You can learn ANYTHING – except,…

It just never ceases to amaze me – the ‘mind of a child’.

The twins and I just got back from the lake. It was a beautiful day!
We talk about all sorts of things when we are together…and today, Hannah asked me:“Grandma, when we get home can we look on the Internet for information on ‘Lama’s’?”
Of course I said: ‘Sure!’.

Then Abby asked me something,..and I told them “You can find virtually ANYTHING on the Internet!”

Hannah QUICKLY blurted out: “Not when you are going to die,..you can’t find out when you are going to die on the Internet Grandma”.

*lol*

Children’s minds are so “Uncluttered”,…they see the ‘obvious’ very quickly and always call it the way they see it. They can’t help it, they don’t know enough to be ‘vague’ or ‘diplomatic’.

I find their profoundly simple statements absolutely ‘fascinating’,…I wish I could be as uncomplicated as they are!

My own Grandmother

At times I stop and think about the sharp contrast between my grandmothers role in my life and my role in my own grandchildrens lives.

My grandmothers were more like priceless relics sitting on a shelf. You loved them,…knew they were ‘there’,..but their part in my life started and ended with the length of our visits. There was no day-to-day interaction, and no feeling that I was ‘missing’ something because of it.

Raising kids was left solely to mother and father, in fact, there was a distinct line in the sand of “in-put” – god-forbid if that line was crossed. Back then a grandparent choosing to interject their opinion without being asked for it, was a ‘relationship’ decision that could set off a round of family-feuds it would take generations to resolve.

It always seemed that my grandmothers ‘had it all together’. As though they had plotted a course in life and HERE (wherever here was) is precisely where they intended to be. There was an obvious absence of ‘hustle-n-bustle’ and constant movement around their household, short of making mad dashes to the freezer for more cookies. There were no ’self-improvement’ or ‘How to have it ALL’ books laying on the coffee table, (Or anywhere else in the house),..that spot was reserved for only one book, a well worn Bible.

My grandmothers never appeared to be searching for anything, much less themselves. They seemed to have found all the answers in life,…to all the questions they cared to ask. They were at peace, and never seemed bothered or unsettled about any lingering unknowns.

There came a time when they appeared to have declared themselves “Done”. All that was left now – was to sit back and enjoy the end of the ride surrounded by doting children, over-rambunctious grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Every day was a ‘notch’ on the belt of life. The daily accomplishment was ‘existing’. When they passed away,..it was sad,…but it was what they were ‘living for’….and anticipating, like the final chapter of a well written book. They were expectant of death and when it knocked, they were there waiting at the door, bag’s packed and ready to go.

Their lives seemed so ‘neat’ and ‘tidy’,…’uncomplicated’ and ’sure’.
When I think of a word to describe them,..the words “COMPLETE” and “CONTENT” come to mind.

Their grandparenting experience could not be more opposite of my own...yet,..despite the difference between the ‘interaction level’ with our grandchildren, we both accomplished the same thing. We played an intricate part in who our grandchildren are.

My grandmothers ever constant living example of FAITH IN GOD changed me forever. As I grew up and started to question everything and everyone,…and saw most ‘religious’ people as ‘hypocrites’ detouring my own spirituality, I could never ‘deny’ the existence of God because of my grandmothers unwavering and ever vigilant belief in Him. She didn’t talk about him like he was ‘up there’ and she was ‘down here’,…she talked about him like a woman having a ‘love affair’ with the perfect man. The twinkle in her eyes as she talked about how he loved her, looked out for her, and cared about her…fascinated me. I don’t believe in God because of a book, but because of my grandmothers impregnable and compelling personal relationship with him.

What I realize in retrospect,..comparing our two grandparenting experiences is this -
IT DOESN’T TAKE MUCH TIME TO MAKE A LIFE CHANGING DIFFERENCE IN A CHILD’S LIFE.

Just frequent visits on the week ends, the holidays and a card on Birthdays,…and I was forever touched by them.

Grandparents Make A HUGE Difference and I believe God is counting on it!

Happy Fathers Day!

Happy Fathers Day to all you men out there that have ’stepped up to the plate’ to be “Dad’s” to the children in your life. Like they say – ANYONE can be a father,…but it takes a very committed and special person to be a “DAD”!

The History of Fathers Day –
Sonora Dodd, of Washington, first had the idea of a “father’s day.” She thought of the idea for Father’s Day while listening to a Mother’s Day sermon in 1909.

Sonora wanted a special day to honor her father, William Smart. Smart, who was a Civil War veteran, was widowed when his wife died while giving birth to their sixth child. Mr. Smart was left to raise the newborn and his other five children by himself on a rural farm in eastern Washington state.

After Sonora became an adult she realized the selflessness her father had shown in raising his children as a single parent. It was her father that made all the parental sacrifices and was, in the eyes of his daughter, a courageous, selfless, and loving man. Sonora’s father was born in June, so she chose to hold the first Father’s Day celebration in Spokane, Washington on the 19th of June, 1910.

President Calvin Coolidge, in 1924, supported the idea of a national Father’s Day. Then in 1966 President Lyndon Johnson signed a presidential proclamation declaring the 3rd Sunday of June as Father’s Day. President Richard Nixon signed the law which finally made it permanent in 1972.

I CELEBRATE ALL “DAD’S” TODAY – and I have a special place in my heart for the Grandfathers that have stepped into the role again of full-time father to their grandchildren….THANK YOU! THANK-YOU! THANK-YOU!

******************************************

Here’s Some great “Fathers Day Quotes” :

“It is a wise father that knows his own child.” — William Shakespeare

My father used to play with my brother and me in the yard. Mother would come out and say, “You’re tearing up the grass.” “We’re not raising grass,” Dad would reply. “We’re raising boys.” ~Harmon Killebrew

It is not flesh and blood but the heart which makes us fathers and sons. ~Johann Schiller

A father carries pictures where his money used to be. ~Author Unknown

The greatest gift I ever had
Came from God; I call him Dad
~Author Unknown

Dad, your guiding hand on my shoulder will remain with me forever. ~Author Unknown

Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of feeling safe with a person, having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words, but pouring them all out, just as they are, chaff and grain together, certain that a faithful hand will take and sift them, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness blow the rest away. Thanks Dad ~Dinah Craik

He didn’t tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it. ~Clarence Budington Kelland

The GIFT of listening

One thing I ‘like to do’ is challenge myself to be consciously aware of what is going through my granddaughters heads when I’m speaking to them. To realize and acknowledge that I am dealing with little people who have a ‘very limited’ view of life and ‘very few experiences’ to filter the information they see and hear. I make a point of understanding that what I THINK I am saying may not be with they hear, and to catch it if that is the case. It takes patience and it takes time, to do it.

Being a Mom to my grandchildren is a totally different experience than being the mom I was to my own kids. I have the rare opportunity of HINDSIGHT to refer to. I have the consequences and results of my first attempt at ‘parenting’ to learn from. That is POWERFUL when you think about it! And once I grasped onto just what an opportunity that was,…I made it my mission to right the wrongs I knew of,…and to implement the things I wish I had first time. But that is another post to come! *lol*

Anyway,

One of the girls favorite things to do is to go to the lake swimming. We went out there the other day and after about an hour of swimming a fast developing storm moved in, so we left. The saying in Nebraska is: “If you dont like the weather, wait 20 minutes”. By the time we got into town torrential rains were flooding the streets. My husband made the comment: “If it keeps raining like this the whole town will be flooded”.

Now “I” knew that he was talking about the streets being flooded, but I glanced back and saw the twins faces and they had PANIC written all over them. I asked what they were thinking,…and they told me how they saw the pictures of New Orleans in their weekly-readers after Katrina, and how the people were on the roof of their houses and some died because of the flooding!

THAT IS WHAT “FLOODING” MEANT TO THEM.

I explained the kind of ‘flooding’ that Grandpa was referring to, which created a totally different picture in their minds of “flooding”. Now they have a couple different definitions to work with when they hear the word.

I thought about how many times as a first time mom I was “too quick to answer”,…I “assumed too much”,…and how much of the time I “was oblivious” to the thought of “What are my kids thinking?” Parenting the first time was much more “Fast-paced” for me, I guess because I worried about EVERYTHING. But as a grandparent I know that it is pointless to worry about everything and can focus on what I know is important.

What I am talking about is a gift that only a grandparent can give a child because it isn’t JUST time, it is experience,…that gives you the confidence to let go of things that are unimportant.

Giving your grandchildren the gift of your TIME and UNDERSTANDING influences their perspective of the world, which in turn, changes their lives forever.

“49″ today and feeling “Confident”

Hello everyone,..

Well today is my “49th” Birthday,…when I was 15 I thought “49″ was the ‘end of the line’ for people! *lol* But being here,…has the definite feeling of a ‘beginning’,..and no ending in sight.
It’s funny, I thought 49 would feel so much different because it is so close to 50.

Maybe I was just a late bloomer…but the truth is that it has only been in my 40’s that I finally started to feel a sense of ’self’. Started to understand myself better. Started to accept I could not be all things to all people,..including me some days.

I feel like the experience with raising my granddaughters started the process of allowing me to thoroughly “sort myself out” as a person. To separate the wheat from the chaff – so to speak.
Kids’ are so unpretentious and have a way of pointing out the obvious, and at this stage of my life I actually had the wisdom to truly LISTEN.

I read something recently that stuck with me,…it was talking about how as people we tend to focus on the things that we are NOT good at, in an attempt to become better,….instead of focusing on what we are great at,..in order to become the best!

That when children come home with a D in Math and an A+ in Science,…they are advised to put more ‘time’ and ‘energy’ into improving the D,..and there is no emphasis put on the A+ because they aren’t having an ‘issue’ in that class. But what they are really revealing is that they have A GIFT and if the emphasis would be put on encouraging and developing that gift, they could become the BEST at it,..and that D would be a vague memory.

When you think about it,..that is a very relevant point.

And FINALLY at 49 I understand that I am NOT GOOD AT EVERYTHING…..but I am exceptional at a few things. Now if I put my time and energy into the FEW things I am good at, that is all it takes to create the life I want. It doesn’t take being good at everything,….to succeed.

SO there are my words of wisdom as a new 49-year-old who loves her life! And it is not because it is ‘perfect’ by any stretch of the imagination……but because I FINALLY own it, good and bad alike..and it is a great feeling.

CELEBRATE YOU, AND WHAT YOU ARE GREAT AT TODAY – throw the rest to the side, and quit struggling to be all thing to all people.

A lesson on “Family” – I learned in Nepal

I was in Nepal for a few months in the year 2000. (the little country sandwiched between India and China) Why I was there, all the things I experienced while there, are stories for blog posts to come, but it was a life-changing experience for me and it altered my perception of the role of Grandparents in the lives of their grandchildren forever.

When I was growing up ‘extended family’ was just a fact of life, whether you liked them or not.
Beyond the usual contact on holidays and special events, we also has a Sunday ritual that lasted for a few years…of showing up at both sets of grandparents, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. There were great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, siblings, first and second cousins, coffee, tea and food, all stuffed into a couple rooms. The adults totally oblivious to what the 25 – 30 kids they brought with them were doing. (If they only knew!) Even though the family ‘rifts’ were well known there was an obligation to show up and be polite,..and that was not the time to speak of them. No matter how tense or uncomfortable anyone was upon arriving, within an hour the room was filled with laughter and people trying to talk over each other as they recalled a ‘different version’ of the memory being shared from ‘the good old days’.

Eventually the harmony of the ‘good old days’ was exhausted and all that was left was the ‘disharmony’ of the present, silence hit and that was the cue to pack up the family and head home.

Little did I know that what I was experiencing was in the process of becoming extinct
Over the next 30 years,…things changed. The influence of ‘extended family’ disappeared.

I don’t know that I thought much about it, other than to reflect occasionally on memories, but when I was in Nepal, it really hit me.

I observed the ‘generations’ of family living together, great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, children,…all under one roof. (A tough concept to imagine for most of us independent, self-sufficient Americans to fathom!) But I was fascinated at how it all worked. If parents went off to work, there was no discussion of “Will you watch the kids”,…the children were a part of “everyone’s life”, and everyone shared responsibility for them.

I watched as great-grandparents and grandparents took walks or sat down to talk to their grandchildren, teaching them the history of their ancestors, giving them a solid sense of ‘connectiveness’ to who they are and where they came from, broadening their minds to see that THEY were not the center of the universe but a part of something bigger.

I believe that is one thing that is sorely missing from our Americanized lives,..a sense of “Connectiveness”. As family’s and as people. And I truly grasped on to the DEEPER benefit of having children raised around the foundation of mulitple “GENERATIONS”…instead of strangers at a daycare who dont share your values or heritage.

I AM SO THRILLED to have the privilege of influencing my grandchildren and their futures. I don’t take it lightly but have a lot of fun in the process!

It was never a choice.

I was always fascinated by a particular sentiment that some people expressed to me over the years as they learned I was raising my ‘granddaughters’….it was always worded a different way, but always the same thought .

They would refer to “my choice” to do it,…how they could never do it.
* How we have a foster care system for those situations.
* How I coddled my drug-induced daughter by taking on her responsibilities.
* How people need to learn the consequences of their choices.
* How I was wrong to intervene…and if I hadn’t, maybe she would have stepped up to the plate and ‘grew up’.

I always thought after listening to them,...”Are they Serious? They do realize we’re talking about real life CHILDREN here, MY GRANDCHILDREN, and not guinea pigs,..right?”

The reason I panicked when Bekah told me her ‘perfect plan’ for keeping the babies,..and not giving them up for adoption, was because I knew, there would be NO CHOICE. If the situation arose where I was faced with the decision to intervene and raise my grandchildren,..it was a done deal, and it wouldn’t be because it was an ‘easy’ decision, it was would be because it was the ‘only’ decision….for me.

Raising my grandchildren depleted ANY savings that was tucked away.
And, I spent more time than I care to admit, sobbing like a baby as I struggled with the physical and emotional challenges, and the stress of having two unstable biological parents involved.
It created a whole new set of unusual relationship dynamics throughout our family.
It’s created hard feelings,…seemingly impossible situations,…and unfair perceptions that will more than likely haunt me all the way to the grave,…never to be resolved in this life time.
And you know what?….

I WOULDN’T TRADE IT FOR ALL THE WEALTH IN THE WORLD!

Trying to Avoid a foregone conclusion –

I remember when I found out my daughter was pregnant, I knew immediately that she was not ready for the grueling and demanding job of a parent. No one really IS, all your training is ‘on the job’ experience. What really separates those who ‘are ready’ for parenthood from those who ‘are not’,..is the conscious willingness to imagine that you will no longer be the ‘center of your world’, your child will be. While there is really no way that ANY of us could prepare for exactly what that entails, it means – when faced with the choice of ‘baby’ or ‘me’,..you set ’self’ aside and choose ‘baby’. Many times that is not a ‘natural’ choice, in fact,…it might take more than a minute or two to decide, but ‘baby’ always wins. Parenting doesn’t always feel good,…so there is a level of maturity necessary for being able to navigate beyond “feelings.

I knew my daughter ‘wasn’t there’. At the time it was all she could do to take care of herself. The majority of our life was spent intervening in hers. She was 19 and her life was a mess with drugs and poor decisions. The pregnancy was nothing more than the natural consequence of having sex. She was in no place physically, mentally, spiritually or maturely, to take care of a baby. (Understand, that is not a slight on my daughter, it was the truth for her life THEN. Today, she is a totally different person, and I couldn’t be prouder of her!)

Then, the clincher….I found out she was pregnant with TWINS. Now I was absolutely positive that the best motherly advice I could give her, was to give the babies up for adoption. (Mind you, when I write those words now, after raising the girls, I could never imagine my life without them) I have to be honest and say that although I truly believed that to be the best choice for her, part of my reasoning was because of a ‘fear’ that I was feeling. I knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that she wasn’t capable of taking care of 1, not alone 2, babies. I knew if she went through with having them, and decided to keep them, “I” would end up becoming a full-time mom again. I didn’t want that.

I was 41,..it was MY TIME to RE-CLAIM my status as a viable thriving independent human being in pursuit of HER OWN goals and dreams that have been in storage for years. I was just getting MY life back. I survived cancer,..and now my two children, Bekah and Ben, were at an age where I could start looking beyond the daily role of parenting. I was feeling the exhilaration of feeling PERMISSION to think about ME first! And I was loving it! I knew inside that my new-found freedom was going to be snubbed out in lieu of “raising grand-children” if my daughter wouldn’t heed my advice.

Inside I was panicked as I listened to her explain to me how ‘everything would work out IF she just married the idiot that got her pregnant’. And no matter how logical an argument,…how sensible my rationale sounded,..she was hellbent on her idealistic perception of ‘what could be’. As I listened to her, I was screaming inside – No! No! No! You can’t do that to me!.

But she never saw things my way.

She had her own dreams and plans which where separate from mine…she was positive that IF only she got married,…IF only he would get a job,…IF only they found a place to live,…IF only they had a car,…IF only they loved each other,…it would all work out. So I should put my anxiety to rest.

Two weeks after the twins were born, Hannah and Abigail, I became a Full-Time Mom again.

Hello Grandparents!

Well here is the first of Many posts to come!

I am a 48-year-old Baby Boomer. One of about 40 million ‘Grand-Boomers’ in the U.S. who are redefining the stereotypical role of Grandparenting that we grew up with. I became a full-time mom again at the age of 41 to twins, my grand-daughters. Six years later they went to live with their mom full-time. The whole roller-coaster of emotions and dynamics of circumstances,…has left me anxious to talk to other grandparents now. Grandparenting in the 21st century is not for the weak at heart!

As the dynamics of the family have splintered over the last five decades it made it more important than ever, that Boomers step up to the plate and offer some stability to generational connections. The close-knit support systems that were in place when I was a kid like extended families, churches, and neighbors have unraveled and fallen to the wayside. And the Boomer Grandparents, like myself, WE are what is left of them.

I don’t know about everyone else,..but I have bonded with my grandchildren in a way I never did with my own kids. I was too busy executing my role as “super-parent” and running myself ragged in order to ensure my kids had everything I didn’t. Bonding wasn’t a priority, ‘doing’ was and I thought it would add up to the same thing. It didn’t. Parenting exhausted me!!
The truth is – Grandparenting is a breath of fresh air after parenting!

It’s a chance to start with a clean-slate. The opportunity to focus. I feel like I have just the right mix of ‘what’s important and what’s not’ under my belt that only people who have ‘been-there done-that’ can have. I am not trying to figure out who ‘I am’,…while trying to give them a sense of who ‘they are’.

I look forward to sharing,…and being shared with! Please feel free to post comments! I look to our conversations

Kath