Grammys Can’t Cry Over Spilt (Poured) Milk

 TV:  The perfect Grammy!

I was excited they were going to stay with me. Their mama, my daughter, was having a birthday and she and her husband hadn’t had an evening off in quite a while. Miles is four and Georgia is two and they are my grandkids and I love them. They can be a handful, but hey, I have three degrees in Early Childhood Education, so what could be the problem?  Plus, it was just for 24 hours. How hard could it be?

We had a nice birthday party for Melissa, cupcakes with sprinkles. So, a few sprinkles landed on the floor. I’m not that clean anyway, plus I was also going to keep Lou, the bulldog, and he was already on KP duty, snorting up the tiny candies with his inverted nose and then sneezing. I did notice that Melissa and Trevor, the celebrating parents, seemed to be a little too eager to leave and they left no forwarding address, only a vague reference as to where they might or might not be if I needed them.

For the first hour or so, everything appeared to be going fine. Miles is just a tad addicted to TV and his mom and dad try to limit his time in front of the screen, but, since Georgia was so busy with so many things, I decided it would be okay for him to have a Disney marathon for a couple of minutes (hours) to comfort him while his parents were away. Georgia and I cooked and read and drew pictures and put her bear, Beary Manilow, to bed several (a ridiculous number of) times, while Miles watched what I was certain (assuming) was educational viewing. At some point, Georgia’s science experiment having to do with pouring her milk from one cup to another got a little out of hand when I saw her conducting it all over my living room floor, but I took care of that by taking it away from her.

The day was chilly and windy, so I thought we would just snuggle at home and have a quiet afternoon watching the Disney marathon and reading several (about 10,000) books. At some point around 23.13 minutes after their parents had left, Georgia was in my lap helping me type on my computer when Miles emerged from his educational (stupefying) reverie with, “Grammy, the TV won’t work.” I put Georgia down and went to the television and saw that, indeed, the screen was black. As an electronics genius, I went into my normal fix-it mode by turning the set off and then back on, sure that all would be well.

It wasn’t. The screen was still black. I checked to make sure everything was plugged in. It was. My next (and last) step was to look at the cable box. I noticed that its little light wasn’t shining, so I turned it over to see if there was a power button. There wasn't. However, what there was was milk pouring out of the slats on the top the cable box.

I'd like to say it got better.  It didn't.  I decided that, without TV and even though it was really, really cold, we might as well go to the park, which would also give Lou the chance to do his business.  

Lou did his business all right, scratching up sweetly-budded blooms just outside my door in the newly planted garden paid for and overseen by our condo association.  Good neighbor that I am, I had my Publix bag with me, along with my keys and my phone and Miles and Georgia and don't forget good old pooping Lou himself.  Because I didn't want to walk them all around to the back of my building to throw the bag of poop away, I decided to take it with me to the park, confident I would find a trash can along the way.

I didn't.  I ended up carrying that bag of poop with me every step of the way to the park, at the park, and home from the park.  "Swing me, Grammy!" Georgia would say and I would swing her, bag of poop in my hand.  "Help me with this, Grammy" Miles would say, and I would help him, bag of poop in my hand. Lou would chase another dog through the park, his leash dragging in the mud.  I would chase him, bag of poop in my hand.

We finally made it back home, cold but maybe a bit tired, Publix bag happily ensconced in one of the trash bins out back.  Being the good Grammy, I made them supper. Miles ate about seven croissants and two boxes of raisins; Georgia ate a leftover bag of bar-be-cued potato chips.  I got them bathed and ready for night-night (thank God), blowing up the blow-up mattress and placing it at the end of my bed, happy to know they would feel safe and loved, near, but not on top of, me.

It didn't work out that way.  Georgia ended up in bed with me, sleeping sideways with her feet in my face.  Miles, at some point, rolled off the blow-up bed and slept on the floor.  Lou, however, enjoyed the squishiness of the air mattress, sleeping in the middle of it all night, his toenails tearing at the plastic casing, snoring loudly enough for my downstairs neighbor to hear him.

The next morning was better as we ate blueberry muffins and two more boxes of raisins and Miles found Nick Jr. on my computer and I brought 700 new books in from my car to read to Georgia.  That's until Miles pulled himself out of his reverie to say, "Grammy, the computer isn't working."

It wasn't.

 

Before and After

Proximity Worry

My kids call this syndrome “proximity bitching” but it’s really more about worrying than anything else. It seems the closer I am to my grown kids physically, the more I worry, which, I guess, factors into increased bitching (at least from their perspective).

Since, in any given year, I spend just eight weeks or so in Portland (two at Christmas, six in the summer), leaving forty-four weeks in Atlanta, poor Molly carries most of the burden of my anxiety. I worry about her school work, her health, her sleeping patterns, her money management, her cats, and her (lack of) cooking skills.

However, for the eight weeks I’m in Portland, Melissa and Billy are the lucky recipients of my hovering. Just recently, Billy had a series of severe headaches a doctor semi-diagnosed as cluster headaches. As you might guess, within twenty-four hours, I was an internet expert on the topic and the poor guy not only had the headaches to suffer through, he also had his mother texting him every few minutes with stupid messages like“how r u?” or "rate pain 1-10". In addition, after just a couple of days following Miles around, I’m already obsessing over him running out into the street, as if Melissa doesn’t handle Miles and the street all months other than Grammy months. Molly, on the other hand, is getting some time off as I have no idea what graduate projects she has due or what she’s burning for dinner.

I think proximity worry partially has to do with time zones. When I’m in a different time zone from my kids, I don’t fret as much. It’s almost like they aren’t living in real time. For example, when I wake up in Atlanta, it’s still the middle of night in Portland and I figure most people don't do anything really stupid just before dawn. Conversely, although Molly stays up too late and sleeps too late (in her mama’s opinion), it doesn’t bother me as much when I'm on west-coast time, since our personal clocks seem better synchronized from three time zones away.

When I was a young adult, having achieved the status of working woman, wife, and mother, I believed my parents were done with worrying about me, and they certainly didn’t seem to be overly interested in how I was doing, even though we shared a state and a time zone. They retired and traveled, had a cabin on a river in south Georgia, and finally built a retirement home on that same river. Of course, those were the days before cell phones, texting, Facebook, twitter, and Skyping brought immediate information on the good, the bad, and the ugly of us all into virtual proximity. As my parents were merrily puttering down the inter-coastal waterway, they weren't constantly checking their Blackberries for updates on my bad judgment.

I do remember my father being incredibly mad at me when Gary and I split up. Except for wanting his sympathy (which I didn’t get), I believed it really wasn’t my father's place to have an opinion on my screwed-up life. Boy, do I now see things differently. To continue with my somewhat wet analogy, Daddy thought his little girl was safely moored and battened down, and then, all of a sudden, she was back at sea, and unfettered at that. I now know his new worry probably caused his river putter to sputter a bit, knowing I was knee deep in life change.

Just recently, I was talking to Molly about my obsessive worrying and she pointed out that it probably has something to do with loss of control. When my kids were little, I drove them to school, took them to the doctor, and fed and bathed them. Although I did none of those things particularly well, I still accomplished them in my own way, in my own time. Now, my parental tasks involve mostly sitting and waiting - and worrying - and texting some.

I know mental health experts and well-meaning others would tell me to get out, to get a life, to volunteer, to get a turtle or a bird, to pray or meditate. I do use those stress-relieving and centering strategies (other than the turtle, the bird, or any real volunteering), but I have this weird philosophy, which pretty much says if I worry enough, nothing bad will happen. Take income taxes. If I obsess enough over how much I'm going to owe, the outcome will be good and I might even get some money back. Of course, an accounting course could also have a good outcome in that I would learn how to handle my taxes and what exactly to expect, but that accounting thing just sounds so boring.

Back to my kids. The one time I didn't worry about Molly and her health, she ended up in the hospital with emergency gall bladder surgery over Christmas vacation. Even when she showed up at my house with yellow skin and glowing eyes, I didn't worry, or at least I packed it away to be opened later with my winter coat and gifts for the grandkids. We boarded a plane for a cross continental flight with a Vegas layover and landed just in time for a breakneck trip to Good Samaritan and a family Christmas dinner in the hospital cafeteria.

And so, it seems I'll most likely continue to obsess and fret and do smart things and dumb things, worrying when I shouldn't and not focusing on real problems when I should. I'm pretty sure I won't be making any major changes as to how I navigate the world at this late date, so I'll just keep on putting one step in front of another as I stumble through life, figuring it out as I go along. It's not particularly pretty and it won't win any prizes, but so far, it's worked out pretty well.

Except for that layover in Vegas followed by emergency surgery in Portland part.

The Left Coast

Okay, I've been meaning to come clean about this but have been putting it off. I think I'm ready now. Here goes.

I'm bi-coastal.

I know it's hard to believe and, trust me, it's a difficult life. The looks I get, people not understanding, the indecision, the not being able to remember where I am when I wake up on any given morning.

I have to blame my children. Two of them just up and moved to Oregon, which is on the West Coast or, as The Big Kat calls it, the Left Coast, while the third one refuses to leave Georgia, which, if I remember correctly, is on the East Coast, or, as the Big Kat would probably call it, the Right Coast. Then, the two who moved started procreating at an alarming rate, three kids in three years, and those kids turned out to be pretty darned cute despite their parentage and grand-parentage. And, to further complicate things, I have to believe my baby will have babies of her own at some point, little southern babies, not western babies.

So what was a Grammy to do? I tried staying in a hotel when I was in Portland but that was too expensive a way to seek refuge for very long. Stay with the kids? You’ve got to be kidding me. We don’t like each other that much, plus it takes me weeks to get used to west coast time.

I ended up buying a tiny condo in St. Johns, a quirky little village in the middle of Portland, where I’m within walking distance to my first and third grandchild and a pretty quick drive to my second. I like to describe my Portland condo as being like a not particularly well-appointed suite in a mid-priced hotel. I live there each Christmas vacation and during the summer. While I’m gone, my friend Susan waters my poor pitiful Atlanta houseplants each week and checks on my car to make sure it's still there. One thing I had to do was to give my cat Chloe time to die of old age before I could make my move to dual citizenship, as I was pretty sure neither of us would've survived her taking on this lifestyle.

I lucked out with my Portland home, parlaying someone else's misery into something good for me when I purchased it in a short sale. And I like to think, because I enjoy small spaces, my two homes are smaller together than the one home of many of my friends. For example, I have two bathrooms. They just happen to be twenty-five hundred miles apart. Rather inconvenient when I have guests, but otherwise just fine.

Although The Big Kat cleverly calls the West Coast the Left Coast, I’ve found Portland and Atlanta to be about equal on the liberal-o-meter, although that conclusion just might be based on the people I hang out with. Portland is, however, much greener than Atlanta. There are bike lanes everywhere and Portlanders take their recycling quite seriously, so seriously, in fact, that I’m a nervous wreck as pick-up day arrives each week. Am I putting everything in the correct container? Are the garbage people going to ridicule me because there is evidence of meat eating? Is possession of styrofoam in Oregon a misdemeanor or a felony?

Another difference between my Atlanta home and my Portland home is air conditioning, in that, in Portland, I don’t have any. When I tell Southerners that little tidbit of Oregon news, they automatically start fanning themselves with invisible cardboard funeral parlor fans. But, the truth is, except for a few days in late July, I don’t miss it at all. In fact, June almost always finds Portlanders in some kind of funky hoodie as they bike to the green market or recycling center.

In front of my Portland home. Note the bicycling family and the blue recycling bin.

I also like to think about how Georgia and Oregon are alike in a weirdly wacky diametrically-opposed kind of way. Georgia, on the East Coast, is the second most southern state in the contiguous US. Oregon, on that other coast, is the second most northern state within the put-together part of our country. They both have a gorgeous coastline, although Oregon has much more of it. They both have mountains and rivers and back-wood small towns and people with few teeth and/or meth addictions. They also both have professional sports teams and state universities with rabid football fans. I must say, however, that UGA's uniforms are much manlier than those green and yellow get-ups the poor University of Oregon players are forced to wear.

Despite all the ways Georgia and Oregon are alike and different, and my good luck in finding a second home in Portland, the sad bottom line of this otherwise happy story is that my first two children couldn’t have moved any farther away from their mama and still stay in the united part of the United States unless I lived in Miami and they moved to Seattle. But I’ve outsmarted them and I know where they live and I’ll be in Portland in a few days, as soon as I drive down to middle Georgia to kiss my third one goodbye for the summer.

I just wish I could have a cat.