Remembering Grandma

You're 21 years old, you're divorced, and you have a four-year-old son. You marry a widower with five children, the oldest of whom is 18, the youngest is six. He and his wife had been very much in love, and he was broken when she died. And, oh, yes, it's 1932, and the Great Depression is underway. This is how my Grandma came into my mom's life.

Ethel with Chuck, Earl Jr., Elgene, Anna Mae and Mary Rose.

My Grandfather

Mom was the youngest of the five children. Her mother, Ethel, died of tuberculosis in 1929. My grandfather was so sick with pneumonia, he couldn't go to her funeral. Assorted relatives helped the family get by. These photos show where the family stood a few years before she passed away:
At some point, Mildred was hired as a housekeeper, then she and my grandfather decided to get married. I have often wondered what their relationship was like at this stage. I suspect there was mutual appreciation and love, if not the head-over-heels romantic kind. But it was strong and enduring.

This is the earliest photo I have of Mildred

Mildred with her son, Jimmie and my mom.

Grandma was unfailing fair to all of the kids.She spent the same amount on gifts for each, down to the penny. During the Depression, she and my grandfather saw to it that the kids ate first. If there was anything left, they ate, if not, the two of them went without. My grandfather baked cakes, dug ditches, and did whatever he had to do to support the family. My grandmother kept the kids and the house ship-shape. I'm sure there was some resentment among the kids (especially the older ones), but when you talked to Grandma, you'd think she had given birth to every one of them.

Things got better after World War II. My grandfather had his own tool and die company, and he and my grandmother did a lot of traveling. She collected sea shells, my grandfather caught a marlin. They went to Florida and out west on road trips. Things went well for them until 1964 when my grandfather had his stroke. He went from being a gentle, loving man, to being spiteful and mean. But grandma didn't complain. She took care of him for the last nine years of his life. She always said, "When you're married, you take the bad with the good. I had a lot of good years with your grandfather." The thing is, when my grandfather had his stroke, she was only 54. And she was on top of her game.

What I remember of grandma in the 60's...her driving us around the country in a big car with tailfins and beige leather seats. Cruising along at 70, her smoking a cigarette and passing slower cars. Her taking us to the store and buying our favorite ice cream...then pooh-poohing my parents when they tried to object. Listening to her records...she had the Coasters doing Yackety-Yak and that song about the War of 1812. And Elvis. And Patsy Cline. At one point, I think it was in the late 50's, she had her kitchen remodeled by a professional interior decorator. It was pink and black.I would love to have that kitchen now.

She was also the family historian. Not just her biological family, but my grandfather's family, too. She kept photos and stories and shared them when we were growing up.

Grandma hung in there until 1996, when she lost her final battle to cancer at age 86. She was getting forgetful, too, and I think she was just plain worn out. But she sure made the most of the life she was given.

Because of all she'd been through, she was not easily shocked. And her priorities were straight. When I was in my 20's and having a career was what it was all about, I used to get frustrated when she seemed more interested in when I was going to get married and have a baby than she was with my job. Looking back, I realize she knew what's important, what is lasting. And how to last.

 Wake-up Call

Unless you want to get slapped into next Wednesday, never say to me, "Oh, well, no wonder I don't know about that, it happened before I was born."

There is a lot of ignorance in this world, but not much bliss. So, if you were about to pull out that old chestnut, just put it back in your pocket. Being stupid does not make you happy. And saying that something happened before you graced the world with your presence does not give you a "get out of jail free" card. If you are not curious, if you do not stretch your mind, if you sit back and throw up your hands and say, "oh well, I'm dumb, but that's okay," you are not alive. You are walking zombie-like through your days, not living to the fullest.

(I need to clarify two things here. When I say "ignorance," I really mean "willful ignorance." And an "old chestnut" is a saying that has become a cliché.)

Being intellectually curious does not mean you have to read a lot of books (although reading does help). It just means you should be open to learning new things.

There are millions of amazing experiences you've never had. And, unless you believe in reincarnation, you only have one life to experience them.

So, you'd better get cracking!

Exercising in Futility

I try to exercise. Most days I succeed. I wrench myself from a warm, cozy bed, feed the cat, and head downstairs to the dungeon to work out.

My personal torture devices.

I have several genres from which to choose. Cardio (formerly known as aerobic); walking, dancing, yoga, Pilates. The titles are always action-inspired: Fat Belly Blast, Big Weight Loss, Get Moving.

Once I've picked my poison, I load it up and off I go. Having done all of these workouts multiple times, I find my body going into muscle-memory mode. Then I start to notice things.

First, I look at the other people in the video who are in the background. Somewhere in the "how to be a back-up body in a workout video," it says, "first of all, SMILE!"

They always smile. Sometimes it looks like they are just gritting their teeth. One memorable example is in a Denise Austin workout, where Ms. Austin walks over to one of her cohorts, talks about flabby arms, and moving her finger across the underside of the woman's arm, says, "See that? We all get this!" It looks like the woman really wants to punch her. But she just "smiles," and for all time will be captured on tape, accused of having old lady arms. (Of course, she doesn't, but the seed has been planted.)

Sometimes they put guys in the video, and they look mighty uncomfortable. I also like to watch for the one person who misses a cue, then has to scramble to catch up. Sometimes I wonder if the choreographer tells them to screw up, just to make the folks at home feel better when they make a mistake. Kind of like, "Look here, even professionals like us make mistakes, it's okay that you're a klutz!"

There are times when the instructor does more reps on one side than the other. I find myself counting or ticking off the number of seconds a pose is held on each side. I'm always worried about being lopsided.

One of my favorite instructors isChris Freytag. But even she has her foibles. In a kick-boxing segment, she said, "pull your arm forward like you're dusting a shelf." A few moments later, she instructed, for the same movement, that "this one goes to the side of their face." Perhaps she was trying to appeal to both the housewife and the take-no-crap modern woman.

Then there is the naming conflict that takes place in two separate yoga videos. There is one pose where you lie on your back and grab the big toe on each foot.. Bullwinkle will demonstrate:

 This move was described in one place as the "Dead Bug Pose," and in the other as "Happy Baby." 

Of course, either name adequately describes the move. But I find the disparate names hilarious. Maybe it's because I've spent another half hour of my life pushing and pulling myself into different poses, and I'm just delirious.

Remembering to Breathe

I watch a lot of exercise videos. Walking, aerobic, cardio, yoga, Pilates. While all of the techniques are very different, there is one thing all of them have in common. At some point, they talk about the importance of breathing. In yoga and Pilates, breathing is key, as they say. You breathe in when you're doing this, you breathe out when you're doing that. In other exercise venues, they just remind you to breathe because breathing is energy.

Sometimes I forget that I'm holding my breath. It's like I'm waiting for something to happen to me. Obviously, when you're not breathing, you're not really living. So I've started reminding myself to look up, look outside of myself, to see, feel, experience life. Life is all about moments. I've never met anyone who gets bliss every minute of every day. I'm learning that you have to make your own. Like this one:

After shopping at Heinen's last week, the cashier told me I'd earned a reward. I had one of two choices, either a package of hot chocolate or a bouquet of tulips. I chose the tulips. They made me think of my mom, and it felt like they were her gift to me. All week, I've seen those tulips and thought about my mom. A dozen moments that have made my heart happy.

Another example...I hope my sister won't mind if I borrow one of hers. I was on Facebook and saw a picture of her in a huge sombrero, her plate filled with a yummy-looking dessert. She was smiling a contented smile, obviously having a wonderful time. When I think of that picture, it makes me smile. It has become my moment, too.

This morning I got up and opened the curtains, and there was the sun. I stepped out onto our frosty porch, my breath coming like puffy clouds. A reminder to me. I had two different views:

I could focus on the cold, frosty earth or the brilliant blue sky.

 Or I could choose to drink in the whole picture. Which is what I did. And took in the cold air of a beautiful new morning.

Mary Had Six Little Lambs

I can't believe it's been a year since my mom passed away. It was more like fading away. That was how she lived her life, a stagehand rather than a star, quietly going about the business of keeping the show going. And when the show was over, she said goodbye to the players and walked away. No fuss. No muss. In fact, Mom was almost always behind the camera when we were growing up. Until we were adults, and my brother, John, came up with the idea of shooting us together, we never had a picture taken of all of us together. The pictures that remain today are a haphazard chronicle. Lots at Christmas time. My older siblings and I were lined up at Easter, facing the sun (that's what Kodak told Mom was best), and we were shot, squinting, in our church going finery. By the time my younger brother, Paul, came along, this tradition had ceased. (Which is why he is shown in his own photo, above.) Mom took a ton of photos of my oldest brother, but by the time we got to Paul, most of the pictures that remain of his childhood show him beside whatever the newest car was. A two-for-one. The point is, Mom was rarely photographed in those early days. And I realized, as I went through our pictures, that there are very few pictures of her and me.
This is one of the few...

Mom was really about putting family first. Her luxuries were few, but cherished. She took a bath after everyone else in the family was done. She would soak for a very long time in there -- sometimes we would knock on the door because we'd hear her snoring. Hints of the path not taken come from her creativity, which whispered rather than singing out. She did several paint-by-number projects when I was small. A large Jesus hung in our living room, its eyes following you wherever you moved, keeping you righteous. A trio of bird paintings in abstract woodland settings. And a Mother Mary (presumably, the companion to Jesus), that made an appearance in the back bedroom from time to time. Then there were her birthday cakes, which she would create to suit whatever theme you chose. The most memorable was my brother's guitar cake. And there was the time she read in a magazine that sponge painting was a great way to liven up a plain wall. We came home from school to find the hallway painted with large olive green splotches. We kidded her about it, but my Dad backed her up. Interior decorating was her job, and, to my memory, he did not get involved.

Then there was her garden. Forget green thumb, hers was a dream thumb. She got an amazing array of flowers and vegetables to bloom there.

On one visit to my mom, a number of years before she died, she confided wistfully that she sometimes imagined what her life would have been like if she had studied art. It was a glimpse, brief and fleeting, into the woman who was my mom. It's made me think more about her, who she was and who she never became because she was busy raising six kids. I suspect she wouldn't have done anything differently. She was very proud of her lambs. And she and my dad were crazy about each other, a love that lasted all their lives, and, I suspect, is still going strong.


Mom was born a few years before the Great Depression got started. Her mother died of tuberculosis two days before Mom's fourth birthday. Someone told Mom they were going to a birthday party, and they took her up to the coffin and made her kiss her mother's cheek. My grandfather married his second wife when Mom was six. Mildred got that family through the Depression. Mom didn't tell a lot of stories about her childhood. She would just say that it was pretty typical. She did say that she would (she shamefully admitted) play the stepmother card when Grandma wouldn't let her do something she probably had no business doing.

After graduating from high school, Mom went to work for Western Union. (She got an A on the test, I have the certificate.) She met my dad after the war in a bar (yes, Mom, it WAS a bar, even though you insist it "wasn't like that.") The two of them hit it off, got married, and, well, there came the six of us.

When we get together and talk about mom, we tell the usual stories...

How food was rationed at dinnertime (you got one pork chop, one baked potato, one scoop of corn, one brownie for dessert).

Her favorite phrase, "We'll see," which clearly meant "No."

Her ability to make you feel so guilty and awful that you would have gnawed off your own arm rather than disappoint her again. And the wooden spoon Damn the wooden spoon!

Those fabulous shoes from 1940-something, velvety black pumps that she had in her closet that smelled like cedar. (They had stories to tell, but I never heard them.) 

The time one of our pet gerbils got loose while we were away visiting my grandparents. Two days after we got back, I felt the bed moving and discovered the errant rodent running between the mattress and the bed covers. We returned the gerbil to its cage and discovered a sizable hole had been chewed in the mattress. Mom was upset, but she simply said, "This is one of those things we are NOT going to share with your father." (Since Mom did the bed making, this was a sensible course of action.)

Then there are the stories that belong to me... Her taking me to a Girl Scout meeting where they showed a film strip that talked about "becoming a woman." Of course, the film strip didn't cover the part about how how sex works. When asked about that, Mom simply said, "He puts his you-know in your you-know and then you-know." Then she changed the subject.

When I was living in Virginia, Mom and I corresponded regularly. She and my dad composed little bits of artwork to include with the news of the day. They were windows into the world of Tony and Mary, and I cherish them to this day.

My all-time favorite story is when I took Mom to play bingo at St. Columbkille. Everyone around us was supportive when they learned it was her first time (even the guy with the toy trolls lined up around him). Then Mom, sotto voce, said, "I believe I have a Bingo." I started waving my arms around, yelling "BINGO, OVER HERE, BINGO!" Mom sat quietly with her hands in her lap, while the gentleman came over and confirmed her card. For the rest of the evening, she had a satisfied smile on her face, and she patted the pocket that held her winnings.

Mom is still with me every day. Her presence is especially strong in the kitchen. As I try a new recipe and fuss over the ingredients, I can feel her and my grandmother standing over my shoulder coaching me.

I have a feeling she's watching me now. Which is why I left out some of the stories I was going to share. Even now, I don't want to piss her off.

I love you, Momma!