Friday, December 28, 2007

Being Grandma

This is a grandma blog for sure. We have spent the last three days with Quincy who's a young three. We are tired grandparents tonight. We had three children of our own, and lots of other kids who came to live with us for months or years. Our house was always full and we were beyond busy. We kind of forget.
Our three oldest grandchildren lived in our area for a year and it was pure pleasure to see them every day and revel in the minutia of their growth. We were sad to see them move far away. The other two grandchildren live thousands of miles from us, and the travel is hard.
So we are inured to the idea that we probably won't really know most of our grandchildren
though we visit back and forth a few times each year.
So, Quincy, who is at hand, gets the benefits of doting grandparents. I have always wanted to have a grandchild who really really could love this ranch and the magnificent part of the world that is central Florida. It was so wonderful last night when Quincy and I took our first ever night hike together. We had our flashlights and his tiny hand was tightly curled into mine. This was an adventure! It was very dark and the stars were stunningly bright. I showed him the constellation of Orion and we looked at Venus. Then, we poked our flashlights down the gopher tortoise holes to see if anyone was there. "Turtles down there?" he asked. But there weren't any to be seen this night.
He's had a big day with incredible energy constantly expended and so he was ready for a story and bed. He's been on the go since seven this morning, ate a huge breakfast of pancake stacks, had to clean out the barn, fix the tractor, water the vegetables, and hook up his wagon to the trailer hitch on the truck. The minute breakfast is over, he's off to be "outside and go down to the barn". My kind of guy!
What all of us grandparents forget or have a certain amnesia about is how totally there you have to be for little kids. You can't really do any of your own routine because there is this small someone who either dawdles or runs way ahead. You spend some time thinking that you truly do NOT want to wait one more minute while your grandchild very laboriously picks three oranges or counts stones or whatever. You think you might be able to complete a small part of a project, check your e-mail, read the paper or a chapter of your book while you are awaiting toddler developments. No way! You look up and find (while you took only five seconds to check the e-mail) , that your grandchild has clambered up a dangerous ladder and is now in the high barn loft, doing god-knows-what with the crud you stored there, can't remember what it was, but you know it is riddled with poisonous spiders, wasp's nests and god knows what else. Quincy is a lot more agile than I am, but I do not want to return him to his parents, maimed. I supervise his descent.
"Quincy, it makes Grandma crazy when you do that! Don't go up that ladder anymore!"
I might have liked to spend a little time with the morning papers. No way! I am monitoring this amazing small person who is constantly and relentlessly doing all sorts of scientific and social experiments to check out the world he inhabits.
It's hard for us to have this charming little person completely ruin our routine. But there is nothing so satisfactory and so affirming as having this little visitor come often. Today in the late winter afternoon's long shadows, Quincy, and we and the dog, all went out in the golf cart to inspect the latest born calves. We all leaned into each other, just being in the moment. We watched hawks circling overhead and Quincy remarked on a snag of a pine tree that "all it's flowers have falled down."

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Christmas is coming

We were walking in the woods this late afternoon, through dry cypress. Since the good rain on the weekend, the ferns are plump and the palmettos shiny. Little Lola, the miniature dachshund was doing her utmost to plow through smilax and keep up the pace.

Just after dawn the pastures and open places were rimed with the first frost of the winter, but now as we scoot under fences and step over fallen logs we shed layers of clothing. I love this Florida winter with its little bites of cold. At bedtime you find those old slippers and flannel pajamas and pile on the quilts. And of course, you still keep all the windows open so you can hear the owls and coyotes and the first bird songs celebrating the new day.

Christmas is coming. No one will be here for it. There is no Christmas tree nor decorations except for a wonderfully fragrant wreath on the front door. Our far-flung children will be celebrating the holiday with their own traditions. Our local child and grandchild will be celebrating with us in her own house. Tomorrow, we'll go out with little Quincy, who's three, and get a small tree to decorate for his house. We'll take our bags of gifts and the giant present of a new bed for Quincy made especially for him by his grandpa. We'll have a wonderful Christmas Eve supper of all the traditional things. We'll spend some time stuffing the stockings, all alike, except for the individual names and hand-knitted by an old friend, with practical and fanciful items.

Somehow, all the old traditions need to be respected, whatever the circumstances. I remember one Christmas when my brother and I, both college students, could not afford to go home across the country to spend Christmas with our parents. We decided to celebrate anyway. My brother's Jewish roommates had long decamped. We went out at the last minute and bought the last tired tiny Charley Brown tree and installed it in my brother's funky New York apartment. We decorated it somehow with the tiny colorful boxes (full of folded $5 bills) our mom had sent. We cooked ourselves a Christmas dinner and then slept soundly on the smelly student beds.

Another Christmas, many decades later, we were in London in a flat with our three children and my husband's mother. The boys were in college, and our daughter was ten years old. We did get the required Christmas tree - again, the last tree on the lot. We made decorations out of newspapers. We decided that each person in the family could spend five pounds on presents for everyone, and we all went in a team to Harrod's to shop. I have no memory of the gifts (they were small!), but they were totally satisfactory. That was a wonderful Christmas.

And there have been far too many Christmases with incredible numbers of family members coming to the ranch from far places and presents spreading grotesquely in every direction from beneath the giant tree groaning from the freight of the ornaments.

Neither Andy or I have much investment in the religious or secular aspect of Christmas; I have done the requisite shopping and sending. (I am not a grinch!)

But, this year, our Christmas will be low key. We are still reeling from family problems of the sort many families have. We are raw, but we prevail, always optimistic and glad to have our friends and family. This is the best gift of all.

Wednesday, December 12, 2007

Walmart Christmas

It was 84 degrees today, so when I pulled up into the parking lot of my neighborhood Walmart superstore, everyone was wearing shorts that revealed their liver spots on the shins and tight jersey across their paunches. There was a clot of of old and middle aged people clogging the door with their carts. They seemed to be homing into some sort of free medical information- maybe it was flu shots? I grabbed a shopping cart and bustled my way through the crowd.

I took two deep breaths and breached the doorway. My mission was to get a few DVD's for a Christmas gift, some wrapping paper, and seed packets for my 4-H students. There is so much stuff here! I found a special on kiwi fruits and I wanted them for my students who will welcome me back from New Zealand. I picked up twenty of them, imagining how I would artfully cut them into servings for the snack I will bring to school next week.

The wrapping paper was the first for us in two years. (We have finally used up the Kwanzaa paper with the black Santas) This time I had the choice between the sponge bob square pants motif and Barney. I chose Barney.

Triumphant, I pushed my cart out to the gardening section. I asked, only to find that there were no seeds. (What's the matter lady? You want seeds this time of the year? We're on New Jersey time. No way can you find seeds here even though it is the best time to grow lettuces!)

So, I trundle my shopping cart to the checkout manned by a sad and surly woman who tells me that I can't pay for the kiwi fruit here. So, dispirited, I give my bag of kiwifruit back and lay it on the checkout counter. "O.K, take it back." ( I am not about to go back into the maw of the huge store, stand in line, and pay for the kiwis.)

So, this is Christmas shopping American style.

I am not grumpy about this holiday. Really, I' m not. I have a long Christian tradition in my mind. I love the music. I love the smell of Christmas trees and the sounds of bells and the traditions of stockings and burning candle odors in the midnight mass. I love the anticipation of Christmas morning and the gifts.

But, now I am not Christian in any traditional sense. In our house we have no Christmas tree, no ornaments, and no regrets. We keep Christmas with our grandchildren and we celebrate like crazy!

We are off (in a snow storm) to visit one segment of our grandchildren. We are taking bags full of gifts to celebrate the season. We are so blessed.

Happy holidays to everyone.

Walmart Christmas

Monday, December 03, 2007

We are not the center of the universe

I've been in New Zealand for the past month with no chance to update this blog. But I'm back and looking at my country and situation with new eyes. We are not the center of the universe, we from the United States of America. I had been prepared to be apologetic about the sorry state we are in. But no one asked, there was no news on t.v. or in the daily papers about the richest and most influential country in the world. No one wanted to engage us in debates or discussion about American policies.

New Zealanders, Kiwi, as they call themselves, have a lovely and friendly society. To us they seem quite delightfully naive where we are jaded. The national newspapers have headlines about crimes that would not get a mention here. New Zealand is tiny by any standard (smaller in size than California) and has only 4 million population, and way more than that in sheep. The social contract is strong and respected. One always feel safe wherever you go. Teenagers and kids greet you everywhere.

I was so impressed with the policies of treasuring the young. The schools are wonderful and creative places, spilling out creative products in art and science and music and physical education (Many elementary schools have swimming pools!) and without such things as the NOCHILDLEFTBEHIND, they manage to produce kids who can read and write and wonder on a level far ahead of ours. These schools are pretty small compared to ours. They reflect neighborhood needs.

If a child has any developmental problems there are very good options for help for anyone. We visited a family whose child had a language problem at an early age. They were able to get, in a timely fashion, the help this kid needed. The speech therapist came to their home, no stress, to help not only the child but the parents. The child is now prospering and on target.

The people I met and envisioned through the local papers, are cheerfully willing to tax themselves to make this all happen. I never read about whining for tax cuts.

Going anyplace and wanting to understand the culture is always like the blind men and the elephant: you only see a little piece of it. Hard to extrapolate intelligently from it. I need to go back repeatedly!

Of course, this place is the most beautiful in the world, so varied and intriguing in all its aspects
of alps, fiords, glaciers, rain forests, amazing birds and penguins, and millions of sheep!

Travel is indeed the power of experience.