My grandma's hands

When I was born my maternal grandmother and both my paternal grandparents were still alive. My Grandpa Thompson died when I was seven, and I honestly don't remember any meaningful interaction with him. I don't remember ever sitting on his knee; I don't remember even any conversations we ever had. I'm sure we must have, our regular Sunday drive destination with Dad was his parents' house. I remember the way he looked, but mostly I remember running downstairs to explore their basement while the grown ups stayed upstairs to talk.

I remember a lot more of my Grandma Thompson. She lived the longest of all my grandparents, and we continued driving to visit her on Sundays (or she'd come to us, for dinner) for years and years. My dad is her eldest son and the only one of her kids who lived in the state, so we saw her a lot. She ate very slowly—we'd sometimes linger at the table for up to 30 minutes after we were all finished eating dinner, while she ate and talked. And she loved the attention that being sick got her. As my own father said, "She'd rather go to the hospital than out to dinner." She was the landing place for all my out-of-state cousins, so I spent many a happy day there at her house playing and chasing, running up and down the sidewalk and out in the back yard. My dad's youngest sister Aunt Kathy lived on the east coast the whole time I was growing up, and so she'd come for a month at a time in the summer to visit. And I'd spend days and night at grandma's playing with my east coast cousin Leslie, having the grandest time. Grandma Thompson had trees that every year bore the most delicious bing cherries, bushels and bushels of them. "Don't eat too many, you'll get diarrhea," my mom always warned. I ate all I could hold and did fine digestively. ;) Grandma always gave me one dollar for every birthday and every Christmas, clear up until I got married. After I married birthdays were just a card, and Christmas was some dishtowels. She died while I was on vacation in the Pacific Northwest, the day after I found out I was pregnant with Ethan. I missed her funeral.

I know it is bad form for a parent to admit to a favorite child, and I'm sure the same applies to grandparents with their grandchildren. But I have no problem with reverse favoritism. My mom's mom, Grandma Harrison, was hands down my favorite grandparent. She died when I was 18, and I miss her. On my wedding day, on the days my babies were born, I wish she was there to be a part of it, to be a part of my children's lives. Every Christmas when I pull out the decorations I still look at and hold the little hand-sewn stockings and wrappings she made for my Christmas presents.

For many years when I was really small, Grandma Harrison lived right next-door to us. I could see her garden through the backyard fence, and I only had to walk up a small alley to get to her house. I spent so much time there with her! She was my mom's #1 babysitter for me. Whenever one of my older sisters had a baby and mom was gone for a few days, I went to grandma's. How much easier could it be? I still walked to and from school, I could even still play with all my neighborhood friends. When Mom and Dad went to Peru to pick up my brother Mike at the end of his LDS mission, I stayed with grandma. Whenever she was baking bread I was right nearby so I could have a slice while it was still hot, and whenever I asked her she made my two favorite foods for me. My mouth still waters for creamed tuna.

Grandma Harrison was old already by the time I was born. She was born on 30 or 31 October 1894-6 (one of those three years, he parents didn't keep a good record) so by the time I was old enough to know her she was already >75 years old. She lived to be >90. She was never spry. She wasn't the sort who'd sit on the floor with me and play dolls, or who even walked outside with me to watch me ride my bike. We mostly played quiet games of checkers or paper dolls, or read quietly side by side, or she puttered around while I played in her toy room. We watched Lawrence Welk, and she never missed As The World Turns. We hung her nylon stockings to dry, and I colored pictures. She put my just-washed hair up into pin curls. We tied quilts. But I knew she loved me. I think that's what made all the difference. She wasn't a playmate, but she loved me—loved me as much as my mother did.

She later moved to an apartment in The Belvedere downtown, and that was pretty exciting too. My mom would drop me off to stay with her for a couple of nights, and the two of us would toddle next door to Hansen Planetarium to look at all the displays (though she didn't really like the star shows) or right across the street to the ZCMI Center mall, where we'd get lunch in a sit-down restaurant and then browse the old lady stores. Then we'd go back to her apartment for As The World Turns and reruns of Lawrence Welk and I'd look at her silver plated hairbrush and drink white tea (which was just milk, sugar, and hot water) out of her china cups. She'd sometimes send a little something home with me from one of her shelves—I have a beautiful antique glass apothecary jar filled with rose petals from a dozen roses her husband gave her. She disbursed all her meaningful possessions years before she died, right into the hands of her loved ones.

Later yet she moved to a little house one of my mom's sisters owned. I was a teen by then, and would still stay with her for a night or two, and she'd always make me white tea and creamed tuna (usually both nights). I always tried her sugar-free diabetic cookies or candy and wish she had real ones. And we'd play checkers or watch TV or read, and I knew she loved me. She let me have two of her china cups that I always drank white tea out of.

Grandma Harrison had beautiful white, curly hair. I suspect she even cut it in her own bathroom sometimes, and yet she never had to do anything more than wet it to look like she'd just had it done professionally. And I loved her hands. I thought they were so beautiful. Her nails were always long and usually painted, and he hands were just so delicate. She crocheted, she knitted, she sewed, everything without a pattern and very lopsided. I have a hand-sewed asymmetrical cloth doll she made me, wearing a dress of the same fabric as Grandma's muu muu. (The doll's name is Big Mukahamas. One day my sister Joan and I were playing indians with our cloth dolls, and the name stuck.) I just loved looking at her hands. The knuckles were knobbly from arthritis and the veins were prominent through the paper-thin skin, but I thought she should be a hand model.

I was thinking of her hands last night while I painted my nails. Sometimes I still dream of her, dream that she just walks into the room looking a little younger and healthier than when I knew her and we catch up where we left off. I bring in my children and she already knows them all, and she loves them as much as I do. I almost always wake up crying, because I do miss her. And I miss holding her hands.

Conversation with my cute brother

My brother Mike sends out links and articles to all of us, all day long. Most of them are political; I read some of these, and some I file away in case I feel like reading them later. But he sends out some other stuff too, and today it was an article about Halloween. Here's an excerpt:

Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy. Sure, the folks down the street might smile and wave the rest of the year, but apparently they were just biding their time before stuffing us silly with strychnine-laced Smarties. That was a wacky idea, but we bought it. We still buy it, even though Joel Best, a sociologist at the University of Delaware, has researched the topic and spends every October telling the press that there has never been a single case of any child being killed by a stranger's Halloween candy. As a panel of "experts" on the "Today" show warned viewers recently: Don't let your children trick-or-treat without you "any earlier than age 13, because people put on masks, they put on disguises, and there are still people who do bad things." Perhaps there are. But Elizabeth Letourneau, an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina, studied crime statistics from 30 states and found, "There is zero evidence to support the idea that Halloween is a dangerous date for children in terms of child molestation." In fact, she says, "We almost called this paper, 'Halloween: The Safest Day of the Year,' because it was just so incredibly rare to see anything happen on that day."

I remember the big thing I was warned against as a child was apples. Oh yes, scary apples, because the neighbors were almost certainly inserting razor blades into them, so that when I bit in I would cut up my gums. Packaged chocolate was infinitely preferable to apples. Talk about wacky ideas!

Mike is 14 years older than I am. He was already gadding about hither and yon in his teens when I was tiny. This is what he said to me about his growing up years, when I responded about the Halloween article:

In the background there’s a general theme that I have often thought about. Maybe you have too (but I don’t know what life’s like in Fairview). The general theme is: When did my childhood become today’s childhood? I am not being critical of my mother. Heavens, I loved my childhood. I would throw my baseball glove over the handlebars, leave the house after breakfast, not return until lunch, and literally not see an adult in between. The same for the afternoon’s activities. We played baseball for hours anywhere we could. We were sandlot types. I remember many hours on the (summer, meaning no school in session) playground at Rosecrest. But we played a significant share of ball in the street, on pavement. I guess that means we “saw” adults, because we would have to stand aside while cars passed through our game. Of course baseball wasn’t the only thing we played. I would also ride my bicycle to Evergreen Park and we would spend hours playing in the creek, actually outside the fenced area of the park. To the best of my memory, I never even asked permission, other than to “go out and play.” And, of course, we were at the pool just about every single day. The pool rules were (if I remember) that a 12 year old (sibling) could supervise any number of under-12s that a parent was comfortable with. We rarely had an adult with us once Sherri turned 12. Hours and hours of unstructured time, with almost zero adult supervision (although you would feel safe to go to any adult, anywhere if you had trouble).

Our own mother, of 7 children, as said to me that she doesn’t know how parents today do it. For a while I was puzzled, but came to understand that she was commenting on the scenario above. She did not feel like she had to organize playtime and be with her kids every second of the day.

He's right, I've spent a lot of time pondering this very thing. My childhood sounds much like Mike's, although I don't think our mother would have let me ride my bike to Evergreen Park because I'd have to cross two very busy streets. So she was a bit more afraid of traffic those 14 years later. Also, the unsupervised pool age was 14 in my time, but as long as there was someone (anyone!) 14+ years old my mom let me stay and swim. And since I went up by my lonesome to check and see if there was anyone 14+, I did sometimes fudge that rule. I spent all day every day at the pool, never even going home for lunch, arriving at 9 or 10 in the morning and not leaving until 4 or 5, never had to check in, had no cell phone for her to check on me. She just assumed all day long I hadn't drowned and I'd toddle home eventually.

I never remember worrying about lunch at all when I was a kid; Mom wasn't worried either. If I was hungry, I guess I went home or ate a snack with friends. But once I left the house I just stayed gone until I was done with whatever I was doing, sometimes 8 hours later. I know that was all 30+ years ago, but find it hard to believe that in just 30 short years it could go from what I experienced to the overprotective helicopter parenting of today.

Fairview is very small town, very safe; what's more, I have a big acre of grass, lots of trees to climb, during the summer we have a pool, and my very own yard is filled with wonder. So my kids are pretty unscheduled and unsupervised. And my peers/friends always look me askance, because my kids don't go from city league soccer to baseball to football to basketball and back to soccer. And because we don't have a Wii (though we actually are pondering getting one). I make my kids ride their bikes around and rollerblade and sometimes take their younger siblings down to the creek by the horse field. And I am definitely my mom's daughter; I never go with them. Sometimes it's because I'm lazy or don't want to go out in the 90º+ heat, sometimes it's because a little quiet "me" time is precious, sometimes it's because I figure they can do it on their own. (So far, I'm right.)

Safest day of the year. Interesting.

I have such a clear image in my head

I was born when my mom was 36 and my dad was 37. (Huh. Until I did the math this very second, I thought my mom was 37, like I was 37 when I had Mack. Huh.) I spent every summer while growing up driving (and later flying) back and forth between SLC and Lake Powell in southern Utah. We probably got in 12-15 trips between April and October. I don't feel like I saw much of my dad during the school year. He didn't come to my school programs or events, I don't remember eating dinner as a family except on Sundays, and when he got home from work in the evenings he just sat in his recliner and read his newspapers and magazines. But during the summer he was mine all mine, as we boated up and down the arms of the lake and took long hikes hither and yon. He knew as much about that lake and the land surrounding it as anyone. He ran the Colorado River often before it was dammed, and he boated it faithfully when it became Lake Powell.

So, I have really really clear memories of him from the ages of, let's say, 42-55. These were the years he belonged to me, or at least Lake Powell belonged to him and I belonged to Lake Powell. I realize now he didn't do those trips for my enjoyment, but for his; but that doesn't minimize even one little bit how much I adored those trips and that lake. It feels like home to me. I yearn for it. I miss it. It almost isn't even fair that I don't have a boat and money and resources so I can still be on that lake half the summer.

I remember sometimes a wind would come up and he'd have to jog after a blowing towel, or he'd have to run after a rope that was going out too fast, or have to dash to catch the boat before it rammed the dock. And his run looked like this funny, choppy thing, sort of a half-gait, all knees up forward and no legs stretching behind. Like his hips and knees didn't quite work on demand.

Which is me now.

I didn't understand it then; I was single or barely double digits in age, and my body did anything I wanted it to do the second I asked for it. I was lithe and limber and never stiff.

But today, when Jackson and Christian and I were setting up sprinklers and I would stand there adjusting the spray pattern, and then try to run out of the way before I got wet, I could feel that I was all knees up forward and no legs stretching behind. Damn! Do I really have to get old? I'm even a jogger. But without my warm up, my hips and knees don't just get up and go anymore.

So now I know where I am in my kids' lives, and the strange and funny images they'll carry away of me, trying to dodge the sprinkler spray. Until they hit their 40s, and then they'll understand.

Memories of 23 years ago

Just after graduating from high school I left with a "delegation" of about 40 high school student "ambassadors" from Utah to visit the Soviet Union. It is one of my most precious memories, an experience I'll never be able to duplicate. I was there within just a couple of years of communism falling.

We flew from the U.S. to Finland and spent about 48 hours in Helsinki. It was mid-June and gorgeous—working up to summer solstice and therefore never getting dark at night...one of the best parts. The food was an experience, but Helsinki itself was everything I expected a European city to be. It was large, fast, clean, beautiful. It was like a dream.

Culture shock began the moment we boarded the rickety museum piece of a train that would take us from Finland into the USSR. We went first to Leningrad. It was lovely in an exotic, ancient sort of way, but it was so different from Finland. For all its being a world superpower, the USSR was not a first-world country. That gobsmacked me. Propaganda was still everywhere—six stories high, painted on buildings in primary colors—statues of Lenin everywhere, but the people lived in run-down little apartments with no appliances or just a tiny (dormitory-sized) fridge and a single hotplate. No washers and dryers, no dishwashers. Phones in the hallways outside the apartments, the whole floor shared. Laundry always hanging out on balconies. Everything—streets, building facades—was filthy. There was not hot water all day even in the hotels; at check in we were handed a schedule of when there would be hot water. In one hotel, they turned off the electricity at 9:00 pm. Water was not safe to drink—it was cloudy yellow. I brushed my teeth with Pepsi for three weeks.

For the first few days I was in sort of a daze: we fear these poor creatures? These are the archenemies of the United States of America? These people who have only one brand of car to buy, whose trains are falling apart, who still fly from city to city in WWII propeller planes? The second night in Leningrad we decided sleep was for sissies and we were only going to be in the USSR once. We hailed a cab and see the city. Our cab driver was an M.D., a surgeon, who had to moonlight driving a cab because being a doctor didn't pay the bills. That was the biggest eye opener of all about what it was like to live under communism.

We visited Yalta, Simferopl, Moscow. I swam in the Black Sea and laid on the black beaches. I ate lots of amazing ice cream, because I was such a picky eater I struggled with the borscht and other strange foods. I did eventually acclimate to dark rye bread, and I gave up the Pepsi at mealtime for tea because I got so sick of the sweet. The weather was so hot during the day; but when the sun began to go down it was like a dream, to prowl the streets of the USSR with 39 other kids my age, like we owned the joint. We saw Red Square, St. Basil's Cathedral, Lenin's tomb and waxy Lenin himself. He just looked like a Madame Tussaud wax figure, but everyone swore it was the real corpse. Of course. Perfectly preserved after 53 years. (It was like a refrigerator in there, that's for sure; it was the only time during the whole trip that I was even remotely cool, and I was freezing.)

We saw the Moscow folk ballet perform. I cried through the entire thing—the folk music, the dance—it was just so gorgeous. We saw the Bolshoi Ballet perform Giselle. (Wish I'd understood the story ahead of time, I was so not following along.) And one night we went to the Moscow circus. This is probably my favorite story of my entire life to tell. I was exhausted—we all were, burning the candle at both ends by being tourists all day long with our officially assigned tour guides and Utah chaperones, and then catching cabs and buses all night long on our own. I did doze off during the circus, at least I assume I did. When I woke up I was in the middle of the ring, holding up a constrictor snake that was way too heavy for me. As soon as I came to, my arms fell to my sides with the heavy. (Circus people were on either side of me to catch the snake.) I had been hypnotized in Russian! I have no memory of the hypnosis, only of waking up; but I have 70 American witnesses that told me what happened. I still geek out about it.

Mitsuketa

Our cat was already full-grown when she started hanging around our doorstep and adopted us. That was 10.5 years ago. Every morning when she meows at me I'm surprised she's still around. She won't catch mice and doesn't particularly like children, but she likes our front porch well enough I suppose.

Ringing out the old

Here we stand, almost at the very edge of 2008, and how quickly it has passed. In some of my resolutions so determinedly made last January I made great strides, and in some not at all. In a few things the landscape looks about the same as always, and in some so different. But this year has been very good to me. Here are a few of the things that I consider the great blessings of 2008.

• My husband and children. Always they top the list. It is my highest honor and blessing to be mother and wife to this crew of amazing people.
  
• Emma's entry into the academy. I honestly thought I'd homeschool forever! Despite my initial reticence, it has turned out to be one of the best decisions we've made, and she is doing better than I would have dared to dream.
• Our fabulous Christmas at the cabin in Idaho, and our other wonderful trips to Zion National Park and Kodachrome State Park.
• Paying off two car loans in entirety.
• Having a really good group of friends here in Fairview, people that we care about and have fun with.
• Despite the economy, Blaine's company is doing terrific business right now and his job is as secure as it can be.
• Getting out of diapers completely and totally.
• My strength training program—it rocks given that I work out at home with only eight-pound hand weights.
  
• Finding Eat Stop Eat, which has changed my perspective, my motivation, and my hope.

Yes, I'm another year older. Yes, I have a few regrets, but more things I pat my own back over. It's been a lovely year, and I go into 2009 with my arms wide and a smile on my face.

Tomorrow when I flip the calendar page, I'll probably also take down all the beautiful Christmas cards we received. So here is a blurry photo of the calendar and card door, before I have to make it bare again. Happy 2009, everyone!



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Now playing: Syntax - Pride
via FoxyTunes

Honestly! Why didn't I think of this sooner?

Just made my kids watch a couple dozen of my old favorites from Sesame Street on youtube, like the Capital I, the Geefle and the Gonk , Two Little Girls and a Little Dollhouse, Ladybug Picnic, That's About the Size, and Subway. Yip yip yip yip. Oh, how I miss what that show was to me. Watching these again was like time in a bottle: suddenly I'm seven years old again, and much too young to have children of my own.