Poetry Friday: Re-creating My Grandparents

Happy Poetry Friday, everyone!

Today's poem is all about my maternal grandparents: Grandpa Mac and Grandma Sallie. I am one of those past-pickers who loves to marinate in the stories, details and even dates of my ancestors. I have drawn up family trees and dug around in the great, stale stores of The Internet for immigration records and am always pressing relatives for little stories and anecdotes. I think one of the key reasons why I am so fixated is because I long for a sense of connection of human understanding, of familial community that stretches deeper and farther than my varied cousins and my several aunts. I want to know what "we" as a clan were like in the Great Depression, how we cook, how we were in The Old Country, how we hold our liquor, how we walk, how we all tell jokes and what kinds of things we do in times of stress. I wish I could interview all my ancestors but instead I am writing a poem for them and for myself. 

My grandpa, the year the stock market crashed, 1929.

My grandma as a young woman with her first child, my aunt Nancy.

My Roots Are Showing

Odd how I run my fingers over and over
The many strands of my family roots,
Harping, my husband calls it when I go on.
I especially think about my grandparents:
I know I am lucky to have hugged them,
Had their wrinkled hands stroke mine
And to have felt their hair with sleepy fingers
But I know my versions of them are pale
Flickering, silhouettes sketches of people.
I remember old snatches of my grandpa:
Rag wool sweaters, pipe tobacco and his back
Bent in the sun over the stone garden wall.
Grandma is the scent of geraniums, solitaire
And glasses of water with crossword puzzles, 
A chic tip to her head, her feet curved and shuffling
I have these little torn, scavenged memories
And I have fashioned them into frozen collages
The two of them, stiff and quirky: static human art.
I know they gasped along like I do, their lives
As thumping and real as mine and my husband's
But sometimes I have to write to really feel them,
Cracking open the trunk of words in my mind
To enliven them, breathing in their realities
How it truly felt...in the bones, to have:
A cascade of preemie daughters, a house-fire,
A war hero ghost for a brother, an ex-wife,
An explosive temper, a yen for pink pistachios,
A college crush, a wry joke over gin,  a first art sale,
A master's degree, a quiet breakfast in Paris,
A job in another state, an absent spouse, a broken nose,
An alcoholic father, a museum you helped found,
A fear of gaining weight, A obsession with saving bags,
Or a commitment that sticks there through it all
Stubborn and eternal and lumpy like all real things.

My grandparents are the elegant couple on the left, my aunt and uncle on the right.

 You can go browse the other submissions for Poetry Friday tonight as a celebration of the weekend or tomorrow morning (like I will) with a mug of tea in hand. There is always a huge buffet of delicious offerings to pick through. Trudy is hosting this week over at The Miss Rumphius Effect.

Happy Weekend!
xoxo

Little Moment in the Manic Rush

We just had a crazy, wild, we're-certifiably-insane kind of high speed visit to Michigan over the weekend. Baby arriving in the middle of the year will mean that we would have had a rather long time between visits with our parents this year. Not quite winter to winter but close. SO, we decided to do the ridiculous and improbable and drive madly back over the course of a weekend, across 14 hours of roads with the boosting of a four day weekend and have a quick hello.

Grandpa, helping zip up Dee's coat before we leave.

A little glance at Mom.

And a little smack for Grandpa. A well-loved man.

Sometimes you have to do crazy things. And sometimes you don't have to but it sure can be fun! I had to share my favorite photographic moment of the weekend, to share a little of the spontaneous fun. Family is a good deal.

Intergenerational Parenting

You know that old saying about how it "takes a village to raise a child?" I have always had mixed feelings. I mean, really...people use it to say that somehow parenting their child is everyone's business and for real, how reasonable is that in some ways. It feels lightly invasive (everyone should be all up in my parental business) and also a bit helpless  (I can't parent my own anyhow...nobody can!). And although I really like people and I'm super borderline, on the Myers-Briggs scale I am an introvert. For folks like me, the idea of parenting posing as the ultimate group project (Man, did I hate those in school!) is a little headache producing. Blech. Can I just go off in my own little corner now?

A's Mom with my neice

Yes, except that there's something to it! Of course we all are responsible for our own families and sometimes its really great to be able to make your own choices about your children's upbringing, there is great comfort and sometimes even brilliant wisdom in the input of other people. Today, I'm vouching especially for the wisdom of the older crowd.

When I was growing up I lived most of my young childhood a ways away from my grandparents but, I was raised by a mom who really cared deeply about inter-generational interaction. My parents weren't perfect but they were spot on about some things. This is one of those things that I so appreciate.

A's uncle with Ru and my other neice

Even though my grandparents were far away, I had a fair amount of time with them (my parents made visits, phone calls from a very early age, letter writing and lots and lots of photo viewing a big priority) and also lots of great time with psuedo-grandparent types who went to our church, lived in our neighborhood or were friends of the family in some other way.

I am saddened by how much I see current society segregated by age and I am cheered by the fact that although its weird to mix the generations in a social setting, when I initiate on behalf of my children or myself, people are almost always very receptive. Yes, and I have three sets of incredibly caring, and involved grandparents, despite the fact that my children are also far away. That's a pretty lucky break to begin with. Having living grandparents is in no way a given.

A's dad, wedged in our armchair with three of his grandkids

My painting group ladies are half young moms in my own stage of life and half older generation mentor types who spend precious minutes every week talking earnestly to my children about whatever crosses their little minds and tickling my baby under his chin to watch him smile. We also rub shoulders with a couple of neighbors and there are of course several warm grandparent types at our church that wink at our boys and ruffle their hair every time we see them. Our babysitters are also both women who have raised their own little ones and are now pouring a bit of themselves into my babies.

When older folks love on my kids and "help me raise them" I am amazed at how much more I trust their opinions, enjoy their company and am warmed and encouraged by their very non-judgmental attitudes. They have done it all, come up with brilliant plans for keeping pacifiers in and lost their minds during the teething phase and told kids things no mother should ever speak out loud. Such is life. And their children have all grown up, they have a little distance on the all consuming brain-sucking child rearing bit and are able to chuckle about many of the catastrophes they survived. Oh how I love that!

Our wonderful neighbor, reading with Ru after we had her over to dinner

I love the old fashioned tips older folks have, the way they help my little ones learn to speak quietly, move gently and listen more carefully, I love that they think my no-t.v. way of life is fabulous, I love the way the very positive and strengthening attitude they have about even the childhood conundrums they haven't got any solutions for, I love how they encourage my children to be respectful and mannerly, I love that they really appreciate a kid just being a kid, I love that they don't mind sticky fingers, that they know babytalk and big-boy elitism and can move smoothly between them and I love that they're available wherever I'll end up. My own parents and A's are a special form of precious but, folks of their generation and beyond are a never to be overlooked bonus. There are few other things I want for my children relationally  than an inter-generational ease, and a genuine desire to connect to and understand people of varying ages. Try it out, you might find it as buoying as I do.

I dare you to adopt a few grandmas!