“…this curious & pathetic fact of life: that when parents are old & their children grown up, the grown-up children are not the persons they formerly were; that their former selves have wandered away, never to return again, save in dream-glimpses of their young forms that tarry a moment & gladden the eye, then vanish & break the heart.”–Mark Twain
As a grandparent, this quote seems to become more poignant as the years speed by. I’ve been blessed with the opportunity to relive, in some ways, through my grandchildren’s lives those moments that perhaps I was too harried or ignorant to recognize and enjoy as a parent. Parents are often caught up in the race to the next milestone: that first step—check; those first words—check; the first day of pre-school—check. We always have our eyes on the future and before we know it—it’s here. But in the meantime, that child we were in such a hurry to move along to the next level is “gone”—only to be seen and remembered in photos, and nowadays, captured in videos. It’s not the same.
Sometimes I laugh as I find myself sneeking a sidelong glance at my grown children while wondering “Who are you? What have you done with the kid I used to know?” Both my son and my daughter have turned out to be successful individuals in life (despite my parenting!) and I’m extremely proud of them. But there is a sense of loss which overtakes me at times for the goofy kids I knew when they were little.
This is where being a grandparent is a bittersweet experience. From the vantage point of going through parenthood and emerging on the other side somewhat unscathed, I can appreciate what is and what isn’t important in raising kids. Don’t sweat the small stuff, in other words.
And I acknowledge that these happy times with the grandkids also will vanish before too long. Before much more time passes they will have friends of their own they would rather be with and other interests besides the ones that please them now. Going to McDonald’s for dinner on Saturday nights with Memaw and Pappy will pale in comparison with going to the movies with friends. That’s inevitable.
So I try to enjoy every moment with them, even as I watch them grow taller and more mature as each day passes. And I will be doubly blessed if, someday, I’m lucky enough to see their children, my great-grandchildren, and be able to sweetly recall their parents’ childhood selves, if only in dream-glimpses.
"It is the false steward, that stole his master's daughter."
Bristol Palin's coupe de mere this week, the ubiquitous airing of Mel Gibson's verbal sexual abuse, and my accidental viewing of Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" video have convinced me that it's time to re-empower those who mother adolescent girls. I am reared up over the cynical forces that undermine and threaten to bury the tender developing selves of our daughters, so break out your copy of Hamlet (or watch any filmed version other than Gibson's); it's time to disinter Ophelia.
In Shakespeare's Hamlet, Ophelia's fate demonstrates the fragility of a young girl's hold on stability and safety. In adolescence, she begins to live for the approval of her father and of Hamlet, with whom she has fallen in love. Hamlet is pre-occupied with his own demons and rejects her; subsequently she loses her grip on reality, dresses in her best and drowns herself. Hamlet comes upon the gravediggers; here, Shakespeare inserts a cruelly ironic moment of graveyard humor before he allows Hamlet to discover for whom the grave is intended. Ophelia will haunt you.
In 1994, Mary Pipher, PhD, published Reviving Ophelia: Saving The Selves of Adolescent Girlsas a wakeup call to families, fingering modern media and culture for increases in the rate of depression, anorexia, and suicide attempts in teen girls. The book made its title a household phrase and Mary Pipher was deluged with speaking requests. I recommended the book to dozens of families who were trying to save their girls from illnesses exacerbated by America's sexualized marketing of teens. It pleases me to report that many families realized how wisely, carefully, and persistently they were going to have to fight in that cause; they were able to shut down the gushing well of exploitation that was drowning their daughters.
Other families, sadly, felt helpless; their attitude was, "If she doesn't get it on MTV (or through magazines, books, ads in stores, etc.) at home, she'll just get it at her girlfriends' houses." They didn't realize that, if they could set and hold strong boundaries at home, they would be giving their daughter a critical safe port. The daughter could then internalize that concept of herself as precious. The sense of being worthy of careful nurturing, of possessing a selfhood worth fighting for, could operate to help a girl protect herself as she moved toward womanhood.
I happened to see segments of Stefani Germanotta's (Lady Gaga) music video for "Alejandro" (a worthless waste of audio perception) on the screen of an adjoining exercise bike at the gym. The rider of that bike looked to be about 40 and perfectly normal, but she was glued to the video. I have to admit, it was the proverbial train wreck; my neighbor's screen was so hard to ignore, I almost missed the news on my own screen that the BP oil well had just stopped gushing. Imagine what the Gaga video would be like for a thirteen year old girl! You can it see it on YouTube here, but approach with caution. It's not that the video is objectionable in a new way (it pretty much struck me as picking up where Madonna left off), but that it is objectionable in the same old way.
I often despair at how each generation has to relearn lessons that the previous generation sweated to master. Not only did absolutely NOTHING change in the exploitation of teenage girls since Pipher's book was published, but the trend has accelerated. As age of menarche declines (as measured in decades) and secondary sexual characteristics (telarche) appear even earlier with the rise of obesity in children, America's media, driven by the unchecked profit motive, reaches further back into childhood to sexualize and exploit our daughters.
In Bristol Palin's passive aggressive decision to alert Us magazine, instead of her parents, about her decision to marry the father of her son, I see the fear and anger of a daughter whose family failed to protect her adequately. Bristol learned from her mother to live an overexposed life, and she applied that lesson to her television debut on the reality show "The Secret Life of The American Teenager." Specialness that special can only be learned. To me, it all further demonstrates the Palin family's willingness to exploit its most vulnerable members relentlessly. They seek celebrity rather than substance.
There is a segment of the country's middle and lower class women who slavishly worship Bristol's mother; in their idolization of her, in their--typically inaccurate--identification with her, I see a feminine cohort that Feminism has failed. Perhaps especially when they try to wrap the cloak of Feminism around themselves.
In the huge popularity amongst teens of Stephani Germanotta's pornographic music video, I see another failed crop of adolescents, both male and female. The lyrics of "Alejandro" are explicitly aimed at a young audience: "She's not broken, She's just a baby. But her boyfriend's like a dad, just like a dad/ and all those flames that burned before him. Now he's gonna fight your fight, gonna cool the bad."
Now, listen to Mary Pipher, PhD. The video will sound and look a little dated, but its message is more applicable now than when it was filmed.
My youngest grandson, hereafter known as HEG (High and Exalted Grandson), is three and already obviously kind, beautiful, brilliant, agile, gifted--just like yours. When he rides in his carseat, I like to sit in back with him because that's when the magic happens.
We sing, hold hands, eat snacks, talk about the stuff we see through the windows, review our day so far, and pay each other immoderate compliments: he's the best and smartest big boy in the whole wide world EVER and I'm the best grandmother sitting beside him in the whole car. As we cross an overpass, he ponders how the cars get down onto the highway below and what, exactly, a "ramp" is. When a motorcycle zips around us, weaving at top speed through traffic, he tells me that is janederous. We practice our special handshake: high five, knuckle up, blow it up like fireworks, pretend to smack our own cheek in sheer amazement.
Watching HEG's brain wire itself is a constant source of delight In July's Scientific American, Alison Gropnik describes research on how babies (described as children from infancy to age four) learn.
One of the greatest mysteries of psychology and philosophy is how human beings learn about the world from a confusing mess of sensory data. Over the past decade researchers have begun to understand much more about how babies and young children can learn so much so quickly and accurately. In particular, we have discovered that babies and young children have an extraordinary ability to learn from statistical patterns.
More recent studies show that babies can detect statistical patterns of musical tones and visual scenes and also more abstract grammatical patterns...Even more impressively, children (like scientists) use those statistics to draw conclusions about the world.
That's what HEG is all about these days...arriving at larger abstractions and finer distinctions by observing patterns that repeat or things that don't fit the pattern: he's got the difference between a house, an apartment, and a generic building, for example, simply by putting together the use of those terms and fitting them into the context in which they've been used. (I SAID he was a genius!) Kids his age only seem distracted; in fact, they have a laser-like attention that they can refocus in a heartbeat. Some of those same smart-aleck researchers have concluded that it's the folks in my age group who grow more distractible.
Having been taught the names of the days of the week and being told that today is Tuesday, HEG takes a breathtaking leap and tells me, "I think tomorrow is Gym Bus day!" (On Wednesdays, the school bus that's been refitted as a toddler gym arrives at his preschool, creating a memorable highlight in his week.) He didn't have that concept last week. Where did it come from?
While he's casually wiring his cerebral cortex faster than the speed of light, he's fiddling with my hands--his sweet little fingers pulling my untethered, collagen-deficient skin this way and that. We're talking about where we want to go tomorrow, maybe the library or the playground...and he stops on a dime, shifting the laser to home in on...
"Gigi, look at your thumb! It's like Play-Doh!" He refers to the fact that, when he mashes hard on the ball of my thumb, the indentation stays there...permanently, we decide. I tell him for the five hundredth time that he's the smartest three-year-old grandson I've got. Yep. I'd not noticed that one new detail yet; my ability to detect changes in the pattern is a bit worse for wear. And I was distracted by the sun damage and age spots.
He turns my thumb over and strokes the nail: "And, Gigi, you've got STRIPES!" I explain that those are called ridges, and I have them because I am old. He's getting tired of that excuse; I use it to explain why I can't carry his forty-plus pounds as far as his Pappy can and why I can't sit down on the hard sidewalk for fifteen minutes, watching a worm's progress. He's detected a pattern to this excuse.
Brow furrowed, he announces, "I don't like old, Gigi!" I somberly concur. Sensing that my mood had just dropped a smidgen, this kind little angel announces happily,
It doesn’t seem to matter how old I become (I’m 63), my mother still sees me as approximately twelve years old.
Since she lives alone and no longer drives (thank you, Lord) I offered to go to the store for her today so she could have her usual 4th of July dinner fare: hot dogs. I got her Hebrew National All Beef Kosher hot dogs.
It’s funny, but in a relatively small Texas town with probably zero practicing Jews, just about all the Hebrew Nationals were sold out when I got there.
Go figure.
I guess either the word is out they taste the best or maybe that whole Rapture thing is going down soon and everyone wants to hedge their bets.
I also got the requisite hot dog buns, “lightly salted” Lay’s potato chips and some potato salad from the deli. At this point in my 90 year-old mother’s life, pretty much anything goes food-wise. If cholesterol, salt and nitrites haven’t gotten her thus far, have at it I say. For dessert I popped for a lemon meringue pie from the store’s bakery.
Let’s party like it’s 1935!
I brought the goodies home and she was thrilled with all of it. She made herself lunch right away and I had a piece of pie while she scarfed down her pre-4th vittles. A good time was had by all. She thanked me several times for getting her all the makings for what looks to be a hot dog marathon over the weekend.
After refilling her pill boxes and chastising her a bit for missing a day’s worth (“If you took Friday’s pills, how come the box is still full?”) I started to make my departure.
She followed me out to her front porch and we exchanged kisses.
Then, as I made my way down her walkway to my car, I heard the words that have been the bane of my existence since I was twelve:
