Baby boy

Living in Indiana and New Hampshire, back in the 80s, I watched with mild envy during Christmas programs while some other young mother held her newborn baby in the annual nativity tableau. Peter was born too late, in mid-January, Matt and Sam were springtime babies; David was nearly three months old by Christmas.

This month, while we tended two of our grandchildren: Eliza, age 4, and Link (Lincoln), age 1, for nine days, I started learning "Mary Did You Know". I was inspired by our friend, Marilyn Foley Jodoin, who died November 22nd. Many remembrances of her included how she sang that song each Christmas, accompanying herself on guitar, her long, red hair swaying to the music. Eliza sang it to us, impressing us with how much of it she knew by heart.

So, at four in the morning, I sang it, over and over, to soothe wakeful Link. I looked into his clear but troubled eyes and wondered at the miracle of this baby boy. I realized that I'd always focused on the story of one night, but that baby of Bethlehem grew up, day by day: one week, one month, one year. I'm sure his mother marveled each day, long after the shepherds and magi were gone home, just as I had for my own six children and as I do now for our dear grandchildren. I’ve never felt closer to the story of Bethlehem than while looking into the large blue eyes of our babe of Boston.

A year of Nerd Fitness

 This month I turned 65. It hit me like a ton of bricks, to use a cliché (which I’ve been informed GREAT writers never do.)

I’ve always laughed at birthday numbers. I’ve proudly announced my age: 40, 50, 55. But 65 has thrown me for a loop. (Oops, another cliché. Must be losing my stuff.)

Growing up in America, age 65 has been the official commencement of old age since July 30, 1965, when President Johnson signed Medicare into law. I was eight years old. A presidential signature. 65? You’re old.

I subconsciously put it off. I didn’t sign up for Medicare until 12 days before I turned 65. I had vaguely heard the advice to sign up three months in advance of my birthday, but I didn’t do it. I don’t recommend the ‘head-in-sand’ approach. (Another cliché)

It all worked out. I’m officially on Medicare and working on understanding what that means.

I’m also working on overcoming my dismay at being officially old.

Please don’t comment with ‘you’re as young as you feel,’ or any such pep talk. Let me wallow in my self-pity for a post.

A year ago, on December 1^st, I joined Nerd Fitness' one-on-one coaching. My first coach resigned (I’m not taking it personally: she bought a farm with her husband and was expecting a baby) and Coach Sarah and I have been working together since February. She’s a weightlifter in Ohio and has a pet duck.

Lately I’ve been skipping workouts, feeling old and worn out. Writing this, I’m suddenly reminded of the night before Peter was born (our second child). It had been lightly snowing and I was in very early labor all day. Since our doctor was in Indianapolis, an hour north of Columbus, Indiana, where we lived, we decided to drop Rachel (now R’el) off at our friend’s house for an overnight while we went to a Red Roof Inn in Indianapolis. Our kids can explain to you what a big deal that must have been. I won’t regale you with the whole story, but after a whole movie in a theater (Tootsie with Dustin Hoffman) sans contractions, I was awakened in the Inn at 3:30 a.m. with powerful ones. I told Jim I didn’t think I could handle this and he gave me a firm coach-to-pregnant-woman-in-labor lecture: basically, buck up. (Well, what else could he offer?) That helped, a lot. He was a fantastic childbirth coach for each of our six births. I’m grateful he was there by my side, helping me through contractions, one at a time.

Fast-forward 38 years: yet again I’ve got to buck up. I’ve now spent enough time whining about being old. I was appalled the other day when my nearly-four-year-old granddaughter said, as she took off running, I’m faster than you! It was true.

I can only go forward. Hopefully I can maintain strength, maybe improve a bit. It is a big challenge. Back to those Romanian Deadlifts.

Oma Duty

 For the past thirteen days, our big house has been blessed with additional occupants: three-year-old Eliza and twelve-week-old Link (Lincoln) (he was ten weeks old when he arrived) and their parents, Sam and Savannah. As I discovered last summer, when Eliza stayed with us for ten days while Sam and Savannah drove from California to D.C., tending young children is exhausting at age 64. Sam and Savannah have been working everyday (the only way this visit has been possible is with remote employment) and we've watched our young charges each afternoon.

At first, Link was evidently not happy with the level of care, and I put an emergency call out to my trusty Relief Society (our church's women's organization): baby swing needed!

The swing has made a huge difference to my sanity, just as when we had babies back in the eighties. Swings have changed over the years. Our lime-green thrift-store special sported a hand crank, four long, thin aluminum legs.  and a vinyl sling for a seat. The swing we borrowed takes two people to move and must be rated to withstand a magnitude five earthquake. It's electric and has settings for various sounds and music (who knew a child needs to hear "Greensleeves" in the first year of life?)

Link can get very hot and bothered, but when he's calm, it's magical. His dark blue eyes, startling under the mop of dark brown hair, sparkle and he chortles with glee. My heart melts. Every day he changes, a little more interactive, a little more in control of his body.

Eliza is a self-possessed young girl. I'm delighting in sharing my favorite children's books with her. Today it was Hey Al by Arthur Yorinks, illustrated by Richard Egielski. In 1986, it won the Caldecott Medal for illustration. She loves it as much as I do.

Cotton Candy and Hauling Water

Last week we hosted our annual ‘Summer Retreat’. Two of our children, their spouses, and the three grandchildren came for the whole week. We had never gotten our act together to rent a summer house: when the coronavirus hit, procrastination proved to be an excellent strategy. Instead we invested in making our home a ‘grandchild magnet’. The most popular item was the foosball table. Seven-year-old Andrew became an avid player.

About two months ago, five-year-old Victoria asked for a cotton candy machine. Jim scoffed at the idea, but one of my fondest memories of childhood was the magic of a cloud of sweet fluff. I loved how it melted in my mouth. We experimented with coloring our own sugar, but didn’t like the result. Besides, white granulated sugar is much more inexpensive than the commercially-colored sugar: being the classic under-spender that I am, I went with plain white, pristine as clouds in the sky. Jim continues to improve his technique and can spin them as big and fluffy as my childhood memory.

I lived in Northumberland, a sleepy little hamlet nestled on the Susquehanna, until I was nine years old. A regular summer outing was to Rolling Green, a small amusement park with a large swimming pool, Ferris Wheel, roller coaster, other rides, games, and food. I loved watching the cotton candy machine, with its huge steel drum, as the wispy threads magically appeared and the operator deftly twirled them around the white paper cone.

Andrew and Victoria had enjoyed cotton candy in New York, but it was a new experience for two-year-old Eliza. She watched Jim make one for Andrew and then he asked her if she’d like one. She shook her head firmly. I held out a piece for her to try, but she said, “I don’t like hair.” I laughed and said it didn’t taste like hair: it was candy. She didn’t budge. Watching Andrew and Victoria enjoy their treats, she finally relented.

Before Peter’s family left, we did some yard clean up. Xiomara started emptying buckets of wading pool water onto the garden. Completely inefficient and time consuming, but I felt connected to my garden as we carried water, two gallons at a time, to drench our rhubarb, tomatoes, and raspberries. It’s been a very dry summer and the soil is a dusty brown. When Xiomara was a young girl, she and her sisters carried water home from the river in Honduras. I felt the simplicity of that life as we used the leftover pool water to nourish our plants.

Cake with pink frosting

I’ve always pictured addiction to be like water pressure from a fast-moving river on a dam. I thought that the cravings increased in intensity without a break.

But, my recent mindful experience with food cravings is that they ebb and flow. I’ve known that part for years. When I fast for 24 hours, the hunger pangs don’t grow at a steady and inexorable rate. I feel acute hunger, then it subsides. If I get involved in an interesting activity, either intellectual or physical, the hunger goes away. Not just because I’m not focused on it: when I do think of my fasting again, I’m often not hungry.

This week I realized that visual cues are hugely important. I’ve always pooh-poohed the idea of putting your temptations in a cupboard. How ineffective, leaving only a cupboard door between myself and the temptation: I still know the sweets are there. What I didn’t realize is that simply seeing the sweets activates the craving.

Case in point. Our granddaughter, Eliza, visited us for a week while Savam drove across country, from L.A. to D.C. (To the East Coast! Huzzah!). We had a delightful but exhausting time. Two important details:
1. Two-and-a-half year-olds don’t stop except for naps and bedtime, and sometimes not then even.
2. Although capable of independent play, Eliza’s grandparent’s attention radar is always on full alert. Within five minutes (I’m not exaggerating) of my focus being on anything besides her (weeding the garden while she played with water toys, cooking or reading my phone while she played), she was on top of me, demanding my full attention. The day she decided not to nap and screamed to be let out nearly outdid me. Her bedtime became my bedtime.

We successfully executed some activities (reading my carefully collected and curated storybooks was a hit), including baking a Betty Crocker cake with homemade buttercream frosting. She particularly enjoyed watching the pink paste food coloring swirl into the white frosting base. (I’ve loved pink frosting since I was a girl.) Cracking eggs was above her paygrade.

Jim was in Chicago, so we didn’t make much of a dent in the cake. Every time I walked by the cake, I felt an urge to cut a piece and eat it. I resisted, sometimes, but it was hard. I finally put it on top of the microwave and under a cupboard in the corner of the kitchen. The cupboard shielded it from my view. When I went to use the microwave and was confronted with the enticing pink frosting inches from my nose, a wave of craving crashed over me. I overcame the urge, but it was powerful. Keeping the cake out of sight, even though I knew where it was, really helped my avoid it.

How do you fight your cravings?

Eliza visiting

Our son Sam and his wife, Savannah, are moving to D.C. this week. Being our youngest has its perks: a backyard trampoline, big screen TV, and Blue-ray player in the past, free child-tending in the present.
Sam and Eliza flew from L.A. to Boston Saturday night. He returned home Sunday and Eliza began her extended stay.
It took me a day to get my ‘sea legs’. For weeks I had fantasized how she would play happily in the yard while I gardened. But when my attention leaves her, she's there to reclaim it in no more than ten minutes. I went to bed disillusioned.
Tuesday morning I was more at peace. It helped that her nap time yesterday had been long and quiet and that after breakfast Jim offered to play with her for an hour or so while I wrote, I jumped at the chance and was much refreshed to start my shift. While she played with our old Fisher Price airport, house, and barn, I was able to clean out the fireplace ash (four months after the last fire of the season). She wanted to play in the filthy bucket water. I was nearly done wiping down the hearth, so I happily rinsed the red plastic bucket, filled it with fresh water, put on her flip-flops and my sandals, and headed out for the shade of the backyard.
After watching her for a while, contentedly filling and emptying plastic nesting cups, I went to the garage, put on knee pads, and started weeding in the garden bed nearest her. In about five minutes she came over, asked what the knee pads were, what I was doing, and then stated that she wanted milk (which was inside the house). That was the end of that project.
       Knowing that milk could segue into lunch and a two-hour nap, I readily acquiesced. I’m finding the balance between catering to her whims and holding the line. Milk and juice are only allowed in the kitchen and dining room. She turns into an angry little dog and growls at me, but I just growl back. She doesn’t know how good her life is. I hope she isn’t disabused any time soon.

My Melting Heart

We last saw Eliza at Christmas time, when she was 13 months old. At 21 months old, she is bubbly, bouncy, and verbal. When she first saw me last week and said, “Hi, Oma!” in a high and clear soprano voice, my heart melted.

We had our annual Summer Retreat: a week dedicated to our immediate family. Eliza won my heart; Andrew, age 6, and Victoria, just turned 4, already had. Several months ago, an older friend of mine said, "Grandchildren just melt your heart." I agreed that grandchildren are wonderful (“If I’d known grandkids were so much fun, I would have started with them” quips a tee shirt), but this week I experienced what she was expressing on a deep level. It’s an astonishing thing, to be accepted fully and without reservation by a tiny human being.

I love Victoria and Andrew; our relationships are more complex, in good ways. We can tell jokes and tease and talk about how things work. Andrew is teaching me how to play Pokemon, a game I ignored when his uncle was young and enthusiastic about it. Victoria and I play with kinetic sand and read stories.

Eliza is endearing as only a one-year-old can be. The freshness, the little personality in a pint-sized body: every encounter is magical.

When Victoria was this age, I visited them in New York. She returned from an afternoon doctor’s appointment and came into the living room; she saw me and ran to me, arms outstretched. The love of a child is deeply healing. The love of three is beyond measure.

They're really saying I love you

Saturday Jim and I attended Linda Huppi's memorial service. We knew Linda from our church congregation. She was soft-spoken and unassuming, but a force to be reckoned with musically. For many years she accompanied musicians on the piano and the congregation on the organ, as well as serving in the church organizations for children, youth, and adults. Every year for thirty years she wrote and organized both a Christmas program and a Spring Sing concert. She even wrote her own memorial service, beginning with prelude music by Sounds of Grace Hospice Choir she belonged to, filled with musical offerings, and ending with a trombone solo, “What a Wonderful World”, which became a favorite of mine when we sang it for a Spring Sing several years ago:

I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do,
They're really saying I love you.

Such a sweet thought. And just like Linda. All her quiet service was her way of saying to everyone she met, “I love you.”

Linda was just twelve years older than me. My walking buddy, Susanne, remarked this week, “Our children are going to weddings; we go to funerals.” Just two weeks ago, while I was in California, a friend of mine, just five years older than me, died of a sudden heart attack.

But life isn’t completely dreary. I was able to spend time in sunny California with my sister, her husband, and dear little Eliza while her parents took a vacation in London and Edinburgh. Although spring flowers and green leaves are still many weeks away, daylight savings time makes the days seem suddenly longer and full of light.

There's plenty of sadness, but it is a wonderful world.

Tending Eliza

I spent all of last week at RootsTech, the largest family history conference in the world. I attended presentations from 8 a.m. into the evening and learned about immigration records, German surnames (my two grandmothers were German), maintaining research logs, and helping others with family history.

I thought I’d write this week, while tending 15-month-old Eliza in southern California. What was I thinking? I’m staying with my sister and her husband, which gives me some breaks now and again, but Eliza's favorite activity is climbing the staircase. She crawls up fine, but hasn't learned the art of gracefully descending and insists on walking down, so I hold her hand. There's no child-gate and it's her go-to area to roam. Since she lives three thousand miles away, it’s precious time to be with her, but I do wish her once-a-day nap was a bit longer. Today I made the mistake of taking a long stroller-walk at 10 a.m. She slept in the stroller and her nap was shortened by an hour. Tomorrow's forecast is for rain. Thursday's game plan? Take my stroller-walk after her noontime nap.

Third anniversary: August 12, 2018

On Sunday, August 12th, on my way to church, I made a voice memo about David’s death anniversary. For several months, I’ve noticed that I have to count to determine how long David’s been dead. It’s been exactly three years, but it feels like four years, or five. I calculate: it’s 2018 and he died in 2015; I’m sure of that. 18 minus 15 is three. I’ve gone through that arithmetic many times. I mentioned it to Jim. He suggested that it’s because so much has happened in our lives since then. Spoleto USA, three years in a row. The total eclipse in Idaho. A reunion in Maine last month, preparing for our own in a week. The lives of our three grandchildren: Andrew, age five, Victoria, who turned three on August 12, and Eliza. We spent Thanksgiving with my sister Maggie and her husband, and saw dear Eliza on the day of her birth.

Victoria was born 40 minutes after David died. Everything we’ve done with her has happened after David’s death. Sometime after David died, I restarted my frequent drives to the Bronx to see Andrew and Victoria. (Oh, yeah, and I see their parents, too…)

This week, I’ve had an email exchange with my friend Cort. A year ago, on August 6th, his wife, Corey, died unexpectedly in her sleep. She was exactly a month shy of 41. David had been dead just two years. Although I’ve been emailing about grief to Cort, I hadn’t made the connection that Corey died just six days before David’s anniversary. And it will always be so. Maybe I’ll remember Corey’s easier that way, knowing her death was 23 months after David’s.

Friday, we took a guided tour of Lexington’s Old Burying Ground. The earliest graves date from 1690. It’s a recurring guided tour; I chose the day that Jim was available. I didn’t realize that it would be so close to David’s death date. That’s the thing about the third anniversary: I keep being reminded that I’ve forgotten. If someone would ask me when David died, I would say, instantly, August 12th, 2015. It’s there, but somehow, emotionally, it hasn’t been in my consciousness as much, frankly, as I feel it “should be”.

Early grief feels like it’s never going to change, that gut-wrenching searing pain. Even though people told me it would change, it would be easier, I couldn’t really imagine it. That’s the cognitive distortion of powerful emotion. It’s one that I wouldn’t try to talk anyone out of. I would only say, in my experience, there has been healing of the raw wound and hope they can find comfort in that. Healing has happened, is still happening.

Genealogy Heaven

Early last Tuesday morning, I joined about 40 other passengers to board a Southwest plane to Milwaukee. We each got an entire row to spread out in. Almost as good as first class!

In order to save the $400 premium for travelling on President’s Day weekend, I chose 11 hours of travel time to get from Boston to Salt Lake City, via Milwaukee and Los Angeles (yeah, California). Have Kindle, will travel! I remained on the same airplane all day and had a unique experience in Milwaukee. After refilling my water bottle in the terminal, the gate agent waved me through to re-board the plane before the waiting new passengers. I walked down the jetway alone and directly into my chosen seat: no line, no waiting. What a feeling of power and privilege, to board before anyone else, without showing a boarding pass. (I’m easily amused.)

That afternoon I rented a car and drove to see Savannah and dear little Eliza, who are visiting Utah from L.A. (I practically flew over their apartment building, but they weren’t there.) The eagles were gathering (Luke 17:37) for a double baby blessing for Eliza and her month-younger cousin, Leo.

Over the next two days, I spent over eight hours at the huge Family History Library (FHL) on Temple Square.

I had no idea what to expect: over the last nine years, millions of records have been digitized and are available, free of charge, from home through FamilySearch.org. What could the FHL have to offer?

What I found bowled me over: several floors, each with a huge corps of experienced volunteer genealogists, eager to guide me to the next level of research.

A seasoned genealogist helped me find an image of my great-grandfather’s handwritten baptismal record, dated October 27, 1860, from Poznan, Prussia, now part of Poland. There are records going back to 1558.

Another volunteer, experienced in Lithuanian and Polish research, introduced me to research tools for Polish locales. Amandus Gustav Bruesch and his parents, Gottlieb and Justine, spoke German, but his birthplace, Poznan, is now a Polish province, 100 miles from the current German border. I’ve daydreamed about visiting the Bruesch homeland: turns out I’ll have to travel to the middle of Poland.

With family activities, I won’t be able to return to the FHL this trip, but I’ll be back. Imagine an entire building of seasoned genealogists, united in their desire is to share their expertise.

Carol of Joy Mixed with Sorrow

Christmas snuck up on me this year. The distraction started with the trip to Montana for Duane’s funeral, followed by two and a half weeks in Southern California, enjoying Thanksgiving with family, the birth of Eliza Joy Johnston 2 days later, and finally Oma duty, cooking for the new parents and cradling Eliza.

After Thanksgiving the holiday lights started appearing in Maggie’s California neighborhood. I found it unsettling to see Christmas lights and decorations with temperatures in the 70s.

Tonight, on my way home from my weekly temple visit, I stopped to enjoy some houses in Lexington.

  The first is my second favorite house in the world. From each window shines a candle. The first-floor windows are nearly room-length and I've always fantasized being able to walk through one into a front room.

The little girl in me seeks out the multi-colored lights of my childhood in Pennsylvania. They aren’t common in Lexington; home owners (including myself) tend to the New England tradition of white candles in each window or a spotlight on the wreath on the front door.

2017 started out as the year David wasn’t going to turn 30. On Sunday the choir  sang “Carol of Joy” by Eileen Berry. Every time I rehearsed it, I wept, and the performance was no different. Although the carol's ultimate message is profoundly hopeful, pointing to the redemption of the fallen world and the deep joy of the Savior’s birth, the lyrics' depiction of dry, withered leaves, cold, barren hillside, and death holding the lonely, fallen world fast, fills me with sorrow.

Yes, Christmas is a time of joy and my experience with death deepens my hope. But it's intermingled with  pain at the closing of the second full year since David died.

         On a brighter note, we are expecting Peter, Xiomara, and our other two grandchildren, Andrew and Victoria, for the Christmas weekend. They'll bring their stockings to hang over our fireplace mantel. I've got all the ingredients for homemade egg nog and my mom's traditional Christmas lasagna (She hated roasting turkeys. Miss you, Mom!).

Candle Lighting and New Life

For The Compassionate Friends’ Worldwide Candle Lighting, we lit our double-wick maple butter candle along with the first and second candle of Advent. We paused a few minutes to remember David during our Advent supper. Over half of our guests were kids, some too young to remember David at all, the rest having barely known him. Of course, these children don’t know any of our grown children: to them we are grey-haired denizens of a two-person nest. It was a bittersweet moment, realizing that David will make no more memories and that no one new will get to know him: his thoughtful gifts, his dedication to hard work, his funny laugh.

David with Santa Claus at the Arlington Ward 2009

After my trip to Montana to attend my cousin Duane Hazen’s funeral, I flew to southern California to spend Thanksgiving with my sister, her husband, and some of our kids. Two days later, Eliza Joy Johnston was born to Sam and Savannah (Savam!). As a full-time homemaker, I got to spend the next ten days with them. I love the fresh, soft-as-satin skin, the huge eyes, the arch-less feet and tiny toes. Sunday morning Savam went to church while I minded Eliza; Monday they took a lunch date. It was hard to leave.

While staying with my sister, we took several one and two-hour walks along the “Fullerton Loop” trail near her home. Weather in the 70s, sunny and bright. Four days after I returned to Lexington, it snowed several inches, a sudden shock to my system. But on Monday the sun shone into my office window, intensified by the reflective snow in the yard.