The every-other-year trip to sunny Oklahoma to visit with Grandma (great-grandma to my grandkids) was quite the stressful situation this year, which is the year my hubby’s and my sole remaining parent turns 87. She was hospitalized for ten days a couple of months ago with a terrible case of food poisoning – we don’t buy the ‘flu’ excuse, it wasn’t flu – and we flew our daughter out there to stay with her when she got out because we couldn’t take the time off. Daughter made arrangements for home health care, which she needs because she lives alone in a too-big house. The one her mother bought just off Main Street, which survived the tornado that took out the hotel a block in front and the Presbyterian Church a block behind. Back when my hubby was 8 years old and Norma and Clint ran the hotel.

She has also lost sight in one eye, so needed someone to take her car keys away for public safety’s sake. This also makes her depth perception non-existent, and has led to a series of nasty falls that have us and her other son’s family who lives about 45 minutes away most paranoid. Her friends and neighbors love her, but don’t want to be the ones to discover her dead one day alone in that big house, but she’s stubbornly clung to her independence since her husband of 50 years died over a decade ago.

Luckily she has very tough bones, product no doubt of her youthful career as a Rodeo Queen – champion barrel racer – and the number of times she’d been bucked off her horse. But it’s inevitable that one of these days she’s going to break something, and all her choices will be gone. That would be a very sad end to a wonderfully storied life, and not something we would ever wish upon her. So our job was to unite with the rest of the family and try hard to convince her that she should go into a nice assisted living facility less than a minute away from #2 son.

Her mind is going, at least the short term memory part. She often repeats herself, and tells the same long-ago stories over and over again to anyone there to listen. I figure the assisted living crowd will love her greatly, and never tire of her stories because their memories are bad enough that they’ll always be fresh! Plus there’s bingo, Bible study her son the Baptist minister teaches, good meals served to her in her apartment or at a table in the great-room (with the big screen TV), and the staff is there to make sure all her meds are current and given on time, which prevents those overdoses or underdoses elderly people are so prone to.

Plus, we bought her a nice mini tape recorder so she could go ahead and tell those stories for posterity, write that wonderful book about her life that we’ve wanted her to write for years. Something about her hard-earned wisdom of getting right back on that horse no matter how much it hurts after you get thrown. So pertinent to dealing with the nasty curve balls life throws at us all if we live long enough, and at which she is a certifiable expert.

She lost a husband in WW-II, then married my hubby’s father because he insisted. Loved her the moment he met her, despite her strong independent and rebellious streak. They lived those 50 years in a love story that has been a never-ending inspiration to me, Clint was the best man I’ve ever known apart from his #1 son. She is lonely now, and vulnerable. The boys and sister-in-law pressured her pretty heavily for the change in her circumstances, as of course they had to do because they’re her boys and the love her and they worry endlessly about her.

I had a different job. She got me when I was just 18, and we’ve had the most amazing relationship all the years since. More like best friends or twins from birth, we’ve always been completely honest with each other and aren’t afraid to criticize or generally bitch, or laugh at the silliest or raciest things, as if we shared a private joke.

So I was totally honest. We know we’re going to lose her if we don’t get hit by a bus any time soon, and it doesn’t matter all that much to me how or when. I’m still going to wail and cry and miss her terribly. So will her sons. I respect her independence, and am not going to insist or cajole or push in any other way for her to commit herself to an assisted living facility, but I will say it’s a nice place, nice people, plenty of company and they’ve never heard her stories! It could literally add years to her life, though she is like me in dreading the thought of living to be 100. Yet she might, so she should make arrangements accordingly.

Norma Jean is already the last one standing of her family and friends from childhood, so that’s not a wish she can still dread like I do. So I told her something she’s told us a million times, her way of dealing with the patients of the Gould Farm facility she volunteered for through her church after Clint died. When they asked her advice – and they always did because they considered her their grandma too – she’d always tell them they already knew the choice they would make, so they didn’t need her to tell them otherwise or to support that choice.

That’s what I told my beloved Norma. She already knows what she must do, and she does. She has put it off long enough, and will make the move. I told her we’d do nothing with her house and all her nice things. Not sell it (I might need it someday!) or rent it out, just seal it up and let the bank keep on paying the bills and Brinks to keep it safe. Then, I said, if she ends up hating the place, we’ll just take her home again. I think that helped.

While I’d love to be in a position for her to live here on the mountain with us and let me care for her until it’s over, she’s deathly allergic to animals and nature these days. Plus, my only bathroom is in the basement and the only spare room in the loft. It cannot be. I could leave my family here and move into that big house with her, but she really could live to be 100. What about my life and my kids and grandkids and such? Totally impractical, and there’s no more work in Oklahoma for a 58-year old man like my hubby than there is here. Where he has a job he likes and pays the bills, letting us stay here in our beautiful retreat from the wider world.

But I’ve volunteered for a mission too. She’ll send me the tapes of the stories, I’ve promised to transcribe and send back, she can edit and add, I’ll get the final manuscript all typed up. And then I’ll find a publisher and get it published. Real history, wonderfully funny and exciting and sadder-than-sad stories that may help others well beyond her own lifetime. She owes that to the world, and I aim to make it happen.

I love you most sincerely, Norma Jean. You’ve always been my heroine!

Char over at Casual Keystrokes blog has a post Moms and Grandmas should love – My Secret to Getting the Kids to Help with Chores. I like this idea so much I’m going to make it a regular this summer when we’ve a house full of grandkids at Grandma’s Summer Camp. Trick is to let the kids take turns being ‘boss’ and picking the rewards. Very, very cool.

11. Teach Your Grandchild Something Cool

When you have your grandchild for a day or a few days, try to get them interested in some skill or knowledge that you have, which he or she might be willing to learn. My daughter sniffed at sewing because I sewed – said she didn’t have to learn. But #1 grandson is quite the sew-er (seamster?), makes many of his own fashionable accessories (including a kilt and leather armor, all his halloween costumes) and does his own alterations. I taught him the basics, help him pattern, he enjoys doing the work.

If your grandchild is artistically inclined, have art supplies handy. If s/he’s a budding actor, encourage it. There are interests you as grandma can indulge and help to develop, and children need to know someone’s interested in what they can do.

12. Let the Grandkids Help With Meals

When our grandchildren are here with us I like to get their daily input on what’s for lunch and dinner. Sure, they sometimes think up something awful, but it’s an opportunity to get to know what they like and don’t like, what combinations most appeal to them. I’ve tons of cookbooks with great illustrations, and a big garden that’s usually got fresh produce incoming when they’re here. Except for strawberries and cherry tomatoes, most makes it into the kitchen before being eaten.

If we’ve picked a bunch of tomatoes, I get out the tomato recipes and let them decide. It’s usually Granny’s Famous ‘Mater Pie. We chunk up the variety veggies and marinate for kabobs. They’re expert ‘tater and corncob foil-wrappers, and will eat as much of everything cooked in or over the fire as they can fit in their stomachs.

13. Have Them Help You Read the Fine Print

When your grandchild learns to read, one fun exercise is to take him or her grocery shopping with you and teach them about scrutinizing food labels. They get to practice their reading skills, and learn something about what’s really in the stuff they’re eating.

My general rule is if you can’t pronounce it, you probably shouldn’t be eating it. Keep going through the brands until you find one that doesn’t have all those unpronounceable chemicals and preservatives in it, chances are your grandchild will decide very firmly that it tastes much better than that ‘other’ brand.


14. Let Them Make the Drinks Too

I have the simplest lemonade recipe on the planet – a cup of bottled lemon juice and a cup of sugar in two quarts of water. It’s hard to mess up, so I usually let the grandchild make it first thing in the morning, drink all day. Pick up some fresh lemons, limes or oranges and let them squeeze the juice. Let them help you harvest some fresh mint for mint tea, or work the juicer with the morning’s garden haul for homemade V-8.

You might be amazed at what healthy drinks and snacks your grandchildren will eagerly consume if they get to help concoct them. And you won’t get a reputation as the “junk-food granny.”

15. Encourage Physical Activity

If your grandchild is born in a city like mine were, you know that social conditions no longer encourage kids to spend time outdoors doing physical things. Too much danger out there, too little to do. If you live in a rural environment as we do, or can plan to go rural when the grandkids are with you for visits, keep them moving!

Go hiking or bike riding, visit museums or exhibits they’ll enjoy. Go camping or swimming, take up frisbee golf or horseshoes or badminton. Play kick the can or capture the flag at dusk, or even a friendly game of tag. Every bit of exercise you can engage in with the grandchildren is exercise that will help you too!

These are fun tips about how a new grandma can build a relationship with her grandchild/grandchildren that’s unique and valued. When babies are new some plain old mom-knowledge is most useful, some TLC to the new mom and dad too. Cook some meals, stay with the cranky baby while they take a walk to earn calm. Babies are not babies for very long, and before you know it they’re full-fledged kids with more energy than any adult, and an insatiable curiosity that seeks stimulation.

In the end, the very, very best thing about grandchildren is that you as grandma can give them back to their parents for the hard work and worry. Your main job is to enjoy them!

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Tips 1 – 5
Part 2: Tips 6 – 10
Part 3: Tips 11 – 15

6. If You Live Close, Set Babysitting Rules

If your kids live in the same town or area, you may fall into the “convenient” babysitter role. I’ve known grandmothers to get hoodwinked into providing full-time day care for young grandchildren because their daughter decided she didn’t want to deal with real day care when she went back to work. There’s nothing that can sour a grandma-grandchild relationship faster than a grandma who feels abused by the presence of that grandchild.

If you don’t plan to be full time caregiver, don’t volunteer for the job and don’t accept it when offered. Remind the kids that you already paid your baby-raising dues, and don’t plan to start all over again. Also beware of being the “convenient” sitter on call for any time the kids want a night out. Sometimes this can translate to indulgence, while putting the kibosh on all your plans for what YOU want to do.

7. Avoid the Dueling Grandmas Game

Often a grandma can be snowed with tales about what the ‘other’ grandparents do. If you fall for it, you may find that you’ve been hoodwinked into donating way more time, money and/or “goodies” than is good for anybody!

Often these days there are 3 or 4 grannies per grandchild, what with the burgeoning divorce and remarriage rate. And that situation has often conspired to contribute serious spoilage to the new parents as well as the grandkids. Parents and grandparents who vie for affection with bribes and fancy gifts aren’t really buying love. If love is what you’ve got to offer, it will be valuable in its own right.

8. If Finances are Tight, Consider Your Contributions Carefully

When families are starting out they often don’t have the accumulated means to buy a nice house or car, to purchase the nicest clothes or accessories, or afford the best pre-schools or private schools. Grandparents with money will often be asked to help.

Always consider whether what you can give is going to help or hurt the family in the long run. If you give them a down payment for an over-valued house with an ARM mortgage, they’re probably better off renting awhile longer. If the public schools aren’t bad, don’t get snookered into private school tuition just so the parents can brag. And if you don’t have much to spare, invest it for the grandchild instead – an educational fund is always a good investment that will benefit the child when she or he needs it for their own necessary future.

9. Respect The Parents’ Wishes

Sit down with your child and spouse and talk about what their parenting philosophy and hopes are. Then support that as much as you can. If they don’t want their child to watch violent television or movies, don’t let them watch such fare when you’re in charge. If they are raising their child to avoid meat, don’t sneak hot dogs or beef stew into ‘em. Same if they want their child to snack on fruit instead of candy, etc. If they’ve decided on a religion you don’t share, don’t try to undermine it.

This is basic common sense if you expect to have a significant role in your grandchild’s life.

10. Pay Personal Attention to Your Grandchild

Parents have a lot on their minds, often not much time for ‘quality’. Especially in households where both parents work full time and there’s more than one child a single child may feel she or he doesn’t get much one-on-one attention. Parents do the best they can, but the modern world isn’t easy.

A grandmother can offer a good chunk of that good-natured, non-judgmental, look ‘em in the eyes kind of attention that helps to bolster a child’s self-esteem. You can even be rewarded for this when that grandchild calls fairly regularly just to chat about what happened in school, who’s mad at whom, and share the details of their lives that are very important to them, but may not be so important to over-harried parents or siblings.

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Tips 1 – 5
Part 2: Tips 6 – 10
Part 3: Tips 11 – 15

My newest grandchild is affectionately known as Sunshine (when she’s not being referred to by her eldest cousin as GuitarGreg) will be making her appearance within the next 10 days or so, 500 miles away. She’ll be my seventh and the oldest is 17, so I’ve a little grandmotherly experience. Since I’m not a perfect person, perfect parent or perfect grandparent, I’ve had to learn some things the hard way. This series lists 15 tips that might come in handy.

Part 1: Tips 1 – 5

For you new or expectant first-time Grannies out there, here’s tips 1 through 5…

1. Choose Your Granny Name Well, You’ll Have It Forever

If you don’t want to be called “Granny” or “Grandma” or “Grandmother,” come up with something you like better. Your grandchild will hopefully have at least two grandmothers, and you’ll want to distinguish your title from the others. My grandmothers were “Miss Granny” and “Lala,” my hubby only had one and she was the formal “Grandmother.” Some like “Nana” or “Nonie” and “Amah” is pretty good if you don’t mind the Asian overtones. “MeeMa” is another grandparent name among the tribe, while yet another is simply “Gram.”

It doesn’t really matter what they call you, but that’s who you’ll be to them all their lives. Whatever you decide, let your children know your wishes. If you don’t they’ll give you a granny title of their own choosing, and you’ll have a heck of a time undoing it!

2. Don’t Attempt to Dictate Names for the Baby

I don’t care if “everyone” in your family is named after a relative, you don’t get to decide who – if anyone – a grandchild is named after. This can cause no end of tension in a young family, because the spouse also has a family that will have ideas about who that baby should be named after.

When we started our family we purposely chose names that nobody on either side owned, so there wouldn’t be issues of favoritism. Then had to correct situations where grandparents, aunts and uncles wouldn’t call them by their actual names. Best idea is to be happy for whatever name the parents choose (don’t pout if it’s not your favorite), then pay attention to what THEY call their child. If you reinforce the child’s awakening to his or her own self-identity, it helps cement your relationship.

3. Be Careful With Your Pet Names

Just as you may want to choose your own grandmother title, you may be tempted to stick a cute kiddy nickname on your grandbaby. This may be entirely inappropriate, so approach this with caution. If the parents use a nick, you can probably use the same one. Or not, it mostly depends on your relationship.

It may be okay to call the child by his/her formal name, even if the parents use an informal nick. “Steven” instead of “Stevie,” “Abigail” instead of “Abbie,” things like that. This way the child knows s/he has a formal, important-sounding name, and that his/her grandmother says it like it really *is* important. Makes them feel grown up.

4. Package Advice With a Spoonful of Sugar

Giving advice is always a tricky thing, and when you’re dealing with new parents it’s good to remember they’ve been through a lot very recently in just getting that baby into the world. If possible always wait for the right opening – when your daughter asks or expresses confusion, or her spouse expresses frustration.

Whatever you do, try hard to avoid taking sides in any ongoing disagreements between the parents. The last thing you want to do is cement dissent in the new family, so it’s best to put your best UN-style diplomatic skills to good use. These skills are something grandmas possess in abundance!

5. Be Positive, Even if Your Son-In-Law is Worthless

I’m joking, of course. Heard a Bluegrass band on the radio the other day called “The Worthless Son-In-Laws” (sic), which is the best band name since grandson #1 came up with “Puppet Hand Gone Bad” some years ago. So long as your child is happy in her marriage and he’s not running around or beating her, give him the benefit of the doubt. If you keep an open mind and get to know him, you might even figure out what she sees in him!

Stay tuned for tip installment #2…

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Tips 1 – 5
Part 2: Tips 6 – 10
Part 3: Tips 11 – 15

No matter how thoroughly you prepare, no matter how well you’ve planned for every contingency, no matter how many books you’ve read or how much good advice you’ve internalized, kids will be kids. And over a lifetime they’re entirely likely to do things that will surprise you, or become things you hadn’t counted on.

Reuters has an article entitled An Inconvenient Truth – Kids Aren’t Perfect that examines the truth about kids with a good bit of humor, which is an indispensable quality for any parent to have in the face of real life. A short cite:

Before becoming a parent, for instance, I genuinely believed I could convince my offspring that Barney the Dinosaur is in fact evil and does not actually love them.

I was also convinced that my children would be the first toddlers in history to possess, thanks to their kindly father, impeccable table manners and a keen appreciation of historical documentaries, late-90s acoustic mope rock and Alaskan scenery.

On all these counts, I was forced to face facts. News flash: kids love Barney, do not generally appreciate the genius of Ken Burns or Elliot Smith and will never, ever, even if you shell out many thousands of dollars on a pleasure cruise of Glacier Bay, give a damn about the majesty of the wild when there’s a buffet table piled with cookies behind them.

It’s a funny read, recommended for all grown kids of us grandmoms who are just starting their families. Of course, the article is written by a Dad, and Dads aren’t nearly as realistic in their expectations of children than Moms are (somehow, we just know these things). My newest granddaughter will be here soon, so this is is a laugh dedicated to Sunshine’s Mom, who is hereby permitted to read it out loud to Sunshine’s Dad, just so he can see how silly unreasonable expectations can seem.

Under the general heading of “nutrition” we’ve examined how to get the kids to eat vegetables, taken a look at how big food producers subvert our best nutrition goals through targeted advertising, how those same corporations once subverted the AMA to claim there’s no relation between diet and health, and how the best “animal protein” for infants comes comes directly from Mom.

The great blog One Big Health Nut has a post entitled Ten Great Reasons to Become a Vegetarian that just might help to push some of those kids who are toying with the idea all the way over the line. If Mom or Grandma were to help reinforce these reasons at home, that is. Why, a Grandma just might end up with a grandchild (like a couple of mine!) who eats bell peppers and whole tomatoes like apples, shuns any bread with no color, and subverts their school, scout and summer camp buddies to veggieburgers and veggie dogs.

Of Health Nut’s reasons, the ones that have worked best with my kids and grandchildren were #4: Save the life of many animals, #8: Help the environment, and #10: Vegetarian diets are healthier. Mad Cow and e.coli infection (Health Nut’s #1) are great reasons to avoid meat, but kids generally don’t tend to worry about such things much. They worry about obesity – they all know fat kids in their schools, and don’t want to be them – the environment, and (most of all for primary schoolers) animal welfare.

Go on over to One Big Health Nut and get the whole list! It’s worth printing out and putting up on the fridge with magnets. I did!

Ten Great Reasons to Become a Vegetarian

8 Good Examples of What Happens When Geeks Have Children

If you laughed at this borrowed photo, you’ve got some more laughs coming! Meanwhile, I’ve just gotta make one of those iPod onesies for Miss Sunshine, who should be here in the wider world with us this time next month!

Moms spend much more money that Dads do. More than 2 trillion (with a ‘T’) dollars a year! That’s a darned lucrative market, so it’s one with a hefty amount of psychologizing put into it by Madison Avenue when they’re designing ad campaigns.

Now, there are people out there who will insist that the target audience for all this marketing is children, and many psychologists insist that advertising targeting children is unethical. Not that ethics counts for very much when there’s trillions of dollars on the table, of course. Deal is, children don’t work for a living, thus have little money to spend on all those expensive, questionably useful consumer items they’re being sold. The person who is REALLY being targeted is Mom. The marketers are just adding to the marketing appeal by enlisting children to do their work for them!

Moms generally don’t watch as much television as their kids do. According to New Dream: Facts About Marketing, the average American child watches about 40,000 television commercials a year, which translates to more than 100 a day. This translates directly into what savvy marketers call “The Nag Factor” – getting kids to nag their Moms into buying something they want (but probably don’t need). Here are some facts about that “Nag Factor” to keep in mind…

• American teenagers will ask Mom to buy them something an average of 9 times before she finally gives in.
• More than 10% of 12-13 year olds admitted to asking more than 50 times for a product.
• More than half of children say getting Mom to buy a product they want makes them “feel better about themselves.”
• Nearly a third of children admitted that peer pressure plays a big role in what products they desire.
• The nag strategy pays off for both kids and marketers – 55% of kids say they’re usually successful in getting Mom to buy.

And don’t think that very young children are immune. Recent studies show that by the time a child is 36 months old – that’s 3 years old – they recognize an average of 100 brand logos. Some kids get money from their parents instead of goodies, and spend a collective total of $24 billion of it themselves on products they want. It’s their influence on how parents spend that the marketers are mostly after, since that figure dwarfs allowance big time.

So. How do advertisers do it? Here are the Top Ten Media Marketing Strategies for getting Mom to buy a child what s/he doesn’t need:

1. Play the “Cool” angle. If you can convince a kid that she or he will automatically become leader of the in-crowd if Mom buys the product, the kid will do all the hard-sell work.

2. Introduce kids to products at school. If a product marketer can get an ‘educational’ website approved by grade school teachers instructing classes in computer tech, internet resources and keyboarding, the kids will insist Moms purchase the products on a regular basis at home.

3. Create a children’s television program based on your products. Air it on PBS or other ‘kid-friendly’ channels in the afternoon or early evening, or on Saturdays. This ensures kids will nag for products associated with the program – toys, food, games, videos, clothing – you name it, they’ll make sure it gets bought.

4. Product placement is important. In the cereal aisle at the grocery, make sure the junk cereals are on the lower shelves. Put the candy and bubble gum within easy reach of short folks. Place the junk toys and candy below the tabloid rags at the checkout stands, Mom will be distracted. If a kid can reach it, Mom isn’t likely to get violent in public trying to pry it out of their screaming kids’ hands.

5. Make sure kids know that chemical dyed sugar water will make them fit and strong – and most of all, sexy. Then the kids will make Mom buy.

6. Don’t be fooled by movie ratings. Kids get into PG-13 and R rated movies all the time. Use those marketing trailers to sell, sell, sell!

7. Sex sells. Especially to 10-year old girls.

8. Use pointless approval slogans. “Mom Approved” or “Mom’s #1 Choice” are good whines to get children to demand bubble gum toothpaste, nutrient-sapping cereals, sugar drinks, candy disguised as fruit, and any sort of junk food.

9. Associate your brand with a cartoon character, clown or pre-teen idol. If the kids’ latest heartthrob wears X shoes exclusively, or dresses like a whore, the kids will demand those shoes and that brand of ‘junior petite’ hooker gear. If Ronald McDonald does a school magic show, the kids will want Happy Meals exclusively for at least three months.

10. Play the abuse card. Make kids believe that they’re being abused if Mom doesn’t buy them what they want right now, they will get that message across in no uncertain terms to Mom.

Urban legends – often spread on kids’ internet chat sites and through their cell messaging cliques – are very helpful for that last one. If a kid can inform Mom with a straight face that some kid in Peoria (or Bangor, or Seattle) committed suicide because they were being harassed for not having this jacket or those shoes or knowing all the words to that rap music song, Mom will feel guilty and concerned that her reticence to buy will drive the young’uns to suicide.

Interestingly enough, I have been unable to find any statistics on how many Moms go crazy, commit suicide or end up in jail for NOT buying things their media overstimulated children demanded. There probably aren’t any such statistics, but it’s a darned good thing (if you are a marketer who knows how to make children do your work for you) kids aren’t nearly as media savvy as Moms are!

Links:

Kids and Commercialism

APA Report: Selling to Kids

We are coming for your children

Online Marketiing to Kids: Strategies and Techniques

Kids for Sale: Television versus the Internet

The Older Child Adoption and Permanency Movement logo – Adopt Older Kids and Youth: A-OKAY.

It’s really kind of strange. When our own children were babies – and at 14 months apart, they were babies at the same time – we were positively terrified by them. Or maybe by our own perceived responsibilities FOR them. We spent many a long night just watching them sleep, deciding what we would and wouldn’t do in relation to the way our parents raised us, sowing the seeds for all new mistakes we invented along the way.

We didn’t have much furniture, being in the Navy and having to move every few months. So when hubby was at nuke school (that came between A-school and sub-school) in Bainbridge and we were living in falling-down WW-II housing blocks in Aberdeen, we put a mattress in the middle of the living room floor, pillows against the walls against which we could sit.

Daughter, our eldest, was just new to walking and didn’t mind having to crawl on soft living room floor one bit. Son wasn’t yet a year old, crawling and rolling was his main means of locomotion. I recall days and weeks spent doing nothing (apart from the usual cooking, dishes and laundry) but rolling around on that mattress with them laughing as hard as they could. Or just watching them wrestle with each other. They were so beautiful! So new, so promising. So much our responsibility!

Our neighbor downstairs was on welfare. Had four children – all girls – and one on the way, her occasional live-in honey (and father to all, far as I could tell) was a truck driver, “home” only now and then. We often heard them fighting when he was around, and her yelling at the girls when he wasn’t. They ranged in age from 2 to 6. Blonde haired, blue-eyed, they looked amazingly alike.

That neighbor apparently wasn’t as worried about the future of her offspring as we were. One day I opened the door to go to the laundromat and found all four of them sitting at the top of the stairs looking hungry. It wasn’t 7 a.m. yet.

All kids look hungry when they’re at your door or in your kitchen, any time of day and all the way through high school. I already knew this from raising my own little brother and sisters, there being 5 children in my own family. They usually lack proper boots and coats and hats in bad weather too. Wise to that game, I knew it wasn’t a sign of abuse. Just kids being incorrigible.

So I invited the girls in, fed them cheap cereal and applesauce, then dropped them off at the building stoop as I headed down the block with mine in the double stroller with laundry baskets stacked atop the sunshade.

Naturally enough, they appeared on my doorstep regularly from then on. Even after the new baby was born, Mom apparently locked them out early and didn’t open the door until late. I didn’t have the balls at the time to complain, so that little apartment with the mattress on the living room floor was home for nearly 6 months to six children. I’m sure the complex neighbors thought they all belonged to me. I didn’t mind all that much.

Soon hubby was transferred to Philadelphia in transit, then on to New London for sub school, I went with the children to stay with his parents in Oklahoma, then with my Dad in Kentucky when hubby went on his first Polaris patrol. Never saw or heard from those pretty little girls again, have no idea if they all grew up and if they did, how they turned out.

But I’d bet you a fin that if you knew one or more of them today, and asked them about their “difficult childhood,” they’d say they remember the lady upstairs with the babies, who had a mattress on the living room floor instead of a rug, and enjoyed nothing more than playing with them all day long. And who made really mean PBJs and oatmeal.

After the Navy years, as our kids grew up, there were of course many more strays. Sometimes our kids would bring them home, sometimes they’d just find their own way to our home. It was always crowded, I always cooked for a crowd, and it was a very rare evening hubby and I ever got to spend alone. Ended up actually adopting three teens of a friend who died, I consider the rest adopted as well even though we never went to court. Their children count among my grands too, and still the house is usually overflowing and I still cook for crowds.

We thought that when ours grew up (finally!) they’d leave home and start their own lives, I’d be able to actually wear some of those sexy nighties hubby gives me for Christmas and birthday every year, but which I never get to wear. It never worked out that way, though. I’ve got a wonderful collection of soft, silky, frilly little nothings that still have the tags attached, some of them 15 or 20 years old! I am pretty sure I wouldn’t look so good in them anymore even if I did get the chance to wear ‘em.

And you know what? I don’t believe I’ve missed a darned thing! Once you start looking at your life from this end of it, and start weighing the pros and cons of what dreams you had that never came true versus what nightmares you had that did come true, wearing sexy little nothings doesn’t seem to count for a whole lot. If in the end a life is valued for how it touches on and affects other people’s lives over the course of the journey, then I must be very rich even though it’s sometimes a struggle just to put food on the table. And that’s worth more than that red silk teddy with the Belgian lace… which I’ll probably leave to one of my beautiful daughters – tags still attached – when it’s a certifiable antique. They’d love to have it!