A Pledge

Younger Daughter (YD) on the left, Elder Daugher (ED) on the right. Clothes by Grandma

 I gave my daughter a piece of advice in the form of a truism a few days ago. “If you do not put yourself first,” I pontificated, “no one else will.”  A trite piece of advice but a sound one and I meant it. It is a working adage that I have tried to follow, off and on for sure, during my life, and a thing that I was sorry I did not do, if I had not been doing it Got that? Right.

JG and I are both in our eighties and, logically, moving toward the end of our ability to live by ourselves and look after ourselves. Much as I want to deny this, my creaking bones, lack of balance, frozen shoulder, reduced blood oxygen level (and lack of patience about all of these) are facts. It is hard work to make the bed, cook a meal, get showered and dressed in the morning, sweep the porch, stay awake while trying to read. JG has ongoing issues as well. Our daughters are doing some eldercare now and will see it increase as time and infirmity go on. Thus the advice in para #1 above.

The cabin 'at the farm'

It will not be the first time that our offspring have had to come second to what we, the parents, chose. When they were just school age, we chose to buy recreational land, a 100-acre parcel, over an hour’s drive from where we lived in the city. Not a cottage on a beach, not a chalet in ski country, but an old abandoned farm at the very end of an unimproved road. (So unimproved was the road, in fact, that for the first few years we accessed the property in winter by snowmobile.) The cabin we built on this land was heated by a woodstove, lighted by propane, serviced by an outhouse, provided with water drawn by the pailful from a surface well and provisioned with food toted in from the city, mostly, as in summer we could not leave food requiring refrigeration and in winter canned goods froze. We chose to spend all of our weekends and holidays ‘at the farm’ and the daughters were part of it by necessity.

I worried from time to time that the girls were missing out on vital parts of growing up, on bonding with groups of friends on weekends, movie dates, sports teams, even television (no hydro, remember). On the other hand, they learned to navigate by themselves in scrub bush, cross-country ski, build a fire in the snow, take their rowboat out onto the creek. They became, faute de mieux, readers and players of board games. They packed their own weekend clothes, packed their city activities into five days a week, and also learned to rely on each other. That they fit their lives into what we, their parents wanted to do, was not entirely a bad thing.

The year that the ED was in Grade 13 my father decided to move himself and my mother from their large Windsor home to an Ottawa bungalow, a short drive from where we then lived. I don’t know if I have mentioned that I am an only child, but that I am is pertinent. My mother was fragile both physically and, increasingly, mentally, and my father needed help in looking after her. I found them the house, facilitated the move and, in self defence, enrolled in a two-year certificate program at our local community college. My father did what he could to cushion me by hiring help summer and winter for their large yard. (They considered apartments when planning but my mother needed flowers and grassy space.) My mother did enjoy my reports of what I was learning and it gave me hours in the day that she perceived to be my own.

I passed that course and actually (and at my age, too) got a job in the industry, but my mother was really struggling and dad could not cope. I got calls at work; I lost weekends. I quit the job and took on eldercare. At the end, at one point I was sleeping on a rug beside my mother’s bed with a light shining on me so that she could see I was there. Luckily for her and all of us, her physical health broke down and she died before the mental stress became unendurable. My father took about a year to regroup, then moved himself into a seniors’ residence and installed his childless sister in the next apartment over. I became a chauffeur when necessary, but dad managed himself and his sister mostly solo. I started a home-based business in the intervals.

The house JG built 'at the farm'

Dad died in September of ’97 and my aunt lasted until February of ’98. Meanwhile my mother’ s unmarried sister’s health deteriorated and I was the caregiver there, first long distance to Windsor and then, after a move for her, in our city. By this time JG had retired and we were building our forever home here ‘at the farm’.  And, up until the big Ice Storm of ’98 crunched our bush, we were making maple syrup. I was a busy person facilitating other people’s lives for a few years in there. But once we got settled, I found several fun things to do for myself in the place where I found myself, mostly by joining boards of interesting activities. I became a busy person in my own right once again.

I miss, profoundly, being that busy person. Bad health, partly fueled by a lifetime of bad habits, has pretty well parked me in an electrically controlled recliner chair in the living room or here, at my computer, where I feel still in charge. We are very lucky to have the financial resources to hire help for what we cannot do ourselves. (Or we can hire help once we admit we can’t do it; some problems in this regard.) Our daughters take the time to check on us by phone and in person at a level I really hope is not too onerous, and their father has the odd job for them to do (on the roof, for instance) when they visit. Not too demanding yet.

If I am going to be honest here, I would have to say that I resented getting pulled into a lot of care for my elders. I knew it had to be done, I knew I had to do it, I even wanted to do it, but I still got angry about being ‘on call’. Or, I think that was at least part of the anger. The rest was, I believe, anger at fate. Anger at illness that turned my vital, intelligent, funny mother into a whiny child. Anger at age that robbed my equally funny and independent aunt of her self-reliance.  I can identify a mixture of annoyance and amusement at my male-dominant dad’s assumption that whenever he made an appointment, I would be available to take him to it. Maybe the problem was being taken for granted, for coming second in the calculation of what should happen.

Unless and until age and infirmity rob me of my personality, I swear I will do my best not to take my daughters for granted. And to manage so that they can put themselves first. 

Grama's Newest Baby

As of tomorrow morning, I am looking after the YD's little darling.  And here she is.

Meet Shamwari, Shammy for short, a golden doodle.  A large furry baby of a dog, with a wistful face and a need to be close to her mistress at all times.  The YD goes to the washroom?  Shammy is trying to peer under the door.  The YD goes off in her car?  Shammy has one eye and one ear out for the car until the YD comes back.
However, in the meantime, if she cannot have her mistress, Grama is next best.  She settles down on her favourite piece of the living room carpet (as shown) and keeps the other eye and ear on me.  If I get up, she watches to see where I go.  The tail is tucked between her legs, the eyes even more wistful than usual.
As soon as she hears the car, up she pops, the tail goes up, and she heads for the door.
Tomorrow the YD has to go into the city and get a lot of paperwork done.  She is going to spend the night at her sister's house.  Shammy is staying here. I hope I can be an adequate substitute for the Beloved for a day and a half.
Wish me luck.

4:30 pm.
There is a new game, chez G.  It seems to be a version of hide and seek.  Mary opens front door and wants Shammy to come in.  Shammy runs around the house and hides.  Mary closes front door.  Shammy comes up onto porch.  Mary opens door.  Shammy runs around house and hides.  Mary opens back door.  Shammy runs around ............ do dogs giggle?  Because if so, this one is giggling.
She is now in the house, courtesy of JG.  Still giggling.

Falling

Photo Credit: The Younger Daughter

It's almost noon here and patches of frost are still lingering on the shady side of the lawn; the leaves are raining down whenever the wind blows, broken free by the frost from their hold on the trees. The red maple that I have in the header picture is now bare of its gold and scarlet as are the birches of their paler yellow. Only the sugar maples and oaks are still holding a brave show of red and bronze. And what am I doing in the midst of all this splendour? Not posting, that's for sure. It's been more than two weeks since I have had a free hour to play.

The things that I have been doing? Well, raking leaves for one thing. JG is not happy if his lawn is covered with leaves. And when the lawn is surrounded by and dotted with trees, each day brings a new covering to be removed. I have also been: dealing with Thanksgiving; visiting my mother-in-law; making posters and drafting a display ad; running to meetings; running to physio; doing the exercises (not often enough!) that the therapist is giving me; trying to get the winter clothes out, pressed and ready to use; making stacks of the papers in the office that need to be sorted and dealt with; and doing a little retail therapy. In fact, we bought a new vehicle.

I have been driving a Jeep Liberty and I adored the thing. It had four wheel high and low drive and could pull out of the nastiest snowy ditch. It took diesel fuel and got great mileage. What it could not do is miss a deer. Last winter I moaned a lot on this blog about the deer that crunched in the front end and about the subsequent tribulations of getting the damage all fixed. Since it was repaired, the Jeep has never been the same and has become prone to quitting dead just after being started and refusing to restart. It also sometimes refuses to shift. This is not good, not at all good, if a lot of the driving you do is through the back country where there are no people and no cell phone coverage. It stopped last week eight feet out of the garage and we decided that this was the last straw.

I now have a nice Ford Escape, all wheel drive and lots of bells and whistles, including Sirius Satellite Radio. I had no idea there were so many kinds of country music, not to mention sports broadcasts. I have a sneaking suspicion that Sirius is just as much of a distraction while driving as cell phones. The Ford is also equipped with a hands free connection for the cell phone, if I could make it work. The dashboard is more than a little daunting, let me tell you. My darling Jeep is in the hands of my brother-in-law, a Class A mechanic among his other accomplishments, who lives where he can phone for help. I am sure he can keep it running, if anyone can. And I have some confidence I can get where I need to go without hassles.

I wish I didn't need to go so many places so often, but the load is going to lighten after November when I am handing over the Chair position at the LHCS Board. Between then and now, unfortunately, we have to go through an accreditation process and preparing for this has been a lot of work, meetings and studying. The accreditation team interviews board members as well as staff and we have to be able to discuss such fascinating topics as how a governance board works and how we establish, follow and review our aims and objectives. I would go to sleep working on this stuff if I weren't so terrified that I won't have an answer that will satisfy the examiners. It's like a final exam but with a team that I really, really don't want to let down.

At least I am not frantically sewing a Halloween costume. Little Stuff decided that she wanted to be a witch, with a slinky dress and a crow on her shoulder. Her mother was able to find a dress that suited her at a costume store, along with a witch hat with streamers, a black wig and a lot of black, purple and sparkly green make-up. I found a paper maché bird that is properly black and boding and she is all set. She did want black shoes with buckles and high heels but I think her mother talked her out of that notion. I do not recall her mother and aunt being quite so exigent about the detail of their costumes, but maybe time has softened the memories. She has already informed me that next year she wants to be a rock star. I guess if the black wig hangs together she could be Cher, maybe.

Tomorrow we are supposed to go and get our regular flu shots; the H1N1 is supposed to be along in early November. Although I am concerned about the grand kids and their parents, who are all in schools where the virus is said to thrive, I am not worried about JG and myself as we are old enough to have been through both the 1950's wave and the 1960's wave and probably have a pretty good immunity. I am told that the line-up for flu shots has been huge so far, most unusually for our area where people are normally pretty blasé. It never ceases to amaze me how little attention people actually pay to the facts during these health scares; the ordinary flu shot has nothing to do with H1N1. Nor is it necessary to stop eating pork. It's frustrating when you are trying to get basic information out; I get the impression that people will do anything rather than wash their hands and stay calm.

I just saw a young doe stroll across our lawn, kicking through the leaves and paying me no attention at all. She's a pretty little thing, just old enough to have lost her dappled coat. The leaves are still pattering down. I need to quit writing, get some lunch and get out there, rake in hand.

Several days ago I read a post about the vulnerability of children and the terror a parent can feel about the dangers a child can face. She was talking about a seven year old. My daughters are now in their forties, well integrated adults with good careers, nice homes and money in the bank. So I should pat myself on the back and settle back in my rocking chair, content that they are safe? Sigh. Today I took a look at the photos taken on a canoe trip the YD took on the Colorado River through the Grand Canyon.

One of the first photos I saw was this.
A little later, I came upon this one.

The YD is home quite intact, cleaning her equipment after a successful trip, sorting her photographs and, she tells me, writing up the experience. I may fall asleep tonight with images of red canoe bottoms floating through my mind.

I am not and never was a risk taker. I have gone on long distance swims, but never without a boat as escort. I stay away from the edges of even small drops. I drive 115 km per hour on the 401. (Getting caught at 120 km per hour nets you a big fine.) I do not eat wild mushrooms. I am, in fact, quite a cautious person. How, then, did it come about that I have an adrenaline junkie, a happy gambler, a chronic risk taker (you can imagine my voice rising shrilly as the list goes on) for a younger daughter. It must come from her father's side of the family.

I have photographs of my precious child rappelling down a rope from a helicopter, floating down out of the sky under a parachute, balancing on a ridiculously narrow piece of rock on the side of a cliff many hundreds of feet above solid ground, kayaking down a waterfall in Mexico. There is a video of her bungee jumping off a bridge over the gorge at Victoria Falls in Zimbabwe. She went, hiking, solo, in the Namibian dessert. She has tales of driving in land mine infested territory in Kosovo and Mozambique. When she was robbed on a beach in South Africa, she chased the thief. And that's just what I know about.

Strangely enough, I don't worry about her a lot when she is off on one of her mad adventures. The YD is a supremely competent and skilled adventurer. I feel confident that she knows what she is doing and won't do it unless she believes her skill level is up to it. (Although she has said that once through the Grand Canyon is enough.) Her father worries - enough for both of us.

But I do wonder what she will decide to try next.

Monday Mission - When the stream runs dry.

We had sun today - glorious, warm April sun that melted away the inch or so of snow that fell on Saturday evening, snow that fell while the ED and her family were here for the ED's birthday dinner, snowflakes big and wet whirling down while the family went for a walk in the woods behind our house, checking out the newly opened streams and playing with the ED's birthday camera, snow that did not stick on the tarmacked roads and make their drive home slippery and dangerous. I was glad. Dangerous situations for my family are like dams against which the stream of my thoughts piles up, halts and whirls in eddies of worry thick with sticks and reeds of nervous and often unrealistic fears.

I think, in fact, that my thoughts are like the little streams that run in our bush, swollen at times with ideas from books I have read or from newspapers or from reading here in Blog land. When that happens, as when the snow melts away in the spring and the ground thaws, my mind races merrily downhill, swirling the dead leaves of other years, covering the rocks of insecurity and self doubt, bubbling, circling, dancing, carving new chanels sometimes in the soft earth of my mind. And then the spate slows, energy spent, and the things I think are tame and ordinary and quiet within the stream's new carved banks. The tips of the rocks reappear and the stream slows still more until it lies in stagnant pools crawling with larvae and green with water weed, steaming in the burning summer sun.

When there are newly opened croci in my flower bed and the robins start to sing and a swift black cloud of redwing blackbirds races across the kitchen window, you would think that my energy would grow with the spring, from the spring, that new freshets of words and images would leap from the split rocks and flow merrily along. Sometimes it even happens that way but not always, not often enough, not nearly often enough to make me feel confident in this medium I have lately adopted. I feel dry as a desert canyon tonight, dusty and cold under a gibbering moon in a sky from which it seems impossible rain or snow would ever fall. A baked mud stream bed, rocks heaving through the clay like bones, dead reeds rattling in a thin cold wind.

Sitting, fingers slack on the keyboard, hoping that the rains will come again.

This has been a Monday Mission as managed by Painted Maypole. The assignment was to write a 'stream of consciousness' post. And, as usual, I cheated.

Maypole, you think up hard ones. Love you for it!

Grama Considers a Bit

This post is up at GNM Parents as a guest blog courtesy of Slouching Mom (whose slot I am subbing in for a couple of posts) and the technical whizzes who run the site. There are some really, really fascinating posts there and it is well worth taking a run through.

Our five (almost six!) year old granddaughter, whom I can't keep calling "Little Stuff" much longer, staying with us last weekend while her parents were away. When we took her home on Monday night, the house looked like a daycare from hell. A puzzle on the coffee table and another on the record cabinet, her drawing table and chair surrounded by ink sticks and paper and feathers and plastic eyes and stickers, her cross stitch pieces on the couch, her paint by number on my sewing table, assorted pine cones, pieces of moss and other treasures in bags here and there....... well, you get the picture.

I spent Tuesday alternately putting stuff away, wiping sticky finger prints off the windows, vacuuming up grit and collapsing in my reading chair where I promptly went to sleep. However, she had a good time. I got an email from her mother that said she had talked non stop from the time we delivered her until her bedtime, telling her parents all she had done and seen. And that's all good; if she likes to stay with us, her parents don't have to worry about her while they are away.
Little Stuff will turn six this spring. Watching her grow is a bit like seeing a speed video of a flower unfolding.
Still reading? Pop over to Grandparenting: Building Memories to see the rest.

A Little Weak in the Knees

I have been boasting, here and there around the place, about what a laissez faire mother I was, how I let my girls try out unusual things, have adventures with risk involved, and all that. How I cheerfully watched the YD make her first parachute jump, following her progress with my camera.
That was then. The now is somewhat different. We are looking after Little Stuff this weekend while her parents are overseas. This afternoon, although cold, was a blaze of glorious sunshine. You could walk anywhere on the snow. Grandpa went out to cut down a tree at the edge of the maintained field so that he could haul it away while everything was still frozen. Little Stuff and I went out to watch, take pictures and follow deer trails.
After Grandpa hauled the tree away, I headed for the nearest deer path. Looked around for the five year old, who had been poking around the base of a tree. Heard a giggle. Looked up. Way up. See that little pink blob about ten feet off the ground?
Erk. 'Grama,' said the little monster darling, 'take my picture up here.' I obliged, but it took me several tries to get my finger on the button.
'Do you want me to come down now?' said the cheerful voice.
'Yes!' said Grama.

A House Made of Asbestos

I have been reading a book called Risk, The Science and Politics of Fear by Dan Gardner. It is a fascinating explanation of how we assess risk and build risk avoidance into our lives, customs and laws. His thesis is that the way we do this has been built into us from Naked Ape level up and so our 'Gut' deals with risk assessment in the same way that our primitive ancestors learned to survive. For instance, listening to stories about narrow escapes (I saw a tiger on the way back from the river!) prints the information in the forefront of the mind and causes the listener to adopt behaviours that will avoid the risk. Supposedly rational educated modern humans react to dramatic stories in the media in the same way and obsess, for instance, over SARS or shark attacks, instances of which are vanishingly likely to affect the listener.
Most of us, even those of us who paid attention in maths class, are not what Gardner calls 'numerate' in our normal processing of information. We read stories about child abduction and subsequently see a near and immediate threat to our precious children. The numbers, as Gardner lays them out, tell a very different story. He gives the percentage risk of an under 14 year old American child being abducted by a stranger in 1998 as 0.00015 (1 in 655,555) or 90 children. Of those 90 children, 60% were retrieved and returned home within two days. In the same period, 285 children drowned in swimming pools. But our 'Gut' screams at us that our own child could be one of the 90 and we decide that we had better walk that child to and from school. The behaviour that kept our ancestors alive and breeding (stay away from there; there might be a tiger), hard-wired into us, does not take account of the size of the sample.
It's a most interesting read. There's a lot of analysis of how the media and modern speed of communication play with this, of how politics in a democracy riffs off it, how psychology and sociology differ in approach and analysis of the way risk affects our lives, our communities and our societies. I'm only part way through, but I'm talking about it here because it correlates in my mind with two recent things I have read.
The first was an article in the paper discussing peanut allergies. The writer made the point that the chances of an anaphylactic incident from peanuts served on airlines or a classmate's peanut butter sticky fingers are vanishingly small. The article has provoked a spate of earnest letters to the editor in which the writers urge people to stick with stringent methods of avoiding even the slightest chance of contact. The other is an internet forwarded goody that a friend sent me yesterday. When I read it it struck me as funny and in some parts quite pertinent to how we deal with raising our children. I'm going to quote some of it here; North Americans bear in mind that it seems to have been written by a Brit.

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL MY FRIENDS WHO WERE BORN IN THE 1930's 1940's, 50's, 60's and early 70's !
First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer. Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, McDonald's, KFC, Subway or Nandos. Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!
We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gobstoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......
WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars. We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY, no video/dvd films, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms...........WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them!
[cut more of the same here]
You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good. And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

This might be the height of old fogydom. 'Things were better in the golden age of our childhood'. And it certainly has some glaring logical flaws. But it makes a point, I think.

What do you think?

Wordy Wednesday -- Drat, and other expletives.

Okay, this is not my day. My links won't work. My computer has locked down completely. Twice. Bogger won't save template changes. Blogger saves template changes but stretches them. Blogger saves template changes in negative colour. Blogger keeps telling me to report these errors, but I have no idea --- NO idea, Blogger help -- as to how to report them.

I am not amused. This is not funny any more. My husband's underwear is all sitting in the washer and I do not dare leave the computer to go and put it in the dryer lest some other bloggy gremlin sneak in and fry something else while I am gone.

In fact, @#$%^&*****!!!

I am going to shut down and start all over again. After the underwear is dry. Too bad for the nice photo that was going to appear here today.

I should have labelled this post 'drinking', as in Blogger is driving me to.... At least the colour formatting is working.

Do other people have days like this, she whined?

The Painted Mapole is making up and organizing the Monday Missions this month. She's got a great post up with a neat take on horoscopes. And when I put this post up, I forgot to link to the site. I hereby award myself a blogger blooper award, and am contemplating what kind of hind end to put into it.

Agitarious

Sign: Chicken

Moon Alert:
Whatever phase of the moon it is, it's wrong for planting something.

Star Chart:
That's a falling star, not the whole sky, for pity's sake

Monday's Horoscope

The signs are clear that you will find something to worry about today. Do not make important decisions until after you have read at least two more horoscopes. Try not to bite off that last fingernail until after 4:00.

If your birthday is today:
You share it with Chicken Little, Mrs Bennett and The White Rabbit.


Two of the several sides of my brain are nagging at each other -- I am sure this happens to you from time to time.

Right Brain: That horoscope sucks. Were you trying to be funny? Pretty lame.

Left Brain: You were supposed to help -- you're the one with the creative creds, after all. Anyway, it may not be very funny, but you should think about it. It's your horoscope, worrywart.

RB: That's not funny either. I'm not like that.

LB: Oh? And who's been fretting about her daughters all week? For pretty silly reasons.

RB: Was not, either.

LB: Was too. Did the YG not end up getting exactly what she wanted?

RB: Well, yes, but……….

LB: And hasn't she fallen on her feet, just the way she always does?

RB: I guess so.

LB: You know so. Stop trying to wiggle out of it. You spent a whole two weeks fretting about nothing. Didn't you?

RB: Uh, yes.

LB: So have you learned anything?

RB: I guess, maybe.

LB: And you're going to stop doing this stuff, right?

RB: Well, I thought I might phone Little Stuff's mom and just see how ………..

LB: Hopeless. You're hopeless!