Friday, November 18, 2011

I want to be like you when I grow up.


So…I have a pretty big family.  My mom had three sisters and my dad had five brothers and two sisters.  So there were always lots of aunts, uncles and cousins.  I love my family.  My dad’s mother died when he was two so obviously I never got to meet her, although I was named after her.  His father remarried not long after and his stepmother was who I knew as “Granny”.  She was nice to me but I wasn’t close to her. She died when I was around nine years old.  Everyone used to talk about how cranky and mean she was…and apparently she was really not nice to my dad while he was growing up.  But she was always nice to me.  I think maybe it had a little to do with my being named after the woman she replaced.  Maybe she thought she had to make sure and not be mean to the namesake of his first wife.  I don’t know.  It doesn’t matter to me.  It only matters that she was nice to me and taught me to play solitaire and often let me be the one to choose what we kids watched on TV if there was an argument.  My father’s father was Charles.  I loved “Papa Charlie”…he was an incredibly charming and affable man with a wonderful sense of humor.  He made the most amazing fried apples in the world.  He was just the cutest thing ever.  I remember being 16-17 years old and watching him comb his mustache with a little “mustache comb” given to him by one of the many, many, little elderly ladies in the neighborhood that had gigantic crushes on him.  He was adorable.  He was a carpenter.  He is the reason that I love the smell of sawdust.  He died just a bit before I turned 20.  Papa Charlie and Granny were lovely grandparents to me but I never really spent a lot of time with them.

My mother’s parents were the grandparents I was close to.  My grandmother was a fantastic woman.  She could cook like nobody else.  She could sew and whenever I’d sit still long enough, she’d teach me.  She always encouraged me and frequently told me how pretty I was and that she loved me.  She played baseball with us in the front yard using a garden hoe, a tennis ball and plastic butter bowls for bases.  She had a great sense of humor and she had a plethora of home remedies and wives tales to share.  I always felt like she could fix pretty much anything.  Her name was Margaret and she was amazing.  She had a way of making every single one of her grandchildren feel like they were her favorite.  I still think I was her favorite.  My grandfather was the classiest man I ever knew.  His name was Wayne.  He is the yardstick against which I measure all other men and unfortunately for them…few can compare.  He wore leisure suits with style.  He played the piano and could sew and cook and even” permed” my mom and aunts’ hair for them when they were young.  He had a wonderful sense of humor and frequently had a twinkle in his eye as he had a penchant for mischief.  Meme and Papa were my solace when I was sad and my get-away when I needed to be away from home.  I spent every summer with them from age 11 to age 15.   They were my ideal for what a married couple should be…for what grandparents should be…for what classy people should be.  Papa was a 33rd degree Mason and Meme was a member of the Eastern Star.  I was never more “star struck” than when I saw the two of them get dressed up for one of the Masonic Lodge dinners and Papa wore a suit and Meme wore a floor length dress.  They made a striking pair and while the two of them were very blue collar people…they knew how to pull off elegant and refined.  I wanted to be just like them when I grew up.  Papa died when I was in my mid-twenties…and it was likely the saddest day of my life to date.  I wasn’t ready for him to go and I didn’t really get to say goodbye because he was in a hospital five hours away and I was a broke, single mom with two kids who couldn’t afford to leave work.  Plus – I just never dreamed that we would lose him…I was so sure he would recover.  Meme died when I was in my very early thirties.  It was horrifically sad but I was more prepared because I was older and she had been ill with Alzheimer’s for quite some time.  Of all the people I have loved and lost in my life, I miss them the most and there are days when I still get choked up thinking about them.  It’s hard for me to talk about missing them…because generally, I end up totally losing it. 

The point of this long ramble…is that I’ve been thinking a lot these past few days about my grandchild that is due in June 2012.  I wonder what kind of grandparent I’m going to be.  I got to play a little at being a grandmother when my daughter was dating a man that had a child.  That was fun and I adore that child still…even though I know we will probably not get to see her much once her dad finds a new girlfriend.  This time it’s different.  This is a grandchild that will always be my grandchild – no matter what happens.  He or she will be truly MY grandchild…which leads me want to figure out how to be a grandparent.

I know the basics.  I had wonderful role models.  I have expressed to my daughter that I would very much like to be called “Meme” (pronounced me me or mimi).  That name has some big shoes to fill.  I just hope that I am up to the task.  I am going to try.

I want to be a good grandparent.  I want to be the kind I had…like Meme and Papa.  I want my grandchildren to look up to me.  I want them to come to me when they are scared or hurt or when they hate their parents.  I want them to grow up with happy memories of things we did when they were little and I want them to remember me with that same fondness that I remember of my grandparents.  I want to have at least one thing to teach them and at least one thing for which they remember me.  I want to be someone they are proud of and someone they admire and aspire to be like.  But most of all…above all other things…I want them to always know that nobody could possibly love them any more than Meme.

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