Grandchildren

If you had asked me about the importance of Grandchildren when I was 20, I would have laughed at the 2 words being used in the same sentence.

I was thirty before anyone said a word about wanting grandchildren or wishing for a bunch of grandchildren or how they believed that grandchildren might be a very important part of getting old.

I now realize that a lot of my human interaction is based on having grandkids--from their birthday parties to their parents needing help balancing the work/school time schedules, to just plain weird conversations with them or about them.

When I woke up this morning, I realized my own parents have been gone almost 20 years.
Neither of my children were grown when they died, and my oldest granddaughter is now the age my own daughter was when they were both gone.  Their father's mother was 1500 miles away and rarely visited.

I remember the awful sound of my daughter crying at her grandmothers funeral---a terrible moment when I realized that I was not really present for my kids during that time, and that they were losing the 2 people besides their mother that had always been their for them. And yet, I was as lost as that poor tween girl sounded.

I didn't have a firm grasp of the importance of grandparents from my own childhood. My fathers parents and grandparents were long gone when I came onto this earth.  My mother's father died when I was two, and while I have vague recollections, I didn't fully grasp it all.  My maternal grandmother's father was in his nineties when he died, but I was 7 and he had 10 kids and so many grandkids that I'm sure he felt surrounded by grandkids all the time although I probably only saw him a dozen times in my life.  My one grandmother had three kids, but had been the oldest girl of those 10 kids mentioned, and was pretty straightforward about not wanting to spend any more time on child rearing.

That was fine with me, given more than 30 minutes, we usually ended up clashing about everything, which was apparently not how things were supposed to be done. While I saw her a about every other weekend with family visits for my entire childhood she actually babysat me 2 times, at age 2 and at age 3 when my mother was having GB surgery, and giving birth to my sister.  Neither of us enjoyed those to visits very much.

I realize, my two grandkids have no idea who my parents were---they don't know much about them, wouldn't recognize them if they walked into the room, and will never miss them.

My kids sometimes bring up stories, but what they don't get very well is that both of them were retired by the  time the my kids were born, and both retired for health reasons. While my father just became more and more like his own crankiest self, my mother changed so much that who they knew and who I knew were almost unrecognizable as the same person.

My granddaughter and I discuss things, like how her mother is or how her uncle is, and we talk about when they were kids and how their grandparents were and how that affected my kids and how that affected my sister and I, and I think she might see them more clearly than my own children, since they spent so much time with them but only at a certain time in their life.

Then I realize my own grandkids are also getting that very view of my life, as if I sprouted up not just fully grown and looking like an old lady, never a wayward or difficult child, never a silly teenager or argumentative college student.  Never worried about makeup or dates or were my clothes in style.

I don't know.  Maybe that is just the way it is. Maybe it is just the way it is supposed to be
My own grandmother, who by my college years, wrote back and forth with me for a few years till I got to busy to keep up, and who regularly warned me about just about everything I believed and she felt was wrong or dangerous, seemed eternally the same.  Only after her death, and then so many other deaths that somehow I had  I had a 2 car garage filled with other people's memories, furniture and fruit jars, did I get a chance to realize she had been young in hard times, young and idealistic, young before women could vote and before---well, before just about any of the things I took for granted were even possible.

She had been a serious child, a girl that got to learn to wash dishes by 4 and change diapers by 5 and clean and cook and make soap and do laundry when all of those things were much tougher than playing a game on Nintendo (that was how I decided the kids were old enough to do laundry, run the microwave and vacuum cleaners and dishwasher, their game controls were more complicated than the knobs on the appliances).  But they had a hand pump on a well for water, and cooking started with "wring the chicken's neck and pluck the feathers".  The stove was not about knobs but instead involved controlling the wood to air mix for a slow stove versus and hot stove.  And soap making started not with measure the fats and lye---all highly scientific and using a metric scale that measures to the hundredth gram, but with "fill the pot behind the house with ashes, after a few rains, check it to see if the lye is strong enough, then render some lard after we butcher the next cow.

My grandkids would stare at me with raised eyebrows if I told them about that.  They might ask some questions or might just change the subject because grandma had to be joking.

I meet children that currently have up to 8 grandmothers, and many have 6 grandmothers, and 6 grandfathers.  I'm sure that is also just part of the norm, what with steps and halfs and teen births and living longer lives.  These days the hardest part for many grandparents is what to let the grandkids call you--mimi, gigi, pa--pa--, bami, bampi, grannie, gramps, but I kept the old Grandma, not as formal as grandmother, but very old-fashioned.  And, I knew how to spell it.

Enough of this, got to go grab the grandson, we are mapping the backyard today--a little leaf tracing, a little cut and paste.  Then identify all those trees that currently all look the same.

Autumn is coming.

A strange year for my part of the country--rain at least weekly.  The grass is still green and growing.  I'll have to mow one more time most likely, which is a month later than the last mow most of the time

There are garden spiders spinning webs in the upper corner of every doorway to the outside world, so is I've had a face full of webbing every time I forget to clear it with a stick first.

The hurricane(s) have the weather pretty cool already, but still up to 90 late afternoon.

I have plenty of outside projects left, but the wasps have been busy building nests and have been particularly waspish--everyone has been stung at least once by the foul-tempered creatures.  Anyone that has said "leave them alone and they will leave you alone" has not offended a nest of yellow jackets by breathing 10 foot from their home.

Momma cat removed her kittens from the yard after one tiny baby stuck its head into a triangular space of wrought iron and then couldn't figure out how to get it.  I heard the yowling, went out to find 6 cats staring intently at the poor little thing, and got him out, despite the flailing of razor sharp kitten claws.  He just needed to raise his head up, but was pulling down and back instead.  It left of under its own steam soon after, following momma.  When she came back the next day, there were only 3 kittens.  I assume it suffered some damage to its neck that was fatal later.

The leaves are very nearly all vibrant green.  We are having none of that early brown and dry leaves from lack of water in the heat.  But the grass is getting that slightly leggy look, despite the weekly mowing, the end-of-summer look, that, green, then you mow and under the green is yellow and brown.

I had my first cold, or virus, or weird and sudden allergy attack that felt more like a cold or virus.  Still have an occasional cough from it and sleeping later, sleeping more, took some naps and such.

I'm surprised to learn that I can not have enough energy when ill to paint or read.  Maybe it was the cold medicine.

I am looking forward to Fall this year, officially starting this week but who knows how long till it actually starts.  When I was a kid, school started the day after Labor day and ended by Memorial Day.  We had a few hot days in school, and with nothing but open windows and a couple of those funny wire-faced desk fans rotating, and we didn't die, and were not allowed to wear shorts.  Pants or dresses for girls (but no jeans rules, we were pretty early on that, the bigger city was still insisting on all girls wearing dresses and no jeans on boys), and long pants for boys.  I don't even remember sweating more than at home, but of course, most of the houses still didn't have air conditioners.

Less than a week from the first day of fall and three days over 90.  And it's humid as usual.  With rain again next week--probably related to hurricane season--that big ol' butterfly flapping over the ocean.

September is a birthday month in our family.  It's funny how birthdays congregate in certain months in different families.  Right now there are 3 in September, none in October, 2 in-laws in November, 4 in December, 1 in January, 1 in February, 1 in March, 1 in April, none in May or June, then 1 in July and August.

That was pointless.

I'm waiting for the first freeze, so I can trim trees and bushes, dig up bulbs, mulch leaves, clean off wasp nests and spider webs, wash windows, and not spend 5-6 hours a week riding a lawn mower.

Don't get me wrong, it's a great lawnmower and riding around mowing, having to stay attentive, it has its Zen qualities.
I'm getting to know my yard intimately, which has changed every time I hired someone to mow for a season.  This is my second full season and when I can't do it anymore I either put in a backyard full of goats and guineas and just mow the front or head to something with no yard.

I love the yard, but it is a yard that spends all its time trying to return to its wild state---and I like it best when it is only tamed enough to keep the neighbors from being able to turn me in.

Instead of no yard, maybe I need a place with no neighbors.

Retired one month.

A month.
Some boredom potential, but I still have not accomplished half of what I planned.  My feet get tired and other things pop up that can't be put off.
I'm not painting every day.  That was a big goal.  But am painting much more frequently than before.
My fear of wasp stings and the stinking itching and swelling has stopped some outdoor projects until it has at least one freeze.
I'm going to bring home some windows for a greenhouse today or tomorrow.
Or not.
I am actually going to go clean on a house after a couple of chores in town.
It's going to rain like a maniac today and most of the rest of the week---but the weather predictions change when you aren't looking.  You look today and it say rain all week, then 4 hours later it changes to no rain for at least a week.  The hurricane season this year is doing weird stuff to our normal, droughty Summer and Fall.  It might actually snow all winter like they are predicting.
At least I won't have to drive in it most of the time.
Now, on to month two.