just no... it is HELL no. Charlie gave me the ULTIMATE compliment tonight. He is very, very close to his parents and adore them... but, after three days away from them, he asked,

 "Hey, Non... can I come to you house?"

Such a gift. Maybe it was the way he said it, but after a trying day with a strong-willed delightful boy... I wanted to melt into the floor.

addendum: no more balls in the house. Charlie has a better arm and is a bit more stubborn than my kids. You live and learn.

grands slam...

I deleted the "low kidney function" blog. Okay, this is what old age is all about: talking about your colonoscopy, your great/bad blood pressure, your kidney function and your arthritic issues. I'm over this nonsense. I am trying so hard to move forward but this experience keeps me tied into the worry somehow. This chemo doesn't quit with the new symptoms arising daily.  I'm not afraid, but they swarm around me like bees on honey.

Apparently, my kids think I'm "just fine" and asked me to babysit my grandsons in Chicago, so that is what I am going to do for the week.

God help me. I'm deciding between Gewurtztraminer or a decent Zinfandel after they go to bed. Ah, forget it. I'll just take the Jack. I must remember to hide the bottle from myself after one drink. 6AM comes far too quickly.

Baby Love, circa 1964

travel light...

You have my permission to get over yourself.

baby photos...

I have none. Maybe it is why I write this blog, so after I go there is some proof that I existed. Yes, there are family photos of me from the time my children were little, but in those photos I was deFINEd by them or deFINEd by my job, my husband, or other relationships. No big deal. But it hit me hard when I found out that my mother had had one of her little fits and pitched the baby photos one afternoon. Mom said my brother did it. I know his heart and he would never have done such a thing. She was the culprit.

Tear.out.heart.insert.lump.in.throat.

I honor every photo of my kids and even have detailed journals from the time they were little. I've often thought of what I would grab if the house were burning down... and, sure enough, it would be the photos and journals of my children. They mean everything to me.

My mother had some kind of borderline personality disorder. I used to tell people that she was an alcoholic to explain her bizarre behavior, but she didn't really drink. She was just certifiably nuts and so I found what I determined to be an inaccurate but plausible excuse: booze. At eighteen, I was distancing myself far away from Philadelphia step by step.. inch by inch even - marrying (far too young) into a family whose culture and religion  were different from my own.

That's another blog post; another day.

I was lucky to marry a genuinely kind man who has been very good to me and is a wonderful (did I say wonderful) father. He carries no drama the likes of which permeated through the house on Harts Lane where I grew up. His parents are not dramatic people either... just simple, regular folks who seem to honor baby pictures like I do. I've gotten so many good values from them although I've had other good role models along the way.. It is determining what is right and what is wrong, and figuring it out yourself when someone hasn't shown you any direction. Still, my compass is skewed, even though I did my best. Destroying your child's baby pictures is just horrifying and cruel on so many levels and has made me feel unimportant somehow. I did figure that out on my own.

This sort of mothering made me far too sensitive, distrustful of people, hurt, edgy, and ultimately unfulfilled. Our childhood forms us like clay. As Steve Jobs said, it takes thirty years to form habits and the next thirty years to have those habits define you. Ironic as it may be, he never saw those thirty years or lived past the age of fifty-six, the exact age my dad died. Also ironic that his initial rejection from his birth parents defined him too.

Cancer has helped with my sadness over the pictures. Weird, but also true. Cancer puts my mother in perspective to me and gives me the ultimate truth of the lost pictures. Compared to the great loves of my life, those photos mean absolutely nothing.

I've lived a beautiful life. I pray for the little ones.

Not just Adam and Eve, but Adam and Steve live here too...

oh yes...