Leslie's Christmas Song

    I’ve always thought of Christmas as a magical season, but there was one time, years ago, when the magic floated right out of the sky and landed right on my head.

    It was the Christmas Eve family mass at packed St. Matthews Church back in 1986, and I was crammed into a pew, along with Jim and three of my four children.  Instead of Jim’s favorite seats near the back of the church, we were all sitting close to the front.  I had a twin on my lap, as did Jim, and Steve was wedged in between us.  Only Leslie was missing.  She was a proud and happy new member of the Children’s Choir, and we had left her surrounded by her friends up in the balcony choir loft.

    There was a lot of whispering and murmuring in the crowded church as latecomers tried to find seats, and parents tried to hush small children excited about being in church at night instead of morning Sunday School and even more excited about Santa’s imminent arrival the next day. 

    And then, a bell rang, and a child’s voice rang out:  “Oh Holy Night, the stars are brightly shining, it is the night of our dear savior’s birth...” and a hush fell over the entire church.  The whole congregation was suddenly silent, mesmerized, listening to a pure, angelic voice fill the huge church with the true, simple meaning and joy of Christmas.  It was lovely, it was compelling, it was perfect that a young child was reminding us why we were celebrating that night, I remember thinking.

     It wasn’t until the last note drifted away, as the organ began to play and the other children began singing, and the priests began their entrance into the crowded church, that I realized that it was not just any child who had been singing, who had stirred the emotions of hundreds of people.  The young singer was my child, my Leslie, who had nonchalantly mentioned on the way home from choir practice a week ago that she had a little solo in the Christmas Eve program. 

    I was utterly shocked. I knew that Leslie had a sweet voice, that she sounded great singing along with Mary Poppins or the Sesame Street crew.  I knew that she had not inherited my complete inabiity to carry a tune, but I had no idea that she could actually sing.  I remember sitting in the pew, stunned, wanting to hear Leslie sing again, wanting to go back in time and listen again to Leslie’s incredible solo.  I remember leaning over Steve and whispering to Jim “That was Leslie,” and the surprised look on his face.  I remember hugging a twin tight and whispering “that was your sister.”  And I remember, to my surprise, tears running down my cheeks.

    Leslie’s Christmas solo was only the first of many performances I’ve listened to.  I will always hear the Christmas songs “I wonder as I Wander” and “The Friendly Beasts” in Leslie’s voice.  Every time I hear Julie Andrews sing “the hills are alive with the sound of Music,” I remember Leslie’s voice ringing through the trees as we hiked through the woods at Turkey Run.  

        I’ve always been proud and thrilled with Leslie’s performances, but I’ve never been as emotionally moved as I was that Christmas Eve.  In retrospect, I’m wondering if part of my astonished and emotional reaction was because Leslie’s singing made me realize for the first time the uniqueness of each of my children with their special talents, gifts, and personalities and how utterly distinct they are from their parents, no matter how much we love them.  A magic moment, indeed.

Age Is Not Just a Number

     Having reached the milestone of a 60th birthday, I've heard my share of "age is just a number" and "age doesn't matter" euphemisms.  And I beg to differ.
     I spent last evening at my sister's house, entertained by her new grandkids, two month old Zoe and three month old James. At one point someone laid them, side-by-side, on a blanket on the floor for a photo op, and it was immediately clear that those little babies weren't the same age.  They were both adorable, with their wild kicking and occasional smiles. But James had a real heft behind his kicks, making resounding thumps that overpowered the clicks of the camera.  Zoe, with a month's less milk intake, had a much daintier kick, making nary a sound as her little feet hit the floor.  Whether defined by weight, girth, head circumference, or activity level, the difference a month makes was obvious.
     And I'm pretty sure that if my own six month old grandson had been available to lay down on the blanket, the difference of another 3 months would have been obvious too.   Mainly because he would have crawled right off of that blanket in a straight line towards the nearest remote control.
     Jump ahead some several hundreds of months and lay me down on that same blanket next to a 40 year old and a 50 year old, and there would be differences there too.  No longer defined by such milestones as babbling, blowing bubbles, or rolling over (which might make for an interesting test), it would be no less clear that age is more than just a number.
     It is the accumulation of skills and breakthroughs.  Accomplishments and disappointments.  Memories and regrets.  But also, gray hair and liver spots. Wrinkles and wisdom--although the fact that I'm letting someone lay me on the floor at the age of 60 might tend to contradict that last one.
     No one ever tries to stop the natural progression of  milestones in the early years, where each new change is cause for celebration.  And although we may want to, and even try to, we can't stop the milestones in the later years either.  We can work at keeping ourselves alert and healthy, but we can't keep ourselves young. And we can't stop the changes that the months and years bring.  We can only meet them head on with the same determination shown by the two month old Zoe as she valiantly tried to roll over.  It may not be as much fun watching the evolution of our own bodies as it is our grandkids', but it's no less real.
     I vividly remember being young, but I am not, and never will be, 60 years young.  Age matters.  As a 40 year old, I probably could have jumped right up from that blanket.  As a 50 year old, I'm pretty sure I could have gotten up unaided. But as a sixty year old, I'm likely to be apologizing for falling to sleep, and then asking how I got down there.
     And I'd sure appreciate a hand in getting up.  But get up I will.  Because I need to find that six month old.  He's got my remote control.

the F word

     I've never been one to curse very much.  Oh sure, I've uttered the occasional cuss word under my breath, and I practiced stringing the words together as a kid.  But saying the words out loud in the course of regular conversation has been pretty rare.  I've tended to save the bad words for the occasions that called for them.  And even then, I've used them sparingly.
     Not that I have anything against cursing.  I'm not like my mom who, as I remember it, cussed only once in her life and immediately started crying when she realized she had said the word out loud.  I can only assume that she had made some pact with herself never to cuss in front of her daughters and was utterly appalled at her lack of self control.  And, indeed, I remember being shocked--even though it wasn't a terrible word and was totally appropriate for the circumstances.  Who wouldn't cuss during a family driving vacation, in a hot un-airconditioned Chevy, with whiny kids and "No Vacancy" signs at every roadside motel we drove by.
     But even with my tolerance for potty mouths, there was one word that always bothered me.  The F word. There was just something about that word that separated it from all the others.  It was harsh--nasty sounding--shocking--hardly ever appropriate.  And yet, oh so satisfying on those occasions when the D word or the S word or the H word or the GD word just didn't quite do it.  When nothing else opened that relief valve for the frustration, or anger, or disappointment you felt.  You could bite down on your lower lip and the F word was always there.  Ready.  And it almost always helped.
     I never completely understood what it was about the word.  It is, after all, just letters.  Not all that different from innocuous words like luck or duck, or suck. Well, maybe not suck.  But otherwise, it looks just like one of the string of -uck words that you'd find in a rhyming dictionary.  Yet, make the first letter an F and, instead of poetry, you get shock and awe.
     Or at least you use to.  Lately I've noticed that the F word has gotten common.  Almost a part of everyday language.  I hear it on the street, in airplanes, at Thanksgiving dinners.  And I hardly ever gasp.  Shoot, I've even been known to utter it myself at such mundane moments as dribbling coffee down the front of my shirt or forgetting to pay the cable bill on the final night of Dancing with the Stars.
     Sure, the word may still get bleeped on TV.  But even that's only on some stations.  And not the ones that anybody watches.
    These days, it's almost become just another word.  George Carlin probably wouldn't even have an act. I mean, really.  If the F word no longer shocks a 60 year old woman, where's the gratification?  Where's the relief?  Where are the laughs? 
     Somebody needs to come up with a new word.  Quick.
     Otherwise, where's that leave us grandmas who are stuck in our SUV's, with whiny grandkids, and no McDonald's in sight.

Getting My Religion From Facebook

     I grew up surrounded by a lot of good, god fearing people.  These days, I mainly see them on Facebook, except on Wednesdays and Sundays when they're at church and I'm not.  But growing up, I was one of them.  Catholics on the left, Baptists on the right, and me sitting in the back pew of the United Methodist church seeing how many cuss words I could string together in one sentence.
     I've been uttering that sentence again lately--every time I log onto Facebook and find a big old revival tent set up on my homepage.
     I'm part of the new demographic--the 50 or older Facebook user.  Or, as I like to call us, Facebook users with less than 100 friends. We must be a discriminating group, because I see friend lists of 48 and 67 and 12 (take note, Robert Sloan).  When I signed up, my goal was to break 100.
     But I had my rules.  Don't embarrass my daughters by befriending their friends. Don't befriend old boyfriends.  Or their wives. Don't befriend anyone who might say, "Jeanne who?"  Don't befriend anyone who might want to chat on a regular basis.  Because, really, I just want to lurk and look at your pictures.  There's only one rule that I backed away from.  It was the one that didn't let me befriend anyone who I might turn down a different aisle from if I saw them at the local IGA grocery store.  That one left me languishing at about  10.
     I ended up with a group of friends heavy on people from my hometown--a small, Southern Illinois town that sits just outside of the unofficial boundaries of the Bible Belt. But, if my Facebook page is any indication, somebody needs to move that boundary due North, posthaste, because I can't log on without a flock of old friends quoting me scripture and lifting me up with prayer.
     Not to mention sending me personal "Messages from God."
     I don't know if anyone else gets these, but they show up on my wall in a picture of a blue sky, with "Message from God" written in white clouds, followed by a pithy little message. Morgan Freeman's voice booms out in my head every time I see one.  "MESSAGE FROM GOD!!!!"  It's a little intimidating.  The other day the message said, "God gives us a clean sheet of paper every morning to write on.  It's up to us what we put on it."  That little missive put this blog post on the back burner for quite some time.
     It's beginning to irritate me.  Almost to the point where I look forward to the posts telling me how to win a free iPad.  Because I get a lot of those too. My Facebook friends also seem to be a little gullible.  Not that I'm suggesting a link between gullibility and religion.  I'm just saying.
     I'm more of a skeptic.  Particularly about religion.
     I trace it to my childhood. My best friend back then was my next door neighbor, Donald. We got along most of the time, but occasionally he'd cheat at hopscotch and I'd hit him with a stick. He'd run home crying, and five minutes later I'd get pulled over to his house to apologize.  The next day, sure enough, he'd hit me back.  But come Saturday, he'd get to go to confession, say two Hail Mary's, and be forgiven.
     "Whoah!" I'd whine. "What's with that?  I'm the one that got hit with the stick."  It hardly seemed fair.  Particularly to us Methodists who didn't have access to a confessional.
     As we got a little older and quit hitting each other, we'd sit on my front porch and play all day Monopoly games.  Donald slowly took my money while telling me how I was going to be stuck in Limbo for all of eternity since I wasn't Catholic.  I kind of believed him since we Methodists were pretty laid back compared to the Catholics.  But I knew something was up when he told me that even the Baptists couldn't get out of Limbo. For my money, the Baptists deserved a place in heaven a whole lot more than the non-apologetic Catholics. Which isn't to say that the Baptists didn't have their own problems since their eternity, wherever it might be, was going to feel pretty endless without any music or dancing.
     I think the Catholics eventually backed away from the whole Limbo business, which makes me happy. Still, it's unsettling that it took so long. And, personally, I think they closed Limbo because it just got a little more popular than heaven.  It has me worried that some day they'll decide to close purgatory too.  And I really hope they don't, because I think I'd get along with a lot of the people there.
     Not that it helped me a lot back then though, since, according to Donald, I was facing two separate damnations--I wasn't Catholic and I wasn't baptized.  "Double damned," he gloated.
     I'm a little safer these days because my parents finally got around to baptizing me.   But not until I was 13 and none too happy to be standing next to a screaming baby in front of every Methodist in town. My pink corduroy jumper was the perfect compliment to my red face.  Part of me understood my parents' thinking--that something as important as baptism shouldn't be done until I was old enough to understand it.   But I was 13.  I didn't understand anything.  Especially why they thought it was a good idea to let me spend an hour curling my hair that morning when they knew someone was going to drop water on it. But, also, how baptism could be so darn important  if they felt perfectly comfortable leaving me unsaved and unprotected for 13 years.
     It was all pretty confusing, and I eventually resolved that confusion by walking away--got up out of that back pew and moved just far enough away to get out from under the Bible Belt that encircled my little town so tightly.
     My Facebook friends have mostly stayed put. And while they seem to have maintained clarity on the whole religion business, I'm still languishing in my own personal limbo, trying to figure out how so many people could ever fit into heaven anyway.
     Sometimes I think that my problem is that I don't pray enough.  Because I don't really pray at all.  Well..., occasionally I'll pray when I'm in one of my own foxholes of trouble.  Like when I had pimples in junior high. "God answers all prayers," they said.  But, apparently, in his own sweet time, because that prayer wasn't answered until well into my adult years.
      I'm pretty sure that if my Facebook friends got pimples, they'd be lifting those pock marks right up with prayer.  Someone with a 48 hour bug last week had 37 "lifting you up with prayers" on her wall. I felt like yelling. "GET OUT THE VICKS.  LOAD UP ON TYLENOL! Has anyone heard of PENICILLIN?."  But I ended up saying something lame like, "Wishing you well." I think I heard snickering when I pressed send. "That girl just never got it."
      Although I'm certainly getting it on Facebook, with a homepage that feels like the new "front door" for the devout.  No one's converted me yet, but they have got me thinking.  I can't even press "SAVED" on my computer without thinking, "Nope, not yet."
     I know I might feel more comfortable if I quit befriending the bible thumpers.  But I really wanted to break that glass ceiling of 100 friends without breaking any of my rules, none of which mentioned religion.  If I excluded everyone likely to be vocal about religion, I'd have less friends than god has commandments.
     And it's not like I have anything against my faithful friends.  They're good people.  I ate a lot of fish sticks at their Formica tables and we had some good times in those back pews. There's even a part of me that envies their certainty and believes they might be right.  Or--like the eight year old who's beginning to doubt Santa--a part of me that wants to believe. Just in case.
     If only I could get over that "heaven has to be awfully crowded" problem.  Because I really hate crowds.
     So I'll keep right on befriending the devout even though it means skipping over parables and scrolling past scripture to get to their pictures.  After all, in their own way, they really have lifted me up with prayer.  I climbed through that glass ceiling of 100 friends one god fearing friend at a time.
    "Godspeed," as they say.

Homemade Halloween

     The only thing I made for Halloween this year was our traditional Halloween stew--complete with the fall leaves that Alex and Bess were convinced came from our back yard until years later when they discovered bay leaves in the aisle of their local grocery stores.
     I didn't make any jack-o-lanterns.   I didn't make any pumpkin pies.  And, living in an apartment with no trick-or-treaters, I didn't make multiple trips to the grocery store to pick out bags of Halloween candy that I'd enjoy having as leftovers.
      I also didn't make any costumes, although there was a time when I did.  A time when I pulled an all-nighter pushing dull needles through layers of  fake fur destined to become a full-body, Care Bear costume for Alex.  A time when I spent multiple evenings cutting out poster board and gluing on hundreds of individual sequins and jewels to make butterfly wings, and then figuring out how to attach 4 foot wing spans onto 12 inch shoulders. A time when I altered one of my own suits the night before Halloween because Bess decided at the last minute that she wanted to go as an attorney instead of a princess.
     I don't get a lot of credit for those evenings, because somehow Alex and Bess remember that Baba, their St. Louis grandma, always made their Halloween costumes.  And to give her credit, there were gypsy costumes, and witch costumes, and Wild Thing costumes that bore Baba's accomplished sewing.  But there were also less professional looking costumes, glued, and sloppily sewn by me.
      The common thread was that they were all homemade--with love.
      And also a little bit of necessity, since the store bought costumes back then were cheap looking plastic, one size fits most, with colors and designs that inexplicably stopped at the side seams so that everyone looked the same as the Halloween parade passed you by.  Accessories were usually limited to a hard plastic mask with eye holes spaced too far apart and mouth holes you could barely breathe through, and fit was accomplished by cutting off a little from the legs, a little from the sleeves, and tying the one plastic tie a little bit tighter in the back.  
      The "good" costumes were the homemade ones-- crafted by moms and grandmas and pulled together by needle and thread, Elmer's glue, and whatever could be found around the house.  They weren't always professional looking, but they were almost always creative.  One of my favorites was worn by a little boy from a family of five kids (and a very busy mom), who came to the door with his winter jacket on top of his head.  When I looked a little confused, he told me happily that he was "a coat."
     There's not much confusion these days, when even the costumes from the drug store come with hats and accessories, and are made out of lots of different, authentic looking materials. My own grandson looked adorable for his first Halloween, dressed as an elephant, with a full-body fleece costume, complete with Dumbo size ears, hooves, and a foot long trunk growing out of the attached hood.  His contemporaries were equally cute as realistic looking pumpkins, and leopards, and butterflies, and pirates.  There wasn't a single dropped stitch or glob of Elmer's among them.  And I'm pretty sure the moms' creative input was directed mainly at deciding, "Walgreen's or Target?"
     Which is why I was surprised when Alex asked if I could help with Flynn's costume next year. She's living in Africa, with not a lot of access to supplies, and was apparently thinking ahead.  I grabbed my Elmer's, ready for whatever she had in mind.
     And what she had in mind was me going to the after-Halloween costume sales that she had seen advertised online.  I dropped the Elmer's and made a quick trip to Target.
     I could say I was chagrined that there wasn't going to be a homemade costume.  Or I could say something about progress sometimes being a little bit sad.
     In my first draft of this blog post, that's actually how I ended it.
     But I didn't post it because it didn't feel right.  And, quite frankly, it was a lie.  All the little kids in their store bought costumes looked adorable this year. I would have loved to have had choices like that for my girls, and would have been at the front of the line to buy any one of them.
     Thanks to Alex, I kind of was.  Courtesy of aisles of professional looking, non-plastic, half off, after-Halloween-sale, costumes at Target, Flynn's ready for next year with a full-body, fake fur, very cute, monkey costume, complete with a long tail in back, and a stuffed banana attached to his left paw.
     Bought with love.  And not even a little regret.

Perfect Babies

October, 2011

    Jill called me after spending the afternoon with Leslie, Joe, and Baby James.  ‘Mom, do you know that Joe Rydberg thinks that his baby is perfect?’ she said with disgust.  And I’m pretty sure that she was rolling her eyes in her inimitable way.  ‘He thinks that James is the most perfect baby in the world.’

    ‘Don’t get me wrong’ she added.  ‘I think that James is a great baby, I think he’s really cute, I think that he’s a pretty good sleeper for being six weeks old....but perfect??’

    I have to agree with Joe on this one.  I too think that my first grandchild is pretty darn perfect.  Just like I once thought my own firstborn son was perfect...

    I have a very vivid memory of standing with Aunt Shirl and staring through the nursery window at Steve as he lay swaddled in a blue blanket in a tiny baby bed, one baby among twenty or more in the Prentice Hospital nursery.  Steve was born before the days of rooming in. In 1976 new-borns spent most of their first hours in a hospital nursery while their tired mothers tried to sleep and anxiously awaited the arrival of their babies at feeding times.  Visitors met the new babies through the nursery glass.

    I remember staring at Steve and thinking that he was the most beautiful baby in that entire nursery.  I actually remember being surprised that all the other people standing and staring at the babies weren’t pointing at Steve and saying ‘isn’t that the most beautiful baby?’  Just like Joe, I thought that Steve was the most perfect baby in the world.

    It wasn’t until months later when I was looking at pictures we had taken of newborn Steve that I realized that Steve was not quite the perfect baby I had imagined.  Steve’s delivery had been a bit traumatic because he was what they called a posterior presentation, so I had spent four hours trying to push him out before he was finally delivered with forceps.  Being stuck in the birth canal for all those hours had given my beautiful baby boy a somewhat elongated head.  While I was blissfully staring at the nursery window at my beautiful baby boy, all those other people at the window were probably thinking to themselves, ‘Wow, look at the pointed head on that one!’

    I also thought that Steve’s sister Leslie was perfect--although her baby pictures show bright red marks on both cheeks from the forceps that were also used to deliver her.  And I thought that Jill and Johanna were perfect--although baby pictures of Jill show a red, squished up face.  Johanna, however, does look perfect in her picture!    

    Love, mother-love, father-love, aunt-love (because Aunt Shirl agreed with me that Steve was the most beautiful baby in that long ago nursery and I’m pretty sure that Jill thinks that James is nearly perfect) may indeed be blind,  and beauty may be in the eyes of the beholder.

  I’m beholding Baby James and I’m thinking he’s perfect.  As perfect as his Uncle Steve!

I Can't Be 60 If I Still Shop At Gap

    My blog posts have been a little heavy on the age issue so far and I'm trying to get away from that.  It's just that becoming a grandmother and turning 60 within the span of the last five months has kind of unglued me.  I can't seem to get my head around it, and find myself mumbling, "I can't be 60...," almost as often as I start sentences with, "Remember when."
    But I think I'm finally coming to terms with it and am ready to move on to other topics.  Like fashion.
    Bess went shopping recently.  Not high end shopping, but Goodwill shopping.  And not regular Goodwills, but three massive Goodwill outlets filled with Goodwill rejects that are sold out of overflowing bins instead of on racks and are priced by the pound instead of by the piece.
     Bess is a lot like me, with an eye for a bargain and a willingness to spend her Saturdays at garage sales or rifling through warehouses in search of a find.   She's also like me in that she often makes the mistake of going for quantity over quality.
    Which means that she sometimes arrives home with 50 pounds of clothes--or floor to floor clothing once I dumped out the 8 super-sized bags in search of treasures for myself.  Unfortunately, her finds on this trip were heavy on large sizes and I didn't find much to try on.
    Unlike my age, my weight has stayed in low numbers over the years and I rarely wear anything larger than a medium.  Not a bad problem to have, but also not nearly as good as it sounds.  Because, although my weight hasn't changed, it certainly has shifted.  "I remember when I had a waist!" has become a common refrain.
    I uttered it again when I tried on the cute little Ann Taylor skirt that I pulled from Bess's pile--the one that was tailored.  The one that, unlike me, had a waist.  The one that wouldn't come close to zipping closed and sent me back into the pile and not climbing out until the next day when I found a small pair of Tommy Hilfiger jeans.   The jeans were a keeper.  They were made out of that wonderful stretch denim that looks just like the real thing--at least in low light and in the eyes of someone who wears bifocals.  My girls might scoff, but stretch jeans are one of the few things that can get me through a day without leaving a button indentation on my non-existent waist that lasts until my next bath.  I love them.
     They're almost as good as the Gap jeans that I discovered on one of my own bargain hunting trips.  
     I've been shopping in Gap for years--mostly for my daughters, but also for myself.  Gap has great sales, and it's been gratifying to hang things in my closet from a store that my daughters didn't turn their noses up at.  It's also been one of the few stores that I've been able to shop side by side with the girls without eventually saying, "I'm just going to run over to the elastic waist department, or meet me in Naturalizer in 30 minutes."
     It's only lately that the Gap dresses have started to feel a little too short,  the tops a little too tight, and the store a little too young.   I still went in, but I rarely left with anything other than Christmas candles.  I got the bag but not the gratification.
     Until the day I came across a pair of jeans on the Gap sale rack, in my size, for $4.98.  I'll try on anything for $4.98, even jeans that look like they might be cut a little skimpy--like they should have been sent to T.J. Maxx as an irregular because someone cut the top five inches off of the pattern.  Like you can't hold them up without wondering what you're going to do with that extra five inches of underwear that will be peeking out.
     But low price tags resolve a lot of reservations  And I'm actually getting kind of used to a little underwear showing.  I've even been known to show a little bra strap myself on occasion.  Okay, not necessarily on purpose, like my daughters, but still.  And thank goodness for that, because I made a great discovery that day.
     Gap has these amazing jeans called "Low Risers."  They look just like regular jeans, but they stop many inches below where your waist used to be.  Now, admittedly, when you first hold them up, you're tempted to put them back because, "Whoa... these things are going to fall right off."  But when you try them on and turn around in front of that slightly too-well lighted mirror, you realize that your hips have expanded just like your waist, and will comfortably keep them up through whatever contortions you have to do to get out of your Lazy Boy.
    Sure, you may not want to bend over too far, but you're probably not doing that very much these days anyway. And, yes, you may need to buy some longer shirts and some shorter underwear, but that's a small concession for being able to breathe comfortably.   There's no waist band cutting into your stomach, no zipper extending all the way up into that dangerous area of belly fat, no sucking in to force that big button through the too tiny button hole, and no embarrassing elastic waists to stare at you from your dresser drawers and remind you that you've turned the wrong way at another fashion corner.
    I'm telling you these "low-risers" are made for the over 50 (okay, 60), no-waist body. Why Gap isn't out there marketing them to the aging baby boomers, I don't know and don't understand.  Because there's a thick-waist market out there just waiting to be tapped.
     They've certainly sold me.  I bought multiple pairs and am breathing more comfortably than I have in months.  And, really, I can't be 60 if I still shop at Gap.