Getting Ready for Round Four

That wonderful little app on my iPhone popped up the other day with a Time Hop that really took me back.

In it I was anticipating meeting my first granddaughter after having been to a weekend yard sale and purchased some things for the baby whose birth was still about six weeks away.

OMG!

Really?

Has it been that long since I was forty-something grandmother-to-be? Since my daughter and I agreed I would be christened "Mimi" by this first little bundle of joy (although even then I insisted I would respond to whatever she named me, just as my own sweet Ma Mary had when I was the firstborn grandchild)?

Honestly, it feels like a lifetime (and in it has been, E1's anyway) since I became, in E1's naming, Ma.

Just when I thought things would be gearing down a bit this fall with that first little girl heading off to school, my daughter and son-in-law delivered an April Fool's day surprise. "We're pregnant," my son-in-law announced, almost as an afterthought after loading up the girls on April 1 and backing down the drive.

In fact, he did pull back up and didn't get out of the car. There was some fear of violence on my part. He said my daughter made him tell me because she fully expected to be slapped. Perhaps her fear was not without merit. Before number three I had at least been consulted about my plans for the next five years, so it did come as more than a bit of a shock.

It was much like E1, who was a bit of a surprise and perhaps not quite planned. Two came along quicker than anticipated and Three was debated and planned. Four, however, well, I was reduced to tears.

I've had time to come around, but that day another baby wasn't something I wanted in my future.

The mantle of grandmother sits uncomfortably on my shoulders at times.

There are times when I wish my granddaughters could have the grandmother (Ma Mary) that I had. She was plump and well padded and gave the best hugs in the world. There were always vegetables for dinner and something sweet for dessert. If you showed up at an odd time, there were cheese sandwiches to be grilled or a stash of cookies or candy to be delved into. She worked 40 hours a week sewing baby clothes in a local mill, but still had time to make me the world's greatest doll clothes. Her garden with its towering rows of corn and tiers of beans was an adventure. Her house was always spotless and welcoming, the perfect place to watch "Batman" when I was a grade schooler and TV was still black and white and in the den, or lick my adolescent emotional wounds after some school or home drama, or nap while she was more than glad to take on looking after a baby or two when I was a mother myself.

It staggers me sometimes to think that while I was dragged into the status of grandmother still kicking and screaming at 47, Ma became a grandmother when she was a decade younger and was already a great-grandmother at my age. Yet I was still a small child when I complained about her not coloring her hair any more and she hid her beautiful white curls for decades longer. By the time she was the age I am now, I was a teenager on the brink of driving. She was still young in years, but in my eyes already an old lady defined by girdles and big bras, cataracts and home hair coloring.

She's been gone more than a decade, slipping away in her early 80s, her life in those days defined by glaucoma and diabetes, thick glasses and a walker, the fear of falling and the equal dread of being a burden or going to a nursing home.

In many ways her course has defined life for my mother, myself, and to a level already my daughter, as we seem determined to avoid her fate if possible. My mother, now a decade younger than my grandmother when she died, is still small and thanks to a rescue dog adopted last fall, walks every day. She tries to eat good and complains about not having the stamina of her younger days. I'm actively fighting weight gain and muscle loss as well, remembering the things that crippled my beloved grandma.

So while I'm sorry at one level that my granddaughters don't have my grandma, I also wonder about the differences in the role model they are seeing and what that may mean to them. Instead of anticipating middle age as a slow down and slide toward elderly feebleness, they will remember watching me lift weights, do yoga, dance a Zumba routine to a popular song, and swim in a string bikini. What kind of difference will that make in their attitude toward aging? Will it challenge them to stay strong? Will that be a gift that exceeds, or at least equals, the doll clothes and baked goods?

Will my efforts to stay strong mean I'm still able to look after my great grandchildren, even though I'll be at least a decade older when they are born? Will it mean I can still go on the trips with family that my grandmother couldn't take because she couldn't get around? Will it mean the chance to build new and different memories longer in their lives?

The announcement of a fourth grandchild -- another girl if ultrasound is to be believed -- meant trading cars again so that I have room for four car seats (although I stopped short of a mini van with a crossover with third row seating). It also meant rethinking what I'll be doing for in the immediate future and settling myself back into the idea of being Ma, almost as reluctantly as I did the first time. It means that I'll be tied down with a baby again, for a while, and life the next few years won't quite have the rhythm I'd been expecting. I've adjusted to the idea though. The sacrifice of my time and plans is an immeasurable gift as well, both to me and to them as we share time most families don't get the chance to enjoy.

It's helping out with gymnastics, swim and dance classes, doctor and dentist appointments where I almost fill the role of a third parent. It's outings where people sometimes still think I'm their mother (go me!) when we go grocery shopping or take a fun trip to the park or splash pad. It's picking beans and talking about sustainable gardening, discussing the advantages of free range hens, serving venison instead of beef and still cooking vegetables from my own garden. It's the magic of discovery in watching a caterpillar become a butterfly.

And all the lessons and magic repeated again and again for a new little voice and a new set of eyes and ears.

Looking ahead it may be learning to run a chainsaw, shoot a gun, hunt and butcher, and a thousand things that I wish someone had taken the time to teach me, instead of assuming I'd never need to know or somehow absorb by osmosis. It may mean sharing the things I was taught -- gardening and harvesting food, preserving fruits and vegetables, crocheting, sewing, making really good sweet tea and coleslaw.

So this somewhat reluctant grandma is as ready as she can get for round four. She's excited about school for E1, E2 being the big sister most days, and even one more baby to hold. It isn't quite how I expected to spend my 50s when I had a career dashing around the county for the local small daily newspaper, knowing everyone and everything, but all in all, I think it's a better investment of my time.

And I know what I'm doing day to day, even if it isn't bringing home a big paycheck or earning me accolades, ultimately will mean more than anything I ever put on paper.

Goodbye Bottles, Hello Little Girl

I didn't think I'd ever feel any nostalgia over a baby growing up, yet as I put E3's last bottles in the dishwasher recently, there was a tinge of sadness.

It was a marker of our baby growing up. Sippy cups are replacing bottles and cow milk supplementing the breast milk on which she subsisted her first year. Yes, she still wants Mommy when available, but when she's not E3 is quite happy with a cup of milk or water.

As a side note, if you've never been the caregiver for an EBF (entirely breastfed) baby, it's quite different. There were constantly bottles of milk in the refrigerator, and as emptied they needed to be washed and given to Mommy to refill, even if I really didn't need to run the dishwasher. There was frozen milk in the freezer, an emergency standby supply, just in case. A lot to keep up with sometimes, but never any formula to mix, and once I got used to the different handling methods, it was great.

Beyond that, there was the fact that she absolutely, teetotally refused to eat baby food of any kind and the best we could determine it was because she didn't need it for anything. As a result, there was none of the sitting before a high chair trying to entice an infant to eat, no spoons knocked in the floor, no far flung vegetables or nasty bibs. No, when she began eating it was only the things she could put into her mouth and her first food of choice was crackers and gnawing on organic apples.

I've never been a big fan of tiny babies. Their utter helplessness, neediness, and inability to grasp what has happened to life as they knew it from the time their little brains engaged until birth always overwhelmed me. I spent six weeks home with my two children when they were born, and was dying to get back to work before I totally lost my mind. Yet, when I was working from home and my daughter began having children, I took on the dreaded task of time alone with tiny people again. Not once, but three times, each time dreading it as much as if I'd never spent time with a baby.

I much prefer them after they're functioning in an upright position, so any trace of regret at the tangible end of infancy is a bit baffling.

A bit of it, I'm sure, comes from the feeling that she's the last grandchild. There was always that expectation that my son would find himself and then find a woman (preferably in that order) and have the children he wanted and I had already girded my loins to be grandma babysitter again. Now I know that won't happen.

Part of it is that just as losing bottles means she's growing, it means I'm getting older as well. So are her sisters and everyone else I care about as far as that goes. All too soon the house where I never had any time because of three demanding little girls will be the house where I have too much time because I'll still work from home and they will all be off at school.

Just as five or six years ago, I could not have imagined how my life would be today, I cannot imagine how my life will be in five years when they're all marching through the doors of a school each morning instead of being dropped off at Ma's house. But then again, that's not necessarily a bad thing, because other than the tsunami that losing my son has proved to be, the last five years have been a worthwhile adventure.

Still, putting away the bottles is a mixture of relief and nostalgia.

No more bottle parts to take apart and sanitize in the dishwasher, no bottles to heat, no forgotten milk to worry about. But at the same time, no more long snuggles over a bottle that segues into a nap, no sweet milky breath and milk drunk babies with a pleasantly baffled expression.

Instead, I have E3, who has already mastered climbing onto the craft table and yelling for help, who chose "bad" as one of her first words, who generally melts into tears and drama if she even senses the word "no" in your voice. I have the crayon chewer who nevertheless feels she should be part of coloring activities, in fact of all activities that involve her older sisters. The still dark-haired child who usually looks so much like her mother, then assumes an expression in which she becomes a whole different person.

Yes, I'm sad to bid goodbye to the baby who was so different from her sisters, but I'm also anxious to meet the little person she is fast becoming. I want to see where she fits in the puzzle of her family life, the niche she fills between her sisters, the role she takes as her own as she grows.

So as I wash and put away the last of E3's bottles, I'm trying not to dwell too much on what is behind us. We still have a lot in front of us and much to learn about one another, just as I'm still learning about her wonderful sisters. Yes, the baby is really gone, but the wonderful little girl taking her place will be even more fun and more of an adventure.

Besides there's nothing that says she absolutely has to be the last baby. (Don't get me wrong, oh daughter of mine. That does not mean we need another to fill her place now.) I know people who are caring for their great-grandchildren. So while I'm in absolutely no hurry to see our little girls grown, I guess I'd best take care of myself in the meantime.

We never know what the future will hold.

I Wish I Had Pictures of My Memories

I remember when this picture was made.

I was 29 and Ethan was near his first birthday. It was the first time he'd fed me, seemingly recognizing for the first time that I ate. It was a special enough moment that I asked his dad to take our picture, something I never did. I have virtually no pictures of me and my children because I was always behind the lens.

I remember how special that moment was and it came back to me in a rush recently when E3, now about the same age, insisted on feeding me some of her lunch. The feel of baby fingers pushing bits of food into my mouth and the delighted grin on her face were both familiar and pulled at my heartstrings.

But although that image feels real down to the weight of my baby's warm bare legs on my lap and the way the air felt in the drafty old farmhouse and my favorite cotton sweater, I struggle to remember my children's childhood. Except for rare moments, it seems a distant blur usurped by more recent ones of different children -- the three little girls who consume my days. There are too few photographs like this where I can remember the details because I was actually part of it.

Some of it is relative. Just as time seems to fly by as each day becomes a smaller fraction of the sum total of our lives, I think the time that I want to remember became a smaller portion of their lives as well. While I want to remember bathing and dressing small children and the heft of their little bodies and the way they smelled, those memories are mixed in with all the other memories and buried under the years.

With Ethan gone and no more memories to add, I want to recover more and hold onto them, and being unable to recall the exact moments I want breaks my heart. Looking at old pictures, much of the time I cannot remember the why or sometimes even the where. Instead, it's the snapshots I didn't take: the first time the nurse brought him to me after his difficult delivery and said I should nurse him and I was shaking so bad and in so much pain from surgery that when I tried to hold him I couldn't; the first day of school when the bus didn't stop at our new home because when they told the bus driver to get Ethan she didn't realize a new Ethan had moved into the house and she knew the previous Ethan had left; Ethan's motto which he failed to follow "Make good choices," adopted from DARE classes in elementary school; standing in the ER with a sweaty middle schooler who had just broken his leg using his skateboard as a luge, and who would have to wait six weeks for the shower he desperately needed; taking an afternoon off from work to ride around with him and his broken heart and wishing I could do more for the 16-year-old who was turning into someone I didn't know but still needed me when his world fell apart.

Even those memories are buried beneath the roller coaster of loving a child with an addiction, who would sometimes talk about the things he wanted to do with his life and for me, and sometimes curse me and the day he was born; alternately smother me in a hug that warmed my soul and hang up the phone when I was unable to provide whatever he sought, whether it was money or an endorsement of his point of view; the funny boy who mimicked his grandfather and the people around him and the scary young man who appeared on the edge of hurting anyone in his path.

Beyond all the pain of losing a child, which is like having a limb violently severed and being left with the phantom pain of hurting for something no longer there, I'm sure most of us lose track of what we want to hold onto about being parents.

The fact is that like most parents I failed to appreciate the everyday miracle of raising a child. Instead of moments to savor, it's something to survive, teetering between joy and exhaustion. Caring for our children and watching them grow is all mixed up with trying to make a living, advance a career, work out the give and take of a relationship and do the chores to keep our homes going. First steps and silly giggles compete with overdue bills and demanding bosses for our attention. We're often still growing and changing ourselves and discovering who we really are may keep us from enjoying every discovery our children make.

It's why grandparenting, even without having lost a child, is so much more intense than parenting. It's not about loving these new little people more, it's about having the time to appreciate them, seeing memories of other now grown children and the growing awareness of our own mortality. We're suddenly aware that every first we're experiencing all over again with them, may well be our last first.

Our children may see this kinder, gentler, more patient and generous person and wrongly accuse us of loving a grandchild more than we did them. In fact, it's a chance to love them even more. Baby talk and dimpled legs become at times not just your child's baby, but yours all over again with a deeper appreciation for each moment. We repeatedly realize how much we've forgotten of what is so precious to us, no matter how many photographs and home movies we make to save the moment, and we try to soak it all in like a dried sponge tossed suddenly into a bucket of water.

The photos, I realize, aren't really for us at all because the real memories are stored in our hearts and souls. They're for the little people, and their future little people, so they can see themselves from the outside when all they remember is how it felt to live the moment, so their children can look at Mommy at 4 and marvel about her hair and the fact that she was little.

My daughter has lots of pictures of her babies feeding her. I know because I've been the photographer at each first birthday party when they've smeared cake on her face and laughed with delight at the fun of mashing food. But I realize now that I need to hand someone else the camera more often.

I realize, looking at that old photograph again, that they are for the survivors of life, no matter who they wind up being. They help conjure the vague memory of the moment and reconstruct it into something you can hold in your hands and savor. When my granddaughters are looking for the pictures of their memories, I want to be in the picture. I don't care how I look any more when the moment happens. Whatever the future holds, I want them to have more than just their memories to remember it all.