The other day, my husband and I got our calendars together to try to figure out and schedule fun “empty nest” plans – events, weekends away, etc. It was then that I noticed that our weekends in September were already filled up with plans with one or more of our grown kids. (Plans our kids came up with – not us.) If you are at all worried about loneliness in your soon-to-be upcoming empty nest, don’t be. My friends and family who have grandchildren (and yes, I’m so jealous) always say that having grandchildren is THE BEST. They always say that it is like getting the “dessert” part of raising kids. It’s so sweet and delightful and fun and easy and breezy. With grandchildren, you don’t have the worries, the everyday mundane stuff, the constant responsibilities, and when you are exhausted, the grandkids go back home. Everything that happens with grandkids is easy to laugh off as adorable, lovable, and easily solvable (by somebody else). Interestingly, I’ve been noticing lately that the empty nest also seems to give you the “dessert” part of your own kids, now that they are grown adults, with their own separate lives. It’s a lot of fun. It’s easy and breezy. The worries and the mood swings and having to juggle everyone’s crazy schedules are no longer on my everyday plate. And when we all start to get on each other’s nerves, we all head back to our own homes, to make our own meals, and to do our own laundry. Once you get past the “wow, that whole raising a family bit, it really went by so fast” existential shock of it all, empty nest is truly lovely. And the hatchlings still fly by the nest for visits, here and there, and sometimes even more often than you would think. And that’s when you get to savor being with the “dessert versions” of your own children, and they, too, get to experience the sweetest part of you.
“Desserts are the fairy tales of the kitchen – a happily-ever-after to supper.” – Terri Guillemets
“Dessert is a necessity of life.” – Adrienne Posey
“Work is the meat of life, pleasure the dessert.” – B. C. Forbes
“I love dessert. I can’t be guilty about it because I have to taste everything. I experiment.” – Martha Stewart
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Yesterday, I had an interesting observation. If you consider the idea that all living things are just various containers/receptacles/vehicles for Life Force, the energy that gives the spark of life and vitality to every living thing, then it occured to me, despite my human smugness, Life Force, in that very moment, was having a much better time being contained in my robust, leaning towards the sunshine bamboo plant, and also being contained inside of my contented, little brown dog, Trip, as he lay napping happily at my feet with one paw resting on my foot. I, at that time, was grumbling over my weekly calendar, all the while worrying about the people and the details of the upcoming week. So the Life Force inside of me got to feel tumult and angst and a little bit of agitation about things maybe not going exactly as I had hoped and planned. Maybe being in a human container, is not the highest goal for Life Force. Maybe Life Force is much happier being contained in a tree, or in a bird, or in a fish. These entities do a much better job of acceptance and joy of just being peacefully themselves, in the moment, than we humans ever do, that is for sure.
Later last evening, my husband started talking about his excitement for the upcoming football season and the Vuelta (which is a bike race in Spain that lasts 21 days. “We” just finished up watching the equally long Tour de France about a week ago.) So, I put my foot down and I announced that last night was my night to choose what we would watch. I was in the mood for an uplifting, heartwarming movie. So I Googled “uplifting, heartwarming movies”. Many websites that I looked at that contained lists of “uplifting, heartwarming movies” had overlaps of the same suggested movies, and we have already seen the majority of these movies, but what struck me the most, is the fact that most of the movies listed were from the year 2000 and below. Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and La La Land (2016) seemed to be the most modern movies on the lists. Despite having seen it several times, we chose Jerry Maguire (1996). It never disappoints. Still, using just this one example, it was a reminder that society desperately needs an infusion of “uplifting and heartwarming.” We’ve collectively been through a lot, particularly in the last few years, so maybe it’s time to set aside dark and depressing for a little bit. A large dose of “uplifting and heartwarming” would do us a world of good. Large doses of anything are made up of small particles of the same matter. Maybe if we each choose to be a small particle of “uplifting and heartwarming”, we will start seeing “uplifting and heartwarming” in masses, everywhere we go. Maybe we will even see “uplifting and heartwarming” in the movies, again.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Some of the most interesting, heart wrenching, thought provoking conversations I have had in my life have occurred with clerks who are helping me with my purchases. I am one of those people who strangers have a tendency to tell me their stories, and depending on the day, I consider this trait of mine to be a blessing or a curse. But at the very least, it is compelling to hear these random stories. This “gift” has given me an overall perspective of how rich and deep and interesting each individual life is, in this world. It’s made me less assuming about people and experiences in general.
My eldest son and his girlfriend are coming down to Florida this week, and so I wanted to buy them little “great to see you” gifts. There is a little shop by me that has various booths where people sell their wares – some homemade, some curated, some full of junk, some full of beautiful, rare things. Anyway, my son’s girlfriend collects gnomes and I knew that this one booth sells adorable handmade “lucky gnomes” that have lucky pennies cemented on the bottom of them. (Yes, I do have more than one of them for myself.) So, I picked out a gnome and then I started stressing about what to get for my son. (My son and his girlfriend are flying, so small things are in order, for it to be easy to be brought back up north.) My eldest son is a history buff and has always been interested in the World Wars, so in a booth full of antiques I found a set of WWII quarters that I knew that he would like and so I brought the trinkets up to the counter to pay for them.
The woman who was running the register was an older, animated, very talkative woman who had a deep Louisiana drawl. Earlier she had found me in the store and cornered me with drawn out descriptions of various gnome products that she would be selling in her booth in the store, coming this fall. Honestly, as I was getting ready to pay for my items, I was tired, I was cranky, and I wasn’t in the mood for random conversation. At that moment, I did everything that I could to shut off the “gift” of hearing stranger’s stories, short of being utterly rude. Nonetheless, the shop lady started asking me about the WWII quarters and I told her that they were for my history enthusiast son.
“My father was a soldier in WWII,” she said.
“Oh, wow. Both of my grandfathers served in the war, too,” I said.
“Did they come back?”
“Yes, thankfully.” I stalled a little, thinking to myself that this was sort of a strange question. Then suddenly, I understood where this was headed.
“Did your father come back?”
“No,” she said, more quiet and somber than she had been the entire time in which we were in each other’s company. “He was 29 when he went over, and he was 30 when he died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
She didn’t seem to hear me. She kept with her story. “My mother was gardening one day and she looked down and she noticed that her wedding ring had cracked in half. For some reason, she wrote this happening on the calendar. Weeks later, she received a letter in the mail, that my father had died on that very day that her ring had cracked.” And then the clerk, forced a big, gracious, old Southern lady smile on her face and told me to come back real soon. And in that moment, I was grateful in my heart that my “gift” of attracting other people’s stories, gave to me another story that I won’t soon forget.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I love this quote. My editor (aka my husband) will read one of my blog posts about something that we both experienced, and he’ll say, “Wow, I didn’t see the story in that, but you did.” And sometimes he’ll try to correct little details to my stories because his memory is different than mine. (And then I’ll get mad, and I’ll insist that my storyteller persona deserves a little creative license) I digress. My overall point is, I do believe that most of us writers, remember a lot of seemingly inconsequential happenings, and we do “remember big.”
The other day, my friend sent to our group chat, a picture of her poor sick baby, all nestled, under warm blankets on the couch. Her baby is now home from college, and immediately came down with some nasty virus going around. Nestled right next to her baby, was my friend’s family’s fur baby, an adorable Yorkie named Skipper, who has been the longtime, perfect family dog, for a family who consists of three beautiful, vivacious daughters. When I texted how cute it was to see Skipper, being right there, comforting one of the beautiful daughters, my friend said that Skipper has always been the family comforter. She then texted a picture of Skipper nestled up, right next to my friend’s father-in-law who had been in hospice care in their home, a few years ago, before he died. “They’re always our wingmen,” I replied. And everyone on the chat agreed. We all love our dogs.
When we visited our son, who attends medical school in a different city, over this past weekend, I noticed a trio of pictures, placed above his computer in his apartment – a place where I imagine that our son spends a great deal of time. The left side picture was one of he and his two brothers, confident and arm-in-arm, on one of our family trips to the great outdoors, the right side picture was of he and his longtime girlfriend, laughing together on the beach, but the middle picture was a giant blow-up of our Labrador retriever’s face. Ralphie, our lab, does have a beautiful, soulful, expressive face. I believe that the picture reminds our son that he has a big, yellow, loyal, goofy, but brilliant wingman, who loves him immensely and unconditionally, and this wingman doesn’t even understand nor give a hoot about medical school. My son’s soulful wingman only cares to be there (even if only in picture form) to be a devoted, supportive form of comfort. How beautiful it is that our furry wingmen feel their own highest form of love and comfort, by just being it.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
We are in yet another city this weekend, visiting our son who is a second year medical student. Our son is more stressed than usual which says a lot when you are in medical school (Medical school is obviously intense and stressful to begin with – the whole family has started to ask for just “the gist” of his experiences, especially when he starts talking about amputations and other emergency room scenarios.) The reason our son is particularly stressed is that he is having to decide on what specialties he wants to hone in on, and so he is going through angsty rounds of “What ifs?”, “Where can I best be utilized?”, “Is work life/balance important?” What if I hate my choice?” . . . . You know the questions. We have all gone through similar handwringing choices throughout our lives.
As a mother, this is when I would love to open my purse and pull out the ever-ready, sparkly, golden magic wand (the proverbial magic wand which we all wish that we had access to). I would show it to my son, with a proud and knowing and able look on my face, and I would bonk it on his head three times, and then I would wiggle my nose and then we would all see a little pink cloud appear with, ta-da, “The One and Only Infallible Perfect Answer!” My son would beam with relief and ease and thank me once again for being such a wonderful, reassuring mother. (and then this is when he would probably ask me which of our four kids would get the magic wand in the will.)
Okay, enough of my stupid fantasy. Of course I don’t have a magic wand and I don’t even have the right un-magic answers to guide my son. We talked about intuition, and prayer, and what just “feels right.” We talked about values, and overall well-being. We talked about practicalities and time. My husband and I talked in circles with our son, trying to ease his stress. At one point, my son mentioned something about reading that you should live your life by thinking about what would be written on your tombstone and what would be said in your eulogy. And that’s when I had, at least to me, a little flicker of a magic wand moment.
Backstory: When we flew down here, my husband insisted that I continue to get out of the dark ages, and he asked me to download yet another airline’s app on to my phone. And so I begrudgingly did it. And in creating my profile I had to answer 542 security questions. (it felt like 542) One question that stood out to me, and was the most easy for me to remember the answer, was the question, “Who was your favorite elementary school teacher?” My favorite elementary school teacher was Mrs. Simmerman, in third grade. She was a tall, elegant Southern woman (in Pittsburgh, PA no less!) and she cared. She oozed care. She wasn’t just teaching little kids facts, she was teaching us to love each other, and to love life. She seemed noble to me. I adored her.
So, as my husband, and our son and I sat at dinner last night, ruminating on his upcoming choices, and my son talk about considering his epitaph in regards to the decision, the whole Mrs. Simmerman security question popped back into my mind. I exclaimed, “G, when you make your decision, remember that when it comes to your life’s end, it doesn’t nearly as much matter WHAT you do, or WHAT YOU ACHIEVED in any field, as it is, HOW you lived you life, HOW you made others feel in your life, and IF YOU MADE A POSITIVE difference doing whatever it is that you end up doing.”
And then much to his chagrin (this reserved young man has never had a mother who embarrasses easily), I asked the two young men who were waiting on us, if they could name right now, in that very instant, their favorite coach or teacher from elementary school. It turns out that the young men were originally from Cuba and they did not speak English well, but when they finally grasped what I was asking them (I gather this is not a regular question which they get from their customers), they both had beautiful, shining expressions on their faces. Their eyes shown. They had instant answers. One young man said, “Mr. Sandoval. He was like a father.” These young men beamed. I beamed. And in some small way, I think that I had a wee little magic wand moment. At least, it felt a little magic to me. And I feel quite confident, that whatever my son decides, he will do just fine.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
I went to my annual OB/GYN appointment yesterday. That was fun. Ha! My gynecologist is a lovely young woman with a three-year-old child who is already ready to sit on Santa’s lap this year with his wish list. I wonder if my doctor tries to get clues about what menopause will look/feel like for herself, when she examines us middle-agers both physically, then also emotionally, by asking pointed questions like, “No really, how ARE you? Do we need to up your hormones?”
My examination went well. Apparently, I’m “normal.” (I’ll leave it at that.) As I was leaving the doctor’s office, a young man was leaving the office as well. He appeared to be a pharmaceutical salesperson. We were both walking behind an elderly couple who were holding hands as they slowly, and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y meandered down the long hallway towards the elevators. “I’m going to need you to be the rude one first, and swing wide around them,” the salesperson playfully said to me with raised eyebrows. “Sorry guy,” I said. “You didn’t realize that I’m not a bitch.” And so we all made peace with slowly making our way to the elevators at a drunken (possibly passed out) snail’s pace.
When we got into the elevator, the elderly couple were still holding hands. “I love that you are still in love,” I said to them, and then the young man and I both smiled at them in admiration and appreciation. “Married sixty-three years!” the woman exclaimed. “And we courted for four years before that,” the elderly man boasted.
“That’s incredible and rare,” I said. “I hope to get to that anniversary with my husband.”
“At this point in my life, I just feel astonished and lucky to wake up and to get to live another day,” the woman said, honestly and profoundly.
And that’s when the young man chimed in and said, “I think that we all should feel that way, no matter what our age. I mean none of us are guaranteed anything, right?” And that’s when we all smiled and nodded appreciatively at the wisest being in the elevator. And for some really heartwarming reason, at that moment in an otherwise ordinary day, I felt so good and so connected with every generation in our world (both young and old and those like me, the “in-betweeners”). I had an extra spring in my step as I got off of the elevator. I turned around. I smiled brightly. And I genuinely and warmly wished them all a wonderful afternoon, and then I happily headed to my car, feeling like all was right in our world.
It’s the little things that make us feel alright. The little things count a lot (if we remember to count them). As it is said, the little things are the big things.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
This one hit me hard this morning. It reminded me about the time in my life, that my only daughter and I went shopping for the only doll which my daughter has ever liked or cared about. It was last fall, when my daughter was 16. We “adopted” Betty Faye together at the Cabbage Patch Hospital in Cleveland, Georgia.
I knew that I was pregnant with a daughter before she was born. She is the fourth child, and she has three older brothers. I am a “girly girl.” I like clothes and shoes and purses and high heels and lots of accessories. As a child, I loved dolls in every form. I loved Barbies, and Holly Hobbies, and Drowsy babies, and fancy foreign dolls on pedestals. I had the largest collection of paper dolls known to man. I still have a few of my precious paper doll sets, in storage. So, when I was pregnant with my daughter, I started collecting dolls for her, that I just knew she would love, with her whole heart and imagination. I bought the prettiest, most collectible, most cuddly dolls which I had ever seen, in bulk. My inner little girl bloomed, as my pregnant belly bloomed, and “together” we shopped for dolls for my soon-to-be daughter and I expectantly piled them high, in the closet.
For the first couple years of her life, my daughter was my own living baby doll. I dressed her up in a new outfit, every single day. She had the prettiest blankets and bathing suits and bracelets and monogrammed binkie holders, and I reveled in all of it. When she was about three, I started introducing my daughter to her curated doll collection, but she didn’t show too much interest. Her brothers proved to be much more fascinating, as they bounced her, like a ball, on the trampoline or used her for target practice for their dodge ball games. My daughter showed her athletic prowess early on, and the boys decided that my daughter was a worthy, valuable teammate for a lot of their games, and she was thrilled to be part of the action. Plus, never one to sit down much, she much preferred to play with her toy kitchen, dramatically chopping up and carving up plastic turkeys and lettuce, “Gordon Ramsey” style, with devilish flare, or to jump enthusiastically and tirelessly, mimicking all of the intricate moves on the video game, Just Dance.
One day, we had a “come to Jesus moment”, when my daughter was almost four. As I gingerly pulled out a fancy, antique Madame Alexander, exquisite doll from her still intact trademark cardboard blue box, in order to transition the doll over to the next generation, my daughter looked at the doll with a glimpse of disgust and maybe even despair. Then she looked me firmly in the eye and very matter-of-factly said, “Mom, dolls are scary.”
My daughter is a talented artist. She has long, shiny, beautiful hair and she loves to do it up, in all different styles. She is so creative when she paints her lovely nails. (luckily she didn’t inherit my ugly, stubby, chippy little fingernails) We enjoy shopping together. So, while we have shared a lot nice “girl times” together, playing dolls was never a part of our bonding experience. So, imagine my complete surprise when she seemed eager to visit the Cabbage Patch Hospital with me, this past fall, when we were staying in a cabin in the mountains of Georgia. I figured that it was just an odd fascination and curiosity about a giant plantation-like looking building, where Cabbage Patch kids are “born.” Even my husband and eldest son agreed to go, for laughs, I suppose.
We walked all around the doll hospital. It was the first time in a long time, that wearing a mask felt fun and normal and appropriate. All of the salespeople were dressed like nurses, and there were walls of photos of famous people who had visited the Cabbage Patch hospital, over many years. It was a silly, fun, unusual, interesting experience, at a time when we needed that type of experience the most.
After getting my fill of the place, I noticed my daughter kept looking at one of the dolls. “If you had to just pick one doll, out of the thousands of dolls here, which would you pick?” I asked her casually. She giggled embarrassedly and pointed to little blonde, pony-tailed Betty Faye, all decked out in comfy aqua pajamas.
“I’ll buy her for you, if you want her,” I said casually. (trying to keep hope out of my expression) “You know, as a funny souvenir and remembrance of our trip.”
She took me up on my offer right away, and we headed back to the “nurse’s” office, to fill out Betty Faye’s adoption paperwork. I don’t know why my sixteen-year-old daughter showed the interest and enthusiasm for a doll that day, that she had never shown before. Was it to make sure that she didn’t miss out on anything in her childhood, with college and adulthood now looming, so soon in the future? Was it a form of love and connection that she was trying to express to me? Or maybe, was it that a soft, comfy doll to hug was just the ticket, after a year of so much fear and uncertainty that came with the pandemic? No matter what the reason, I lapped up the experience, and so did my daughter. And every once in a while, when kissing my baby girl goodnight, I notice that Betty Faye has made her way off of the shelf, and into the bed, with an ever smiling face, promising that you are never too old or never too young, to enjoy all that life has to offer, all along the way.
Are you passing on love, or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
A few Christmases ago, I ordered a bench for our living room, that was handmade. It has a really cool flokati shag cover that reminded me of my favorite rug to lie on when I was a little girl. I had actually ordered it that October, but for some reason, it was taking a long time to be made and then to be delivered, and I finally got notice that it was to arrive on Christmas Eve, via UPS. I actually found that delivery date to be exciting and special and was eagerly awaiting its arrival.
Christmas Eve rolled around and during our festivities, I kept wondering when my bench was going to arrive. It got later and later, and the bench wasn’t being delivered, so I checked my email for the delivery status. The email showed that it had been delivered! Now, we were home all morning and it’s a pretty big, heavy bench so it would not have easily been stolen off of the porch. I was distraught. I called the company and UPS and they put “tracers” out to see what might have happened with our package and they told us that we would likely hear something within a week or two. I was so disappointed!!
Now, I’m not sure if it was intuition or just my demanding, impatient side that doesn’t do well with disappointment, but I remembered that sometimes our mail delivery person sometimes transposed our address numbers with another neighbor with a similar but different number-ordered address, (who we did not know) several houses down the street. I had to put that neighbors’ mail in their box more than a couple of times, due to the dyslexic confusion. My husband and son, eager to get away from my welling dismay, agreed to walk down the street and to see if perhaps, that is where the bench had accidentally been delivered.
My husband and son were gone for a good 45 minutes and I was starting to get concerned. The holiday spirit was zapping down to nothing in our house. They weren’t answering texts and calls and I was getting ready to walk down the street to see who or what was keeping them, when all of the sudden, they opened the front door, carrying in the lovely bench! My hunch was correct! But here is the best part of the story . . .
The neighbor was a new neighbor of Eastern European descent. She was older, had just recently moved here, and she did not know too many people. She had been thrilled when my husband and son arrived at her door, because she believed that they had been sent “specially” to her. You see, her family heritage has a strong tradition and belief, that on Christmas Eve you cannot leave your house, until you have first, entertained a visitor and given them a gift. She had a party to get to and was patiently waiting for a “visitor” who might appear. So, not only did my son and husband come back with the beautiful bench, but my lucky son also received a bag of candy and a crisp $20 dollar bill, after a nice little visit with our sweet neighbor and some coffee and cookies. She said that she hadn’t even looked at the box that UPS had placed by her garage earlier that day because she just assumed it was things that she had ordered for Christmas.
I’ve written before that my friend has told me that coincidence is God being anonymous. I think that it applies here to this very true, heartwarming story that I think about, with a smile, any time that I glance at my bench. No horse pucky here!! (please check out my other previous “no horse pucky stories”- all crazy, but true)
