Category: Women

Grannie’s Hands

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Her hands lie upon her stomach quiet and still. Telling, in their scared wrinkles, the story of a lifetime.

As a child her plump dimpled hands clung to her mother’s. They were, at times, covered with mud, sticky sweets, and all of the mess and mire of childhood. When she was a young woman, her hands were thin and lovely, yet strong enough to cope with the life she anticipated as the wife of a farmer. Those hands were adorned with a simple gold band, and, in time, held each of her newborn children.

They scrubbed, cooked, cleaned, and washed for her family. They comforted the ill, held the weary, and buried the dead. They were scared by fire, cut by life, and calloused by work. But to me, they were simply Grannie’s Hands.

I remember how they touched my face, braided my hair, and tied my shoes. I remember watching them as they sewed on buttons, kneaded bread dough, and planted flowers. They gently held my hands as I learned how to measure sugar for vanilla cookies, cried out my hurt feelings and fears, and poured out my heart when I fell in love. I remember Grannie’s hands reaching out to hold my first baby, and watching as she touched the face of her great great grandchild.

Her hands passed down instruction, discipline, talent, love, comfort, and compassion to four generations, and now, on her death bed, they are still.

But  as long as I live, I will remember Grannies hands.

 

Re-Evaluating

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I was reading a blog by Sarah A. Hoyt (Yes, the SF writer) that made me stop and think about how we all have to stop and take a look at where we are in life on a regular basis. http://accordingtohoyt.com/2012/08/02/im-not-that-guy

This is the response I posted on her blog.

I think many of us of a certain age go through that whole process you wrote about, no matter what career they chose and what kind of “fame” it creates – or not. We reach the point of self evaluation through many avenues, but at some point, unless very shallow or so lost in depression etc., it tends to happen.

I think it comes in stages throughout life. In our teens, we grow up and have to decide what the next step will be. In our 20’s we are striving to learn a multitude of talents to reach the step we decided on, often changing course and objectives along the way. In our 30’s we are generally in a long term relationship and having our children. Another big step for most of us because having kids is a very scary thing.

Then we hit 40. Oh boy, 40 . . . how the heck did that happen? It’s OK, because by then we have settled into house, home, career, relationship, and it is a good time to either cruise through the next ten years or re-evaluate our choices and decisions. Most of us re-evaluate, and either stay where we are because we are happy with our choices, or we panic and decide on a mid-life crises (women too), or, many of us realize that life is passing by fast, and we are no where near where we want to be in life.

I’m pushing 60 now. And looking back, I can honestly say I did the mid-life crises thing by going off to England to complete my doctorate. Life stepped in, however, and at the loss of our eldest son, we became parents to his one year old daughter. I had to re-evaluate big time at this juncture in my life.
So, at the age of 41, I was a new mom, and just to make things crazier, my husband and I decided to work our way around the world. We moved back to England, on to Hong Kong, and finally to New Zealand before coming home to the US nearly eight years later. It was worth it, every moment.

Now my granddaughter is 18, going to college, in a long term relationship, and expecting her first child. Holy CATS! I am going to be a great grandmother at the age of 58. Time to re-evaluate again.

Same time every year.

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My son, always the adventurer, poet, free spirit.
My son, always the adventurer, poet, free spirit.

Every year the black days roll around. They drag me down into a bog of depression, sucking me under, dragging me into the lair of darkness, designed to suffocate every nuance of joy, drown every moment of peace. You would think after nearly 13 years, it wouldn’t be so difficult, and that I would be able to cope better than I do. I know that, in my brain, I am aware that the days are coming, I try to fight the darkness, I try to stay strong and overcome the feelings that slowly overwhelm me. But, like a cloud obscuring the sun before a storm strikes, the emotional storm drowns me.

I know it is useless to let the depression take over. During the dark days, that usually last a week or so, I am physically and emotionally exhausted. I become inconsolable in my sorrow, and prickly in my communication to everyone. At times I feel catatonic and others manic as I relive the anguish of losing my son. My bright, difficult, passionate son was murdered – gone in a millisecond. Taken by a madman in a flash of gunfire, he fell in a pool of blood and brains onto a cold kitchen floor. Days later he lay cold and still in a casket as his family and friends attended his funeral, and we buried him in the cold red clay of Oklahoma. It was a beautiful winter’s day, but my sorrow knew that spring would never really come again for my heart.

So, now that the years have passed, I keep thinking I should be able to cope better. His birthday is September 11th. So many others have reason to be sad on that day because they lost loved ones. I am sad on that day because it was the day of birth for my son. More than the anniversary of the day he died, his day of birth causes me to mourn his loss. I don’t know why that is, I wish I did so I could let go and move forward. I do try to do something honor his life that day. I write him a letter, or I work on his memory book, I have even had a birthday party for him, but the sorrow still drains all the joy out of me.

This year was particularly bad. I went to bed for three days and only got up when I had to take care of my family. I cried a great deal, but mostly I lay there and thought about my son. I remembered every moment of his life from birth to death. I even went over the awful years of his teens when he was so angry and violent. I tried to think of everything I could remember about his likes and dislikes, all the funny stories of his childhood, everything he told me about himself. I read all his letters that he sent to us over the years, and went through his school papers and awards. The last thing I did was to read both his birth and death certificates. I know, a glutton for punishment. Those two documents are the proof that he did live, and that he died – but the important part is the life he lived in between them.

When I think of him, I think of him as a young man holding his baby girl and telling me that she was the whole purpose for his life my heart softens. I hear his voice telling me he loved me and wishing me a Merry Christmas the last time I spoke to him. I see him playing soccer as a little boy, with a big cheeky grin on his face after making a difficult goal – and as a Cub Scout winning an award. I remember a small boy telling me he can dress himself – even if he got his shirt on backwards and his shoes on the wrong feet. As a baby he was the most determined child I have ever seen. And through all the memories, I relive the love I still have for my first born. All the wishes, dreams, plans, and desires I had for his future and his success a a person came flooding back. And the sorrow that he didn’t get to live past the age of twenty-one morphs into anger. The childish cry, “It’s NOT FAIR,” wafts through my mind.

No it isn’t fair for a young man to be brought down in the best days of his life. But he wouldn’t think it was unfair. Not him. Life was always about an adventure, and when it got boring, he would find a way to make it exciting. Dying, for him, was just another adventure. Although, I am sure he didn’t want to leave his baby girl, or his family and friends, I am equally sure that he couldn’t wait to see what waited for him next. Though, he may not have been a very religious man in the traditional way, he always believed there was something more beyond this life. I can see in my minds eye his cheeky grin and bright brown eyes filled with curiosity and wonder as he took on a new way of life. That’s my boy – forging on ahead, no hold barred, into a new existence. Sigh, I miss him so much.

Now it is time to swim my way out of the bog of darkness and press on with this life. The sorrow clings to me every day like whispers of fog floating around me. But the sun does come out and it burns the fog away more day by day. Until next year. I don’t think a mother who loses a child, no matter how old or young that child may be, ever learns to ‘get over it,’ but eventually we do learn to live through it. Even if it means staying in bed in abject sorrow for three days every year.

Tomorrow the sun will peek through my darkness a bit more, and maybe by next week I will be back to normal, but I still miss my boy, and I guess until I join him and he gets to be my guide on the other side of life, I always will.

Possibilities

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Do I think too much? I often wonder if I make life harder than it should be. Do I engage my brain instead of listening to my heart and spirit? Do I simply exist instead of living life fully? Am I letting stereotypical expectations of what I should be and how I should act stop me from being true to myself?

There are a number of pithy little sayings floating about in the ether of the internet or self help books that I could apply to my feelings to create a feel good factor, but how many of them really make any difference in the long run?

I guess we all need to stop and do an internal check to make sure we are staying on the right course. Allowing ourselves to buy into the popular ala carte culture of self analysis is the easy way out of negative feelings. However, if we don’t delve a bit deeper than surface feelings, we are wasting time. None of the quick fixes out there will last beyond the next critical meltdown in our lives.

Oh, I don’t mean we need to run out and spend thousands of dollars sitting in some analysts office talking about how rotten our childhood was and how our relationship with our mother was horrific. If that makes you feel better, go for it, but I am talking about is taking the time to get to know what we really want in life and why we aren’t doing something about it. I am talking about taking the time to really learn what we feel about our lives, and to know our spiritual beliefs and needs are fulfilled.

As I age, I have less patience for people who constantly look for reasons to be unhappy and unfulfilled. I want to throw my hands up and shout, “For heaven’s sake, get off your duff and out of your pity puddle and DO something about your problems.” Inaction is no excuse for failure to thrive. We can always play the unending blame game rather than change what needs to be changed in our lives so we can flourish. It takes courage and determination to actually take steps to transform our lives. If you don’t like what you live, then alter, amend, modify, convert, exchange, or replace the things about your life you don’t like with things that you want or dream of doing. As long as you are inactive or a non-participant in your personal growth and dreams, you will never achieve happiness. Learning to be proactive in all areas of your life will give you the ability to attain all that you desire.

I recently had a conversation with my husband about how fast life has gone by. It seems that just yesterday I was a mother of two young boys, and now I am the mother of grown men and a grandmother. The years just whizzed by without my noticing; it was shocking for me in a number of ways. He pointed out that if I broke down the years, I would be amazed at all I had done, almost without noticing. He was right, and I really had no reason to be feeling sorry for myself. I had accomplished a great deal in my life, and in doing so, became the person I am today. Bumps, warts, and all, life experience has helped to make me who I am, along with all the spiritual moments that strengthened me.

We can’t go back and redo the past. It is over, to paraphrase a song by Brooks and Dunn, “[Life] is like the Mississippi, when she’s gone she’s gone.” It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking “if only” we had done things differently or made a different decision our lives would be better, and we would feel happier. Nonsense, what is, is and cannot be changed just because we wish it so. We live with what we have earned through our life experiences. I can’t make any difference in my life if I spend all my time thinking ‘if only’ about the past. What I can do is move on from this instant, right now. I can mend relationships, ask for forgiveness, and try to make restitution for the hurts I have caused, but I cannot take back what I have done and relive the past. Despite what all the science fiction stories tell us, time travel is still just a fantasy.

We could waste time beating ourselves up over our mistakes, after all, misery loves to propagate and the best way to do that is to use our guilt or frustration as fertilizer. All we will end up with is a patch of weedy discontent. If, however, we have the courage to pull all those weeds of discontent and replace them with the ability to bloom in a garden of possibilities, we can enjoy our lives.

At one point, I was a young mother, and you know, those days were so full of things to do, teaching moments, and work, I didn’t know how fast the years were going. I didn’t have time to sit around and feel sorry for myself back then. I had two little boys who were busy and growing, and I needed to be there to support that growth emotionally, educationally, and physically. I was the home room mother, Cub Scout Leader, and Sunday School Teacher. I squelched through mud and muck finding ‘treasures’ for their nature project, stood knee deep in a pond teaching them how to fish, stayed up late helping them learn to saw, nail, and glue together Cub Scout Derby cars, and had more than one battle over math homework. It was what moms did without question or thought; it was simply part of the job.

As they grew, I taught them how drive a car, work hard on a job, hygiene, and dating manners. I struggled with them through their final exams and yelled about homework more than once, and I was still there for them when they came home after curfew and ended up grounded. I learned to let go and let them make their own mistakes, and to make them be responsible for cleaning up the mess they had made with those mistakes. And, I had more time to think, and to do things for myself. I was so lost I finally went back to school to have something to do when my nest was empty. And, I started the downward spiral into feeling sorry for myself because I was no longer needed so much.

I wasted a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, until I had an epiphany one day. I realized that no one was going to feel sorry for me but me. Sympathy was not forthcoming from anyone, and not one single person was willing to join me in my pity puddle. I sat in it so long I was getting pruney and soggy. No amount of whining or moaning made any difference, except encourage people to move further away from me as fast as they could without making a scene. So, without a real plan, I just stood up and walked away from that pity puddle and began to find a way to overcome self pity and my patch of weedy discontent.

The how isn’t all that important, because it will be different for each of us. What is important is that we take the step to over come what ever it is that is keeping us from being joyful and content in our lives. Not every day will we be able to overcome the discontent in life; we have too many issues in our lives for that to happen, but with practice and dedicated attempts, each of us can have joy and contentment more often than not. For me, the most important step I made was to consciously decide that I was going to be a feisty old lady someday, and to do that I needed to practice being spirited and determined. I had to stop allowing my inner fear of making a fool of myself stop me from trying new things and learning new ways of doing old things. I had to learn to speak up and state my mind. And, I had to learn to be willing to be wrong now and then.

The second most important thing I had to do was find something to be passionate about. My passion was teaching and through that writing. For someone else that passion could become politics, women’s issues, health food, diet and exercise, learning to sing, or learning to paint. The choices are endless. What ever it is that you choose, make sure it is something to which you want to dedicate your time and energy. And, if you find it wasn’t your cup of tea after all, then admit it and move on to something else. I started out thinking I would love to teach high school, something I quickly learned was not for me, so I switched mid-stream and decided to teach at a university level. That passion I had for teaching finally manifested itself in tutoring women who were learning to speak, read, and write English as a second language while we lived abroad. My point is, without something in our lives that we can be passionate about, we have no direction for our energy. We cannot be joyfully engaged in life if we don’t have something to be joyful about.

So that leads me back to my original question, do I think too much? Am I searching for a quick fix, or am I really engaged in life to the fullest? Am I still waiting to be rescued, or am I really out there making choices and mistakes as I give every adventure a chance to enhance my life? Life has changed for me in the past few years as my health has become an issue. I don’t teach any longer, and now I need a new passion. I guess its back to practicing to be a feisty old lady, after all, someone needs to help set a good example for the next generation of up and coming feisty old ladies. Why not me? I guess I had better go and explore my garden of possibilities.

Cinema Passion

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Some people go to the movies because they are bored. Some people go because the kids are driving them crazy and it is too hot to send them outside, or they refuse to go outside. Some people, especially teenagers, go to hang out with friends and to see the hottest, new movie. Not that they actually watch the movie with all the socialization going on between them. Some people go to the cinema out of habit, and some because it is a particular genre they enjoy. There are some people who actually go just to be entertained. There is, however, a breed of cinema goers who are in a class all their own.

These are the people who have a true passion for movies. Some of them are passionate about certain actors, making it their business to know all the statistics about each and every one in every movie they see. They can recite chapter and verse about all their favorite actor’s parts and quote, line for line, the dialogue from their favorite scenes. They are fanatic about every detail of the character, and will argue endlessly about what scene in what movie was the best scene for the actor they adore.

Another group passionate about the movies is the technical fanatics. They love to go to the movies and pick apart the special effects, point out the obvious continuity flaws, pour over the scenes and pick out tiny mistakes on the set, or, in some cases, huge flaws. In this group is the sub groups of Sci/Fi technical fanatics who have read every book in a series, like Lord of the Rings, and love to note what scenes have been left out, combined, or changed beyond all recognition. They are passionate about the story, but also the way in which technology was used to create the movie. They will sit and watch the credits to the bitter end to see who did what in the movie.

There are people who are passionate about the whole movie experience, regardless of the genre or the technology. These are people, of which I am one, who have grown up in the cinema all their lives. Going to the movies is as much a part of who we are as anything else in our lives. Some of us can quote favorite lines from movies, know every word to every song from the musicals of our youth, and have favorite actors, but aren’t fanatic about them. Children of the cinema love the ambiance of a large screen, dark auditorium, and the expectation of the movie bursting on to the screen with sound and color. We are the people who get annoyed at the whisperers, bag rattlers, ice crunchers, and crying kids because it ruins the show for us.

The children of the cinema have certain rituals that must be observed. Buying the ticket, the popcorn, the soda, and sometimes candy are an important part of the process. We can hardly wait for the previews of coming attractions so we can plan for future cinema experiences. We wait with excitement for a new movie to come out so we can find ourselves involved in a new story that will make us laugh, cry, jump in fear, or feel romantic. The cinema is an escape, a place where we can leave our worries of real life behind and live in a fantasy world for a few hours. Knowing, however, that soon we will be back to dealing with life as usual.

Even leaving the theatre is something of a ritual. Waiting for the final credits to roll, the last note of music to fade, we gather our detritus, and depart as the lights come up in the room, are all part of the encounter. Children of the cinema blink in the bright lights of the lobby as we make our way out into the real world, already dissecting the movie, and comparing it to others that we have seen as we plan the next sojourn into the magic that is our passion.