My Last Living Grandparent Died This Summer
My grandmother, Dorothy Greist, studying at Wellsley.
My last living grandparent died in July, my grandmother, my mother’s mother, in her late nineties. My mom called to tell me, calm for the most part as it had been a long time coming and my mom doesn’t fear death like I do.
I felt sad, and I cried that day, I’m always a little on edge about death. But there was a lot separating me from my grandmother, first the fact she’d had Alzheimer’s, hadn’t been coherent for a long time. The last time I talked to her was Christmas, and she sounded ragged and hollow, hoarse, of course didn’t know who I was. Also, I was in the middle of many grandkids, lived far away, didn’t visit often, so I wasn’t much on her radar. Plus the fact I always felt like she didn’t much like kids, something I think my mom felt too, which is a way bigger deal when it’s your mother versus your grandmother. My grandmother, though nice to me, just always seemed more interested in other things; this in contrast to my dad’s mother, whom I lived with for months at a time and who thought I was the best thing in the world and let me know it every day.
Still, it’s hard to have your last grandparent die.
I think it’s really important to go to funerals, a view my family does not share. My dad’s father, whom I was extremely close to--no one thought it important that I be at his funeral and I still feel a loss for missing it. I can’t turn back time and be there, but I could go last summer for my grandma, and did.
I took the train to Connecticut from Boston where I was working. My dad picked me up at the train station and we went back to the compound, three houses and an enormous tract of land that has been in the family for generations. We stayed with my industrious aunt, who had picked all the flowers for the service and was making preparations for dinner for 50 look effortless.
We caravanned to the church, very old fashioned, prim and proper with a tall white steeple, there were a lot of people there and the funeral people in suits were treating the family special, sent everyone to a room before where I sat with my aunts and uncles and cousins whom I hadn’t seen since we were children and I kept thinking, how did everyone get so old?
My grandmother was an amazing woman. She grew up the privileged daughter of a doctor and never lived far from where she was born. Was outdoorsy and adventurous when women weren’t like that; I still remember stories of her going backpacking with babies and having to pack in and out cloth diapers. She was an accomplished clarinet player. Volunteered all over her upper crust, puritanical town. My mom was the last of five children and tells of as a child being so embarrassed that her mom would forget her at school, having more important things to do, and how her best friend was embarrassed of her mom, who always was on time because she was just a housewife. One of my favorite stories of my grandmother is about when she was traveling, this must have been sometime in the 60s, she and a girlfriend had a chance to ride a cargo plane illicitly into Tibet and they did, slept on pallets and lived on cans of beans for a few days, until they were able to be flown back out.
After the service, the extended family went back to the compound for the meal my aunt had prepared, chicken and salad and bread and drinks, cookies for dessert. I’d been told I could have my grandmother’s house if I wanted it--everyone was hoping to keep it in the family--and I walked by myself around and through it later that night. It was built by my grandparents, wood and rock, grand and still there were relics of the 60s when they last updated it, and Eames office chairs, a blue graphic print on curtains I would have loved to take home. It was warm because there’s no A/C. The house desperately needs updating but it’s got so much potential--room and views, hardwood floors and a fireplace and I remember being there a few times in my childhood: the picture from a family reunion when I was 8 with us all standing around or sitting on or in front of the mustard davenport in the living room is one of my favorites; lunch on the stone patio out back; sleeping in my mother’s childhood bedroom on hot summer nights with crickets that we didn’t have at home, and fireflies which we didn’t have either. I would love the house, but I don’t see myself in Connecticut. That goes double for my husband.
The next morning, I sat in my aunt’s lush and varied garden, she lives in the original house, the one built by my great grandparents. I talked to my mom, who was feeling tension and unappreciated by her siblings, for all she’d done for the service and for them.
After, we went with my dad to visit his brother and wife. I’ve always really admired this aunt, but she as well has always been chilly towards me. Maybe it’s an East coast thing. This visit, though, she sat close and talked with me about how she’d waited until she was older to have children, said I’m not too old, which I really needed to hear and I hadn’t thought about her being older but it made me feel better to think I could be a mom like her. We went on a boat after that, my mom and dad and I, and then to the Peabody Museum at Yale, where all my male relatives went to college. The dinosaur bones that had been there when I was a little girl--when my mom was a little girl, too--were still standing.
That night, I took the train back to Boston, the signals down all along the line, the whole northeast messed up, but still I got home. Along the way, the train stopped for fireworks, bright outside the windows. Only once the sparks faded were we allowed to move again.
Missing California
One of my Southern California friends had a birthday last week. So I was thinking about him, and feeling sad and/or envious, I’m not sure which. He grew up in Santa Barbara and is an amazing surfer, he’s been in the surfing press not too long ago and I know his life has its challenges, but I wish I could surf, and be young, and live in that part of the world. I did all those things once; it’s gone, can’t (although I might be wrong) be retrieved. I could do all that--and did--with my youngest brother, but without him, I can’t shake the feeling that I don’t belong. It’s also my brother’s birthday tomorrow, he would have been 33, he’s dead five years now and around his birthday everything always feels off. It passes, but it’s so hard to sit with while it’s happening. I probably should have taken tomorrow off work, but I’m traveling later in the week and it’s just not possible. I try to stay positive and happy and look for the good in each day, but it’s hard right now.
There are fewer days I wake now longing for California. No longer every day, but it still happens.
When am I going to feel like I belong somewhere again?
Word Clouds
You know how sometimes once you see something you see it everywhere? That’s what’s going on with word clouds and me. Make your own at Wordle--just insert text and a word cloud comes back. So cool.
Pickled Beets
The beets just before pickling.
I live near my mom and dad, which is wonderful for a zillion reasons. Like: I get to go over on a Thursday afternoon and can pickled beets--beets my mom pulled out of her organic garden that morning. There were a lot of pickled beets in my childhood. They’re going to be lovely in the dark of winter.
Traveling Too Much
This year has been travel-heavy, to say the least. After next week, I’ll have 101 days away from home, with 20-25 more to come before the year is out. I don’t have to travel for my standard work set-up. So why am I doing so much of it?
The reasons this year are easy. Extra work (which I do have to travel for), because we need the money. Sick father-in-law (he’s doing better). Lots and lots of time with fertility doctors in Denver. But the truth is, this near-constant travel has been going on for years, since 2002 when I started freelancing and splitting my time between Boston and San Francisco.
I think how I grew up has something to do with it. I spent months at a time with my grandparents in Seattle (summer) and Mexico (winter), so being nomadic feels normal to me. But it’s tough on my husband and tough on me--always packing or unpacking, always trying to get ahead or catch up from being behind with work and life. What am I getting out of it? Some possible answers:
- The money
- Seeing my friends who are scattered across the country
- Big-city stimulation (our town is so small; sometimes a girl needs good restaurants and shopping)
Or maybe there are more sinister reasons, like:
- I’m not really comfortable in my life
- I can’t slow down because I’m scared of what I might find
I read an article yesterday in Poets and Writers about Christian Wiman, Editor of Poetry (love, love, love Poetry). Talking about his constant movement from place to place, he said: “It was anxiety, too, driving all the travel--the anxiety of the ordinary. You come to think of disruption, disorganization, dislocation, all those things as fuel for your art.”
I’m not sure I’m doing this as fuel for my art, but somehow I feel this--all over the country--is how I’m supposed to live. I’ve always been both scared of and drawn to the ordinary; maybe travel is a way to make difficult an easy, stable marriage (although I have managed that for the most part, but travel certainly makes it harder), a circle of close friends you can do things with whenever you want (vs having to plan around me being in and out of town), days where I have lots of free time to cook and garden and read and write and knit and hike etc. (vs constantly being disrupted, disorganized and dislocated).
I think part of why I want a baby (way, way far down on the list, but still) is to put a stop to this. But I can put a stop to it on my own, too. It’s just that a blank space on my calendar always feels like somewhere in which to squeeze another trip. The detriments, though, are starting to outweigh the benefits. Maybe it’s time to do things differently.
Image Credit: John Picken
Why Do You Want This Baby So Much?
So. I’m reading a book called “Inconceivable” by Julia Indichova (jury’s still out on whether I like it or not). But something I read yesterday keeps going through my mind--something a Chinese doctor said to a woman trying to conceive her second child. What he said encapsulates perfectly why I want a baby--why I can’t make this longing go away. (Because believe me, I’ve tried to talk myself out of wanting this. The savings in money and time and hassle and heartache would be astronomical.)
Here’s what the Chinese doctor said:
“You need to keep asking yourself why you want this baby so much. Do you want it for yourself, to own it, so you can say you have two children? Or is it a channel of your love to send out into the universe?”
New age-y, I know. But I need places for my love to go. January has got to be our month. Please God let it work.
Fiscally Responsible Indulgences
So last week my husband and I were at the bookstore and I browsed across this book of knitting patterns.
“That dress is great,” my husband said. “Why don’t you get the book?”
“Maybe,” I said, but I left without it. Later, I got a lecture about not denying myself things that I want, because I need some treats in my life.
“You can afford that book,” he said. “It’s all about fiscally responsible indulgences.”
I went back and bought the book because I know he’s right. But it wasn’t just about denying myself things; another part of the reason I didn’t initially get the book is I am such a beginning knitter, and most if not all of the patterns are beyond my current abilities. But now that I have it I really want to make these clothes, so I’ve spent most of the day knitting--not something from the book yet, but something harder than I’ve done before. I’m making my husband a hat, charcoal grey with a knit/purl pattern, the first pattern I’ve attempted.
It took two or three tries to get the round knitted and joined together. It took a couple tries to figure out how to go from knit to purl and back in one row. And then my circular knitting needle broke, and so I lost all my work (four rows, but still.) I went and got a new needle and am ready to start again, although other things need to be attended to so it will have to be tomorrow.
Bottom line: I learn a lot, and am a heck of a lot closer to fabulous vintage-looking knitwear than I was when I started. A good Saturday.
Privacy, and “Something Bad that Turned Out Fine in the End”
A couple of interesting things in the October 25, 2010 New Yorker, which I read last night 3 AM hot bath couldn’t sleep.
“Young people discovering their identity and their desires need a zone of privacy where they can be who they are, perhaps in the company of another human being, without feeling that somebody else might be tweeting it, filming it, or blogging about it, or that maybe they themselves ought to be--there’s such a thing as violating your own privacy, too. The unobserved life is so totally worth living.”
--Pride and Prejudice, Margaret Talbot
Interesting to read the week I start a blog.
And, about the rescued Chilean miners:
“…it is a story of something bad that turned out fine in the end. … Only in a handful of stories…is there hope of a true happy ending, in which losses are restored and sorrows cease. … Thirty-three men can now say, for the rest of their lives, ‘At least I’m not trapped down at the bottom of a mine.’ … People are trapped by circumstances; other people help them. There is a way out. Since this is the fable that every life hopes to trace, maybe the madness isn’t so mad at all.”
--A Way Out, Adam Gopnik
Infertility Sucks
A brief history of my attempts to have a baby:
1998 or 1999 – 2000-ish – Try to have a baby with husband #1. Unsuccessful. Never went to the doctor
2001 – 2005 – Need some time to be free and get over my bad/failed marriage
2005 – Brother’s killed and I’m in no shape for anything
2005 – Meet husband #2
January 2007 – Move in with husband #2, stop using birth control
October 2008 – Marry husband #2
January 2009 – Go to local ob/gyn re: possible infertility; no workup other than fibroid diagnosis
February 2009 – Fibroid surgery
April 2009 – Fibroid surgery #2; told to try on our own to get pregnant for the rest of the year, then come back if it doesn’t work
November 2009 – Schedule appt. with specialty clinic
January 2010 – Get worked up at specialty clinic. Turns out there are multiple issues. IVF recommended
February 2010 – IVF #1 cancelled due to cyst
March/April 2010 – IVF #2, chemical pregnancy (very early miscarriage)
July/August 2010 – IVF #3, chemical pregnancy (very early miscarriage)
Need to wait until January 2011 for various reasons – then: IVF #4
It’s hard to go through this. It’s not necessarily going to turn out happy. I do better just not thinking about it, unless there’s something specific that needs to be done.
Infertility sucks.
IVF #4 worked! I am officially pregnant! Due date: October 26, 2011.
IVF #4 pregnancy ended in a missed miscarriage at 11 weeks, 5 days. FET planed for July, 2011.
Our FET worked! I'm 6 weeks pregnant with twins!
Boxers Are the Best
Newton, age 2, and Dexter, 6.
Two boxers live in our house. Dexter I inherited from my brother who died. Dexter barks at the mailman and is blind in one eye. He’s named after the street in Seattle that my grandparents used to live on (I would love to buy that house and move in, but that’s another post). Dexter sleeps with his tongue sticking out. He once chewed the arm off of a leather couch, which was perplexing until the couch went in for repair and the repairman found a tennis ball stuck inside. Dexter came from Santa Barbara, California, and we sometimes joke that we took him away from life as a movie star’s dog, complete with his own nanny and custom doggy swimming pool.
We liked Dexter so much we got him a doppelganger. Newton’s actually smaller than Dexter, so we call him the three-quarters boxer. He came from the rough side of our Colorado town and he’s got a wee bit of a temper. He’s bonded to my husband beyond belief. He chews up my shoes as protest when I leave town; last week he got two of them. He’s also the sweetest, lickiest, happiest dog I know.
Boxers.
Happy sigh.
Life’s so much better with dogs.
Why Blog?
My desk in my home office, where much of this blog will be written.
So last week an idea that’s come and gone for years popped back into my head: “I should write a blog! It’d be fun!”
Quickly followed by: “That would have been cool ten years ago, but everybody’s doing it now.” And: “Why would anyone want to read anything you write, you’re just an average girl.” And: “There’s already not enough time in the day, why would you want to add something else to your schedule?” And: “That’s a stupid idea. Get over it.”
Herein (I think) lies the source of much of my misery: I don’t let myself do what I want to do. I talk myself out of things that sound fun--why, I have no idea. But I’m trying to get ready for another IVF cycle (major fertility treatment), and one of the things I’m trying to do is get myself into as happy a place as possible. Just in case those who say the reason I’m not getting/staying pregnant is because I’m not totally happy, and what baby wants to be with a mom who’s not 100% cheerful all the time? (I’ll have a lot to say on that point of view at some point, by the way.)
Anyway, my “get happy” mandate has somehow helped me brush aside all those negative voices, and hey! Here I am! Blogging! Just because it’s fun! And if I find I don’t like it, I can stop, right? But at least I’ve tried something I’ve thought about doing for a long time, instead of just leaving it on my long list of things I’d love to do.
Yay, me! :)
How Can You Be Happy After Bad Things Happen?
So here's the story:
Girl has childhood with some rough elements. Girl, grown up, does what’s expected of her instead of what she wants. Girl’s first marriage goes down in flames. Girl lives with her beyond-cool baby brother/best friend/soul mate (not sure that's the right word, but don't know what else to use to get across how close we were)--up until he’s killed in an accident. Girl meets and marries fabulous second husband and tries--unsuccessfully so far--to have the baby she’s wanted for absolute-ever.
Girl started out pessimistic by nature, and at this point feels pretty beaten down by life. But girl doesn’t want to be one of those people who wake up in the morning wishing for it all to be over. Instead, she wants to be the kind who wakes up happy and thankful for all the good in her life and all the amazing, beautiful, inspiring things that happen every day.
This blog is intended to document one girl’s attempts--big and small--to get to a happy place.
Welcome to my world. :)