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.

Cursive Writing

September, 2011

    I was shocked to read in the newspaper several weeks ago that the state of Indiana has decided to drop a requirement to teach cursive writing as part of the public school curriculum. Instead, all Indiana students will be required to learn and become proficient in keyboarding.  I was even more shocked today when I looked up ‘cursive writing’ on Wikipedia and learned that  as of June 24, 2011, cursive writing was not longer a mandatory part of the grade school curriculum in my own state of Illinois!  

    Starting 3rd grade at Northside School with Mrs. Buckner was a big deal back in my grade school days, primarily because Mrs. Buckner was famous for making caramel apples for her class.  But 3rd grade was also the year that that Mrs. Buckner taught thirty nine year olds both our multiplication tables and cursive writing!  Even now, almost 55 years later, when I think of 3rd grade, I think of caramel apples, timed multiplication tests, and D’Learian cursive letters circling the room high above the blackboards.  Even now, I remember how proud I was when I could finally write my own name!

    My mother had a unique 3rd grade experience.  She lived in the country and attended a one-room school where one year she unexpectedly found herself the only 3rd grader in the school, so she was suddenly promoted to 4th grade.  She always claimed that the reason her handwriting was so bad was because cursive was taught in 3rd grade and all of her new 4th grade classmates already knew how to write, so no one bothered to teach her.  Fortunately, however, she never seemed to have any difficulty with multiplication! 

    My son Steve has the worst handwriting of any of my children and I’m pretty sure that his bad handwriting can be blamed on his 3rd grade experience as well.  Steve’s 3rd grade teacher was Mrs. Marietta.  Mrs. Marietta was a no-nonsense teacher who, legend has it, kept a red scarf in her desk that she whipped out if and when she was in a bad mood.  Her students quickly learned to tiptoe around their teacher whenever they spotted the scarf.  She was also a big believer in detentions.  I’m not exactly sure what Steve was doing in Mrs. Marietta’s classroom besides not paying attention to that red scarf, but, although he was a whiz at multiplication, he never really mastered handwriting--and he averaged at least one detention a week for the first semester of 3rd grade.  Steve’s detentions finally decreased when I realized that he didn’t mind detentions.  He actually liked hanging out after school with his friends in detention, and sometimes he even got a head start on his homework.  It was me who had to make a return trip to St. Matt’s to pick him up who was being punished.  Once I figured this out and started charging him $1.00 a late ride, the detentions improved.  But his handwriting never did!

    Leslie, my most artistic child, also had Mrs. Marietta but she sailed through 3rd grade with only one detention (for chewing gum) and emerged with beautiful handwriting that today makes her unique within her chosen field of medicine.  Her father, another physician, has the stereotypic  doctor’s scrawl. His 3rd grade teacher was a nun!

    The trouble with having more than two children is that after two, everything begins to blur.  I’m pretty sure that Jill had Mrs. Marietta for 3rd grade, I’m pretty sure that, knowing Jill, she got her share of detentions, but my only vivid memory of Jill’s cursive skills is the fact that by high school she could perfectly imitate my own not terribly proficient signature, so much so that I couldn’t tell her copy from my own.  I’ve since learned that Jill spent most of high school signing her own permission slips, report cards, and detentions!  Mrs. Marietta would be appalled!

    Johanna’s brain tumor made multitasking activities difficult for her so, while she learned cursive, she has always preferred printing.  However, she is a whiz at her times tables.

    Obviously much has changed since my mom and I were in school.  Obviously much has changed even since my kids were in school.  My son’s keyboarding class in high school was still called typing.  No one had any idea that opposable thumbs would supplant index fingers when it came to tapping out messages on communication devices! Leslie got her first cell phone her junior year of college and all it did was make and receive calls.  Texting was still years away.  According to Wikipedia, only 15% of high school students taking the ACT’s today write their essays in cursive.  Clearly schools today are correct to insist that all students become proficient in keyboarding.  But I’m not sure that keyboarding vs cursive needs to be an either/or choice.

    Keyboarding is efficient and quick.  It’s a skill that everyone needs in this technological age we live in.  But it lacks the personal touch of something written in cursive.   I have a group of high school friends I still keep in touch with, and, 45 years after we all graduated from high school, I immediately recognize all their handwriting when I find their Christmas cards in my mailbox.  My parents have been gone for almost ten years now, but occasionally I will come across a card, a note, the back of a photograph--and immediately I recognize their handwriting and have a sense of their presence.   

    Indiana (and Illinois) haven’t eliminated the teaching of cursive writing, they’ve just made it optional.  I’m hoping that the Mrs. Buckners and Mrs. Marietta’s teaching third grade today will continue to incorporate cursive in their own curriculum.  Handwriting is a very personal thing, one of the things that makes us unique individuals.  Good or bad, neat or messy, artistic or ugly, slanted, sprawling, it’s ours alone.  As someone named ddavidshi once said, “I don’t have bad handwriting. I have my own Font!”

    In this increasingly homogenous world we live in, we all need our own Fonts!

     

Sweet Baby James Cooper

September, 2011

    I’ve been a grandmother for three weeks now, thanks to the happy arrival of Baby James Cooper Rydberg.  And with the eminent arrival of Baby Harms in the next few week, after a long and emotionally draining wait, suddenly in the Harms family, it’s raining grandbabies!!  

    So, what does it feel like to be a grandmother?  Well, it’s wonderful.  There’s nothing better than cuddling with a baby, sniffing that sweet baby smell.  I’m thinking that this grandma gig is going to be really great.  

    But...

    When Joe took me in to the recovery room to see Baby James for the first time, it was an amazingly emotional experience.  I was beyond thrilled to meet my new grandson, but it was seeing the joy on Leslie’s face that brought the tears to my eyes.

    When we brought the baby home that first week and he was struggling with breast feeding, I was never concerned about the baby’s weight gain.  Instead, I was worried that Leslie would feel depressed and guilty about not being able to feed her baby in the way she wanted.

    When the baby had trouble sleeping, it was Leslie that I worried about being tired.

    When Leslie checked the baby’s diaper and was worried that his circumsized penis might be infected, I took a peek and offered my opinion.  I thought that everything looked okay, but I was immediately concerned about how tricky it was going to be for Leslie to combine being both a mother and a doctor.

    And when Leslie struggled with trying to decide whether to call her baby Jamie or James, it never occured to me to try to figure out which one he more looked like.  James Cooper is Leslie’s baby to name; I have already named mine.

    Don’t get me wrong.  I am truly enamoured of James Cooper.  I think he is the the most beautiful baby on earth right now, a title he will hold at least until his cousin in born!  I can stare at him for hours and like nothing better than for him to take a nap on my chest.  I love the times when I have him to myself and I can whisper love words in his tiny ear and pretend he is smiling back at me.  I am having a wonderful time wandering through baby stores and picking out cute baby clothes that I would probably have never been able to afford for my own firstborn.  I lay in bed at night and imagine all the fun things Baby James and I are going to do over the years.  

    But...

    When the phone rings and it’s Leslie, I ask first how she’s doing before I ask about James Cooper.  Because, I’ve realized that no matter how old I am, no matter how old Leslie is, she is, and will always be, my baby.

   Just as Baby James Cooper is, and will always be, hers.

Remembering Marshall

     There's a new page on facebook where people who grew up in my small hometown of Marshall can post their memories about growing up there.  It's only been up for about a week and already has a following of nearly 700 people.  Which is a pretty good turnout for a town that graduates less than ninety seniors each year and whose population has never topped 3,500.
     And, I have to say, Marshall's coming off looking pretty darn good.  Of the hundreds of posts, I haven't seen a single one that's negative.  All the teachers across the generations are loved, the catholic priests are revered, the mushrooms are to die for, the food in the school cafeteria is tasty, and everyone who moved away misses the town and still thinks of it as "home."  There are no memories of bullying in school, boredom at home, economic inequality, joblessness, break-ins, or worries about food being on the table.  Nor is there a single mention of alcoholism, even though the town has as many taverns as churches.  According to the facebook page, Marshall is the idyllic model of a small town--with happy families, rosy cheeked kids, no crime, no poverty, and no problems.  Mayberry at its best.
     Which is pretty much how I remembered Marshall too.  That is, until I moved back for several years in my mid-40's and started doing public defender work and seeing an underbelly of the town that I never knew existed. Murders in Marshall?  No way.  A serious drug problem?  I don't believe it.  Child abuse and neglect?  Not in my town.  Crippling poverty?  Not a chance.
     But it was all there underneath those shady elm trees.  And I'm pretty sure it was there when I was growing up--that there were a lot of kids who grew up in something other than idyllic conditions.  I thought I  knew everybody in town, but somehow I didn't know those kids.
     Which all makes me wonder about the facebook site and the Pollyanna picture that it portrays.  I suppose it's possible that people with really bad memories wouldn't be drawn to the site or wouldn't want to publicly post about them.  But what about the smaller problems that can play havoc with a happy childhood?  Is it possible that not a single person who was bullied in school has joined the group? Where are the memories of bad teachers, being the last one picked for the kickball team, loneliness, boredom, never getting off the bench in group sports, not having the quarter to get into the pool, the alcoholic cousin, the unemployed uncle?
     It may be telling that nearly all of the followers of the facebook site are over 50, with a well-worn AARP card in their wallets.  Maybe those 50 years are the time it takes for bad memories to fade and for the good ones to take on a prominence that they might not have always had. Maybe that's the time it takes for us to rewrite our memories in a way that deletes the bad times.
     I kind of hope that's the case--that bad memories get overridden by good ones as we get older. It makes me feel better about the bad things I saw in Marshall, especially those involving kids.  And it makes me think that there might actually be a silver lining to this whole aging thing--something better than my AARP  benefits and the promise of Social Security--which isn't looking all that promising lately.
     But I don't want to think about Social Security right now.  And I don't want to think about how my own memories of Marshall were a little tarnished when I moved back. I want to read about that 2 cent carton of milk we all used to buy at school.  And do you remember how much fun we had playing "Home Free All" late into the night?  Sleeping in the back yard in tents? Walking barefoot to the pool every day in the summer? How we all knew everybody in town?
     It really was an idyllic childhood.  Or so I think.

On Turning 60

    I made a bank deposit at the drive through the other day and drove away  with both my deposit slip and  the big pneumatic cylinder that they return the slip in.  I didn't realize it until that evening when I looked over and wondered what the odd thing sitting on my passenger seat was.  Oh.....
    When I told Alex about it the next morning, she just rolled her eyes and shook her head.  If Bess had been in the room,  I'm pretty sure they would have exchanged one of their knowing glances--that irritating, conspiracy of youth look that says, "I think Mom is losing it." 
     I'm turning 60 in a couple of weeks and the girls seem to see this as some sort of milestone, although not necessarily a good one.  I'm pretty sure they've started looking for signs of deterioration.  And I don't doubt that they're finding them.
     Saturday, for instance, I couldn't come up with my cat's name.  Which is a little bit pathetic since her name is "Kitty."  But, really, it was no big deal.  I  just used the anonymous call of, "Here kitty, kitty, kitty," and the cat came running.  No harm, no foul so to speak.
     My girls tend to see it differently though.  They seem to think that forgetfulness is a bad thing.  That it's tied up with aging.  Or brain cells dying. Or Mom losing it.  And so they look for signs.
     I probably should just ignore them.  But it's kind of got me worried that Alex may decide pretty soon that she can't let my grandson Flynn ride in a car with me. Come to think of it... I've never actually driven him anywhere yet.  And last weekend when I offered to drive home from St. Louis, she and Andy were quick to say that they weren't the least bit tired even though neither one of them has had a full nights sleep since Flynn arrived eight weeks ago.
     I think it might be time to sit down with the girls and explain to them that I'm okay, and that 60 is the new  40.  That I can still finish a crossword puzzle before either of them, name all of the finalists on Dancing With the Stars,  read several books a week (even if I can't remember the titles), and react in record  time at seeing anything vaguely resembling a mouse scampering across the floor. And that car accident this past winter?  It was absolutely not my fault.  Okay, I might bear a little responsibility for the broken back window in the Harms' Explorer, but that other accident...I was faultless.
     "Being able to text," I'll explain to them, "or having a phone with a keyboard, is not an appropriate test for competency."
     "And a little forgetfulness at a bank drive through is not a sign of impending senility. After all, I did remember to get my deposit slip.  It's right over....well, it's somewhere around here."
     All those signs they think they're seeing--they're really just nothing.
     When I was expecting Alex, I spent the entire nine months embroidering a special hand made blanket for her.  And then, on our very first outing, I set it on top of the car while buckling Alex in, forgot about it, and lost it forever somewhere along highway 40 in St. Louis.  My guess is that it probably ended up right beside my three gas caps that had the same fate.  And these things happened while I was a young 30-something.
    Surely the girls must remember me driving them to grade school and arriving with my coffee cup still on top of the car.  And I was how old then?  A baby...no more than 37.
     And what about that time that I wore two different shoes to the mall and shopped for 30 minutes before looking down and seeing one brown, one black, one flat, one with a heel.  I don't think I was even out of my 40's.
    That lost book that I finally found in the freezer....I was no more than 42 when I put it there.  Using hand lotion instead of conditioner on my hair....I've done that fairly regularly for decades. Forgetting to put the eggs in the recipe...not all that unusual over my lifetime of cooking.  And what about your Aunt Ellen?  She was only in her 30's when she drove the carpool and remembered to pick up everyone except her own daughter, who she left stranded at the grade school.
      "So girls," I'll explain, "the next time I drive off with the bank's cylinder, or forget your name, or open up the freezer when I'm looking for my book, don't assume that I'm losing it.  Because, believe me, I lost it a long time ago."
     And by the way, if you don't see me when you're reading this and think I might have wandered off, don't worry.  Flynn and I just went out for a little car ride. 

     
 

Where Have All the Bookstores Gone

     When I opened my used book store four years ago, I discovered some pet peeves I didn't know I had: dog-eared pages, books with writing in them, missing dust jackets, broken spines, scribblings in children's  books, and prices written in ink on books that eventually made their way to my store.
     Small irks.  All things I learned to live with.  A little Wite-Out took care of the inked prices.  Broken spines and dog-eared pages came to be seen as signs of a well read book.  Lines of initials on first pages as proof of a well traveled book.  And children's scribblings as a sign of an early appreciation of all of the arts.
     A few of the peeves I even learned to love.  Like the personalized inscriptions that so often express a fondness for a specific book as well as for a certain person.  All in all, a more than even trade for the pleasure of spending my days surrounded by books instead of by lawyers.
     But lately my pet peeves seem to have gotten bigger.  I get irritated not at books but at people.  The ones who write letters to editors bemoaning the closure of a local bookstore but buy their books off of Amazon.  The ones who don't browse in a bookstore because their lives are just too busy with all their electronic gadgets.  The ones who buy Kindles so as not to clutter their homes with books, but have four sets of china and two more bedrooms than family members.  The ones who consider books clutter.
     Admittedly these new irritations are all in direct correlation to what I see as dwindling book sales and the willingness of people to give up the pleasure of holding an actual book, flipping through it's pages, cuddling up in a chair with it, writing a personal inscription in it and, when they're finished, handing it off to a friend who might enjoy it.
     A woman came into my store recently looking for paperbacks because she thought her new Kindle was causing her hands to cramp.  I almost cheered.  It gave me hope.
     Surely, amid all the warnings and testings for hazards that we do in this country, someone will verify a causal connection between the new book readers and some minor health hazard.  Maybe they'll even find a slight, but verifiable, harm from second hand exposure to the devices.  They might even want to test for any slightly offensive odor that they emit.  With luck, some sort of graphic warning will be required.
    I'm not hoping for a cancer connection.  Just something minor that we booksellers can grab onto.  Something that makes people just a little bit afraid or irritated.
    And while they're at it, I hope they also do a test to reaffirm that browsing used book stores and holding an actual book in your hands causes pleasure. Because too many people seem to be forgetting that.