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Posts Tagged ‘Grandparenting’

Holding Two Truths

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2026| Leave a Comment »

We flew into BNA in the dead of night, back to chilly Nashville after a whirlwind birthday weekend with our One Year Old Grands. California was surprisingly green and rainy at first, but we didn’t mind. Memories of the NICU softened into a highlight reel of kind, competent nurses and long walks around Pasadena while we waited for the Twins to grow into themselves. And so they did. Music fills their home, and so our baby girls are fierce dancers and ready to perambulate!

The Twins’ Birthday coincided with the Chinese New Year; 2026 is the Year of the Horse that begins with the new moon and celebrations can last for weeks. Like Passover and Easter, it is considered a spring holiday; families will cook traditional foods and often give children tiny red envelopes with money to symbolize good luck and prosperity. Almost like finding the hidden matzoh, no? Aunt Kiki told us our baby girls have some Asian heritage since her Great Grandmother was Chinese.

We strolled among the red lanterns and drummers in the Garden of Flowing Fragrance at Huntington Botanical Gardens. “A number of flowers have special New Year’s significance in Chinese culture, including plum blossoms (symbolizing the beginning of spring), peonies (prosperity), narcissus (longevity), and other blooms such as orchids, forsythia, camellias, and golden mums.” We met a colorful dragon and watched Koi swim under foot bridges. Swimming comes naturally to our baby dumplings, they had just been in the Rose Bowl pool with their Daddy and PopBob.

The sun came out for their birthday party in the park the next day. Dogs came with balloons tied to their collars, children ran around blankets spread under trees like an Impressionist painting. I loved catching up with their creative friends and managed not to fall. Only falling deeper in love with my son’s wife, who juggled party planning and babies with grace. Since the Rocker has moved his studio into town, Kiki now has a pull-out sofa in her home office, and I was sorely tempted to stay longer.

I asked Bob how I managed to drive nine hours from Charlottesville to Nashville when the Love Bug was tiny. He just looked at me and said, “You were 13 years younger.”

I felt very old indeed last night while I tried to stay awake for the State of the Union. It was political theatre, reality TV. Or at least Mr T’s deluded version of reality. The NYTimes called it a “Tedious tiresome performance.” Republicans bobbing up and down, up and down in their seats. Hockey players and medals galore. I was waiting for him to go off script, hoping maybe the teleprompter might fail. All he did was smirk at the few Democrats in the House. Elizabeth Warren was paying attention, some were caught sleeping. One was yelling and yet another had to be forcibly removed with his sign scolding Mr T for a racist video he posted.

SCOTUS sat patiently in the front row, only to be derided by him for their recent decision on tariffs. No problem, he said, he’ll do a work-around. After all, he thinks he’s a king. I had enough and went to bed early.

I dreamt about singing to the Twins, about wheels on buses and Yiddish lullabies. And I woke thinking about Juan Ramirez, a devoted husband and father who ICE recently captured in Nashville, a worker who is here legally with documentation. He is not a criminal, and has now disappeared, leaving his wife, a young child and a ten day old baby behind. This is our alternate truth, our American paradox.

I was in charge of the Twins while the crew cleaned up!

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Comfort Food

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 25, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Did the ‘short loop’ around the Greenway this morning with the Bride. She walks her rescue dog Maple, and I trudge alongside with my hiking sticks. Bob stayed home which meant the talk wasn’t all medical. In fact, I told her I was making the corn bread tomorrow for the corn bread stuffing and she was surprised I didn’t use a box-mix. She told me about the yummy pumpkin cake with cream cheese and caramel icing she’s going to make and then stopped on the way back to borrow my cake pans. Americans everywhere are thinking, planning, and shopping for food this Thanksgiving week.

Of course Bob and I bake the stuffed turkey every year, and I do the gravy.

What are your favorite, traditional turkey day sides? Do you continue serving the same old same old carbs and veggies your family put on the table fifty years ago? Since we had craftily avoided family gatherings in the past with our original Big Chill Friendsgiving, we stayed in our own gastronomic lanes. Each couple was responsible for one major food group on the harvest table, and like any good commune we all cleaned and cooked equitably. Bob still put the turkey in the oven, but I didn’t get to make cornbread stuffing. There were no surprises, but OTOH there were no surprises. Not even a Turducken!

Later, we were surprised by a Facetime call with our Twin Granddaughters over lunch in LA. It was hilarious! One girl has been particularly verbal, perfecting saying my name – with a mouthfull of banana pancakes and yogurt all over her sweet face – she repeated NANA, NANA, NANA! I’d like to think she recognizes me in my blue glasses on her parents’ small cell phone? Maybe she just loved the pancakes? But I can’t wait to hear her sister call my name in a day or two. They just went to the pediatrician and they are each 17 pounds!

Here are some comfort foods from my childhood Thanksgivings that have not survived the test of time: creamed onions, green bean casserole, even mashed potatoes! What with all the carbs already present, the simple white russet is no longer necessary. The Bride will however make the yummy sweet potato marshmallow casserole, the cranberry relish, and she’ll roast a bunch of vegetables. The Flapper’s crystal dish of tiny pickles has turned into a modern day charcuterie board before the main meal, filled with cheese, salami and yes, pickles.

And maybe it’s because we’re Southern now, the Bride asked me to make my mac and cheese this year! I grate Vermont cheese and make my own bechamel sauce for our family’s original comfort food.

The Grands have a half day of school today so the plan is to pick them up and head to the movies to see “WICKED for Good!” It opened this past weekend and sold $223 Million in box office seats globally. From The Hollywood Reporter: “Wicked: For Good is a needed jolt for the struggling North American box office in particular, which has suffered the worst fall in decades due to a glut of male-skewing pics and a lack of product for females and families. The movie’s better-than-expected performance more than proves the buying power of girls and women; nearly 70 percent of audience were females.”

And we can’t elect a female president because…? Happy Thanksgiving all y’all! I’m grateful to you my readers, and so grateful to be here, a year after my fall, to love on all my grandchildren. Look at these little gobblers!

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Plus ca Change

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on April 1, 2025| 2 Comments »

The more things change, the less I like it.

But I am not like my Nana, who refused to give up her “ice box” for a newfangled refrigerator. When the ice man stopped delivering, she reluctantly accepted the new contraption with a round condenser sitting like a pill box hat on top. It’s ironic that it was my sister Kay who had the Frigidaire delivered to our Nana, but later refused a microwave from me!

Today it’s more complicated. It’s not as if I’d like to return to the days when a milkman came to our little house in Victory Gardens… or my Daddy Jim had to climb up on the roof to adjust the TV antenna. But milk IS the driving force of our lives now that the twins are home! The Rocker had to install a small freezer in the garage for the overflow of breast milk Aunt Kiki is delivering. It’s actually Amazonian.

The Flapper told me very little about our lives before that Year of Living Dangerously. But I did know that her doctor took her aside one day and told her she didn’t have to sanitize my baby bottles – which meant in 1948 she didn’t need to boil them. The doctor knew my Father was dying of a brain tumor in the dining room of our home, and he figured she had enough to worry about, what with three other children in the house.

And so when the Bride was born, the Flapper helped me in many ways but she knew next to nothing about breastfeeding. Ditto for Grandma Ada. Their generation was expected to bottle feed, only poor women who couldn’t afford formula would nurse. And yet, the culture changed so dramatically by the 70s – we women read “Our Bodies, Ourselves,” we had consciousness raising groups, we had Gloria Steinem!

And the La Leche League of course. It was considered a badge of honor to nurse your baby anywhere and everywhere. And like most things, we went too far. I suffered through the flu and a mastitis and kept on going, determined to make a success of it. When in fact, training your baby to take a bottle along with nursing makes sense for your family’s sanity.

Especially with TWINS!

My son and his wife had a crash course on caring for preemies in the NICU. They had a lactation specialist and an occupational therapist! Best of all were the nurses, who each shared the tricks of their trade; including the last night nurse who hugged me and said I looked like a mystery writer!

So now I am my Mother, knowing very little about bottles. The baby girls are excellent nursers, but the bottles at first were not getting the job done in the NICU. And Kiki came up with the idea to change the bottles from one brand to another, and voila! They started meeting their “shift minimums.” So yesterday, we brought the girls home to meet Leo the Protector and his two resident cats.

Bob and I will stick around to help in any way we can. Ive learned how to defrost breastmilk and use the new bottles and their special cleaning appliance. The rest is like riding a bike, right? I hope they got some sleep last night.

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Lockdown

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on March 25, 2025| 4 Comments »

Last weekend my stepbrother Eric and his wife Bev, from St Louis, were visiting their daughter’s family here in California. We have a history of missed opportunities to see each other whenever we overlap on the West Coast but this time I was determined to make it happen. We made a reservation at a French restaurant near the hospital, we would sit out on the terrace to avoid germs.

Then this happened:

Aunt Kiki and I left Bob and our son in the hospital’s cafeteria – they were headed into the Starbucks cafe near the gift shop while we wanted to get back to the NICU. Only when we got to the locked door leading into the maternity ward, a spot where I would pick up the wall mounted phone and announce myself and the name of the babies I was visiting, we met an armed policewoman.

She said the hospital was on LOCKDOWN and we couldn’t get back into the NICU and we couldn’t go outside! We made her say it again.

All of a sudden a fairy godmother holding her dinner plate looked at us and said, “She’s one of our mothers, follow me!” It was the NICU charge nurse sweeping us through maternity’s locked doors and into the nursery where we learned there’d been an incident in the ER. I asked our fairy/nurse if this was a drill, she said no. Kiki quickly texted the Rocker to tell him he should abandon his coffee run and meet us in the NICU pronto.

Without knowing anything – was there an armed shooter in the building, had a car crashed into the ER, or was the next plague contained behind locked doors – we settled into our little room with the twins. I told Kiki we were in the safest place imaginable, behind multiple layers of security. The Rocker texted back he heard helicopters outside while Bob was using his doctor bona fides to reach us.

We were the only visitors in our “twin room.” At one time we had three sets of twins with three nurses each but on that day we were down to two sets and the remaining two nurses were trying to put us at ease. “There’s plenty of breast milk to keep us hydrated,” one said. The baby girls slept peacefully all swaddled up in their bassinets and I hugged Kiki. The boys arrived.

For over three hours it was business as usual, kind of – Kiki was nursing the twins and I was tentatively texting with Bev. They were at the restaurant holding our table and enjoying some French onion soup. We learned that someone had left the ER unhappy with their treatment, threatening to return and, “Shoot up the place.” The LAPD were looking for him (I’m assuming their gender) and until he was arrested we were held captive, obliged to miss yet another attempt to see Eric and Bev!

Once the threat was over and we were driving back to our AirBnB, I was slowly aware of my suppressed rage. When Bob worked in a hospital, there were no metal detectors. Today we must present our drivers license, stand in front of a camera and have a badge made every day we visit the twins. Every baby has some sort of security band on their foot. And yet

These babies, my brand new grandbabies, have already experienced their first distinctly American terrorist threat… their first active shooter drill. They were not even a month old. Even if this disgruntled patient was at home having his dinner, we were watching the NICU door, listening for gunfire. I was terrified. He was arrested, we got the all clear and picked up dinner – cookies – from the hospital’s vending machine.

But do I want my grandchildren to grow up in a country with 125 guns for every 100 people? Here is a screen shot of that night.

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Work Life Balance

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , on March 18, 2025| 6 Comments »

Another week, another day of physical therapy. I’m working hard to not only turn my head, but bend it at an angle so I can look into the eyes of my brand new grandbabies. That is the goal. That and not falling, so I’m working on balance exercises too. Isometrics is also part of the plan.

And once a week, I’m tuning into Apple TV to watch “Severance.”

If you’re not a fan, Severance is a series about people who are suffering so much in their personal lives, they undergo a surgical procedure on their brains so that they are entirely different people in their work life. At home they are “outies,” and at work they are “innies.” Their memories are kaput!

The series was shot at Bell Labs in Holmdel, NJ. Long white corridors leading to strange rooms punctuate the dystopian landscape. Its four main characters have no work life balance; instead they have two different identities.

Whenever I heard anyone talk about work life balance, I felt it was code for a more traditional, sexist point of view. After all, men never uttered those words when I was joining the work force in the 70s. Their work was their life. But for women, well we were expected to look like a Virginia Slims ad – a baby on one hip and a briefcase in the other hand.

We could bring home the bacon and fry it up in a pan!

Things haven’t changed much since then. American women still shoulder much more of the housekeeping and child rearing. As the Bride likes to point out, our country is the ONLY G7 country that doesn’t offer PARENTAL leave after the birth of a baby for six months to a year! We also abandon our new parents to a for-profit childcare system that can eat up half their income.

My son has his studio at home, and Aunt Kiki has a pretty flexible designer’s schedule where she can work from home as needed. But still, having twins will require an open-door policy at their house! Getting those babies home and on the same schedule is the order of the day. They are fast approaching six pounds!

While the only severed woman, or should I say women, on Severance is Helly R aka Helena Eagan, and the only baby is outie Mark’s niece, the science fiction series is a welcome relief from the actual cesspool of MAGA policies that have been littering our news outlets. Like DOGE people bringing armed ‘Marshalls’ into government agencies – I wonder if they were wearing brown shirts.

Breaking news. I’ve graduated to two pound hand weights and my goal is six plus. My work is all about balance.

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The Grandmother Hypothesis

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 9, 2024| Leave a Comment »

My daughter called me yesterday to rave about a new book she’s reading, it’s all about menopause! My immediate thought was, why is she reading about menopause, and then I came to my senses. My little girl is rapidly approaching this phase of life, and like everything else she does, the Bride will gather all the evidence-based information she can find before she plots her course through peri to post-menopause with the utmost care. And this book, “The Menopause Manifesto” by Jen Gunter, MD, begins at the beginning.

What do we humans have in common with killer whales? Homo Sapiens (and Japanese aphids btw) are among the very few females in the animal kingdom to live well beyond childbearing age. Why? Well some researchers have studied this phenomena – after all, evolutionarily speaking once you’re finished reproducing, you’re finished. But women can live half their lives in their golden years; and according to Darwin’s theory there’s a good reason.

“The first hard evidence for the grandmother hypothesis was gathered by Kristen Hawkes, an anthropologist at the University of Utah who was studying the Hadza people, a group of hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania. Hawkes was struck by “how productive these old ladies were” at foraging for food, and she later documented how their help allowed mothers to have more children.” https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2019/02/07/692088371/living-near-your-grandmother-hasevolutionarybenefits#:~:text=If%20being%20close%20to%20grandma,same%20parish%20as%20their%20mother.

Pretty simple right? The grandmothers know which mushrooms are poisonous; how to treat mastitis in a nursing mother; where to dig for water. They can also simply watch over their grandchildren so that fewer wander off into the rainforest. But what about today? Factoring in birth control and hormone replacement therapy (HRT), is the modern Grandma still as useful as her predecessor?

The Flapper taught me how to wash a newborn’s head, how to gently nudge a baby to sleep during the night and not let them sleep all day, how to stay calm in the midst of it all. She ordered a dryer and had it installed because she didn’t want me hanging diapers out in the sun, like she had to so many years ago. She told me how my brother Michael started coming into this world while she was hanging out the wash. How my sister Kay had to run through backyards to fetch the doctor, running through our neighbor’s laundry.

“You are in your perfect place,” my Mother told me time and time again. A mantra I repeat to myself, and to my children and grandchildren. The Flapper embraced Buddhism in her later years. I often wished she didn’t live in Wayzata, MN, I longed for her every single day… the Mother I lost when I was 10 months old and found again when I was the Love Bug’s age.

But there was Great Grandma Ada to the rescue. Once we moved from the Berkshires back to NJ, Bob’s Mother took on the role of Supreme Grandchild Spoiler and Snuggler. She fed the Bride her first solid food, chopped liver, and she encouraged the Rocker to explore and expand his horizons. I remember when he was five and played the violin on her deck for all her friends! They fed the ducks in the park, went swimming in her pool, and accompanied us to the Big Apple Circus every year.

It’s good to know I have a purpose according to the Grandmother Hypothesis. Of course, I’ve always known that loving and caring for my babies was the one thing that mattered most, my one raison d’etre. Now that we live only two houses away, I try not to be too intrusive, but I love it when the Grands just stroll in without knocking. “Hiya Nana!” they say.

“Are you ready for breakfast number two?” I ask after a big hug.

It’s too late for me to take HRT for my osteoporosis, but if you’re in your forties and wondering about it, here’s a good place to start – https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/menopause/in-depth/hormone-therapy/art-20046372

I am the luckiest Grandmother in the world!

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Nana Camp

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on July 2, 2024| Leave a Comment »

There are no day camps this week for the Grands. No sailing, Taylor Swift, or pottery camps. Plus, on July 1, all the brand-spanking-new doctors have started their rounds, and so the Groom has a lot of teaching to do in the MICU, and the Bride gets to explain how to write a prescription to an intern. It can be taxing, and so I cook dinner for six people just in case they get home in time. On July 4, we’ll be relaxing by our dear neighbor’s pool while the “little doctors,” as Grandma Ada called them, save lives.

This Fourth will be the 75th anniversary, if you want to call it that, of the Flapper’s car accident. Dr Jim has been doing some soul searching around the event that left our Nana, Mother, and Sister lying bloodied and comatose on the side of the road. He was only seven years old, and so it was up to him to tell the police their names and where they lived. It is an early memory, but not his first. That was the day, earlier that Year of Living Dangerously, when our Father returned from the hospital after brain surgery, his head wrapped in bandages.

Sometimes I wonder what memories our Grands will keep with them. I’ll bet they will remember their parents coming home from their hospitals during the pandemic and having to shower before a hug. Will they remember seeing the David in Florence? Or will they remember a feeling of ease, an all encompassing feeling that everything will be alright when they arrive at Nana Camp? That it’s not all action and adventure all the time. Sometimes we bake muffins with abandon, or we swim in the pool. Sometimes we take field trips to museums and then we watch Jeopardy! There’s a rhythm to life in this house, and my grilled cheese sandwiches often hit the mark.

Today the Bride is home and so we are off duty. I try not to think about the recent SCOTUS decisions. Like the presidential debate/debacle, I put those thoughts into the “things I cannot change” basket. I can put the basket in a river and let the water flow through it, or I can unpack the basket on the riverbank and perseverate about our time and place in history. I’m not a Monday night MSNBC type. It’s hard to imagine changing course so close to an election, and I know Joe Biden.

Like my birth family, Irish Catholics from Scranton, PA, he will never give up. When the going gets tough and all. Like the Flapper telling her doctors she’ll not only walk again, she’ll dance on their graves. We come from a strong line of strong, smart women forged by coal miners. I’ll bet Dr Jill has ancestors just as tough and resilient. We need a Democrat in the White House now more than ever, so I’ll be voting accordingly.

Have a safe and uneventful Fourth of July. Steer clear of the naysayers and knee-jerkers. Look at the long view. America is still that beautiful shining city, our democracy cannot topple over!

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Disconnected

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on June 11, 2024| Leave a Comment »

As we approached the medieval city of Pietrasanta last week, I was surprised to see a giant sculpture of a teddy bear laying down outside of a church with a knife through his heart. Marco and Claudio had told us this place has long been a haven for artists – from Paul Klee and Joan Miro to Henry Moore and Fernando Botero. But I had no idea the exhibit we were about to see, including large busts of cherubic angels with their mouths taped shut inside the deconsecrated church , was by a sculptor connected to the Jersey Shore, Rachel Lee Hovnanian!

“Hovnanian’s “Poor Teddy in Repose” sculpture shares a powerful message. “Poor Teddy is a reflection on the ways in which childhood playtime has changed in the contemporary era,” Hovnanian shares about her work. “Children are no longer interested in teddy bears and other tangible toys – the smartphone seems to have eclipsed all other toys as the ultimate pass-time for children, a knife to the heart for Teddy.”…Hovnanian goes on to share that her choice of raw material – bronze – was deliberate. “It emphasizes the industrialization and commercialization of childhood,” she explains.” https://www.forbes.com/sites/janehanson/2024/05/28/how-one-artist-is-using-teddy-bears-and-angels-to-redefine-the-way-we-communicate/

It was a July day in 2002 when Hovnanian’s 15 year old son, Alton, drowned in his jet ski-type watercraft in the Navesink River. Word spread quickly in our Rumson-Fair Haven community, Hovnanian Enterprises was the number one building firm in the state. Alton was taken to my husband Bob’s ER in Red Bank, NJ. I had friends who were good friends with the boy’s grandmother. His grandfather, Kevork, was an Armenian immigrant from Iraq when he started his company.

Now the silent angels stared down at me, more menacing. I felt a chill inside the dark vestibule of the Complesso di Sant Agostino, maybe it was my fever? We turned a corner only to find another gigantic, lonely teddy bear surrounded by floating, electric plugs that looked like the tentacles of an octopus. The Love Bug said it made her feel sad, and we talked about the meaning of art. The Rocker told me the artist herself was in the next room.

It was an accident that night when Alton plowed into a moored sailboat. The Rocker was 17 and had just graduated high school, we were packing him up for college; while Rachel was burying her son instead of sending him off to high school. Luckily, I had stopped writing for the local newspaper the year before. And here we were, in Tuscany, in a room with another Poor Teddy having a solo tea party.

When we arrived home, I handed over my iPad to the Bug for her Design Camp. She is an artist like her Aunt Kiki! You see, I thought I would be the Nana with a basket for devices by the door; that Grands would be required to drop their screens and connect IRL. This was my fantasy. But instead, I am the wild Nana who says “Anything Goes” when the kids come to our house. My daughter and her Groom said “NO” to screens until thirteen!

At first, we went along with their Luddite ways. I hated to see a toddler in a stroller clutching an iPad while sucking a pacifier! But lately, social media seems to have creeped into the Grands’ lives nonetheless. After all, mostly all of her friends have either a cell phone, a tablet or a smart watch. While we were walking through the ancient streets of Pietrasanta, I noticed the Love Bug, who will turn 12 this summer, doing a little dance move of her own here and there. I asked her where she learned it.

“Oh, it’s on TikTok,” she said. “All my friends are doing it.”

Poor Teddy

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Ear Bug

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on May 21, 2024| Leave a Comment »

There is a constant buzzing in my ears. Inside the house, it’s manageable; outside it’s another story. Shall I start from the beginning?

The Bride and Groom had scheduled a trip and we were all IN to be working grandparents… and granddog parents of course. Then it hit me – a sore throat. Why is it that ever since the pandemic, getting a common cold feels like a death sentence? I tried to keep my distance from the Grands – we ordered pizza for dinner – Bob did the driving – dog walking was passed down to the Bug and the Pumpkin. The problem is, Maple, the black/mix/killer/rescue dog, is on one mission and one mission only: she is single-mindedly determined to

Eat as Many Cicadas in One Walk as She Can Find!

“Ewwww Nana,” my granddaughter said, “she ate two cicadas while they were mating! and I could hear them screaming.” If that’s not a Hitchcock film in the making…

I tried to make light of the Bug’s budding fear of bugs. After all, I’ve picked hundreds of ticks off of dogs and children (and myself) over the years, and they can find some pretty strange places to burrow. I was proud of the baby Bride when we moved back to NJ because she was the only one of her friends who would pick up a daddy longlegs. We were country people, people!

But here we are, living in a semi-genteel southern city that has been attacked by cicadas. Granted they don’t bite, or transmit a horrible disease, still they are dang ugly, and LOUD. Their chorus is around 100 decibels in TN, akin to a Harley only not as nice. We still have our old windows in our new cottage so I can hear them humming all day. It’s like I have chronic tinnitus, with a cold to boot. When I venture outside to water the garden, the trees are shimmering with them and the noise is no joke.

I’ve swept the patio, picked them out of my new patio poufs, and we’ve been in charge of the neighbor’s pool while they are away which means Bob is routinely skimming around 50 dead cicadas every day from their filter. But the last straw was on Sunday when I was swimming with the Grands. I sent Bob home with the kiddos so I could finish my water exercises. I was so deeply grateful to be back in the pool, the water was warm and the sun was shining after a week of rain.

As I was getting out of the pool, feeling the weight of gravity return, a cicada flew right into my right ear!

It was screeching to get out. I was screaming for it to get out and banging the other side of my head. Somehow I knew not to put my finger inside my ear, I guess some medical knowledge does rub off? I grabbed my towel and ran into the street not caring what anyone might think of this wet haired swim suited crazy banshee woman. But in the few minutes it took to run across the street and find Bob, it must have flown out. After a quick investigation with an otoscope, I was pronounced cicada free!

Last night the adult children returned, and now we must pack for our next trip to Italy! I wonder if they have cicadas in Tuscany?

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Milestones

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , on September 5, 2023| 3 Comments »

For the first time ever last week, Facebook sent me a warning. Granted, I wasn’t suspended, only put in detention with a “restriction.” Why?

Because I posted a WAPO article about police stopping cars in a TX county if they think women are going to cross borders to obtain an abortion. You read that right. Passing an ordinance legislators call “abortion trafficking” is the latest ploy of religious zealots designed to frighten women into submission. Here’s what I said with the link:

“If this sounds like a dystopian novel, it’s not. It’s real. Pro or anti-choice this is not what democracy looks like.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/09/01/texas-abortion-highways/

And Facebook didn’t like it: “Some of your content in the last year didn’t follow our Community Standards.”

Maybe I should feel honored? I wonder exactly what word triggered their algorithm – dystopian? Because watching TN legislators pass laws about decorum in front of Covenant families asking for a modicum of gun safety legislation, while celebrating the Love Bug’s birthday with a gaggle of tweens at a Barbie movie felt pretty Orwellian!

Republicans aside, Bob is in the middle of tearing up our house. Staining a fence wasn’t enough in his ongoing quest to upgrade this old cottage core house. We had wanted to save the original pine floors in my snug and the main living/dining area, only to find out later they weren’t really salvageable. We all know if someone were to drop dead on the street in front of him, Bob could save a life. He can also sew up a laceration like a plastic surgeon. What I pleaded with him NOT to do was lay the new engineered hardwood himself.

But thanks to the wonders of YouTube, my husband has turned into a floor guy; along with the fence guy and fine woodworking guy, and the all around Mr Fixit guy. On the one hand, he’s happy learning to do something new. On the other hand, my house is almost always a construction zone. In the past, like 30 years ago, he laid tile in our kitchen. But that was fun, sort of, and we were young, definitely. Now, he’s busy introducing his grandson, the Pumpkin, to power tools.

I find myself lost in memories of wood burning stoves and diapers hanging on a clothesline. Milestones included buying our first house and bringing the newborn Bride home. Her first tooth was miraculous. She started walking on our orange shag carpet. My first published essay was about black ice in the Berkshire Eagle. Then the Rocker was born and he lit up our house like a perpetual motion machine. How could I know that sometime in the future I’d be censored by a large, strange social media corporation?

I read last night that the First Lady has Covid. I wish her well and hope that Joe is staying isolated. After all, if his polls are still running even with a twice impeached, ex-president facing a charge of insurrection who is too afraid to even debate his challengers, well then the next milestone may be just as incomprehensible.

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