Family

Howard on our Anniversary

By / August 7, 2014 / 1 Comment

I love watching Howard talk and listening to him tell stories. He went to a convention recently and, when he returned home, we stood together in the kitchen while he told me of things that happened while he was gone. I watched his face and the gestures he uses to emphasize points or to make a joke have more impact. Howard in full-out mode is larger than his physical form. It is like he projects himself out into space. I saw all of that and realized, once again, why people are so happy to listen to him in presentations, on panels, or during podcasts. Howard is compelling. I had that thought, and on its heels was a feeling of deep gratefulness that when all the show, presentation, and signing is done, Howard comes home to me. I think that’s a good sign twenty-one years into marriage, that I’m glad to have him come home.

We went out to dinner for our anniversary. we don’t always. In fact our anniversary traditions have had more to do with forgetting to plan anything. Some years we’ve missed it altogether. This year we felt like we ought to do something, so we went to Bombay House and ordered our favorites from the menu. Howard was having a low energy, low mood day. We sat across the table from each other, mostly in silence. I am one of the few that gets to see Howard when he’s low. He trusts me with this, and I help him carry it, just as he helps me when my emotions get unruly. I had a hundred things in my head that we could have talked about, but many of them were related to business, which wasn’t ideal for his mood. Also, I didn’t really want to turn our out-to-dinner date into a business meeting. We have plenty of those at home in the kitchen. Twice or thrice daily, in fact.

“Are you still glad?” I asked Howard during one of the quiet times when our eyes met. He knew what I meant, on that day, on that date. Are you glad we got married? It was a question to which we both already knew the answer, but somehow the asking and the answering gave a tiny ceremony to a part of our lives that we often take for granted. “Yes.” He answered. Even on a low-mood day, we are both still glad.

A mere day later, Howard and I drove together to Salt Lake City to visit a friend from out of town. We talked quietly, about business, about things we saw on the road, about our kids. Howard was not in performance mode. We sat with our friend for hours talking about all sorts of things. We ate more food than we needed, but all of it was delicious. When time came to depart, Howard and I drove home together, mostly in silence. Sometimes there isn’t much that needs to be said, it is enough to be together.

Yes, I’m still glad.

Updates

By / August 2, 2014

My neck/back has continued problematic ever since I injured it last Tuesday. (While sleeping. Cosmically unfair that.) It is steadily improving. Regular stretching, heat packs, ibuprofen, and ointments have given back a range of motion that is almost normal. It is to the stage where I think it doesn’t actually need much more treatment. It just needs to stop being mad about being out of joint. I’ve picked a day next week and if I haven’t hit “all better” by then, I’ll go ahead and spend money to have it looked at. Less fun is the fact that I think the “out of joint” point on my back is also a hidden anxiety button. Not my favorite, but that is coming back into control too.

Gleek is home from camp. She arrived dirty and glad to be here. She gave me some hugs, but was far more interested in changing into short pants and getting on the computer than in sitting down to tell me all about camp. I do have a report from a leader that she was fine at camp, so that’s a relief. I’m just really glad to have her home. I missed her.

Stage one of Link’s Eagle Scout project is complete. The project has been approved. Papers are signed. We did the site clean up this morning to prep everything for a shed to go up. Stage two is more paperwork and drumming up donations to pay for the materials to build the shed. We have some leads, but follow up is necessary. Stage two is also more paperwork, because of course there is more paperwork. We plan to have the shed fully installed and the project complete by August 30th. After which there will be more paperwork.

I’ve completed a draft version of the Challenge Coin PDF. On Monday I commence emailing the contributors to get their approvals on the copy edits of their words. Howard will take a copy on the plane to GenCon so he can write the intro and create some cartoons for the interior.

Kiki’s final art show of the summer ends tonight. She’ll bring home all of the unsold pieces and put them up for sale in her etsy shop. Once they’re all in place, then Howard and I will both blog links to that shop. Though if you want a head start, she does have a few things there now. All of those proceeds will go directly toward her college tuition and living expenses while at school. She leaves in three weeks, but I’m not quite ready to think about that yet. I’ve really enjoyed having her home for the summer. She will be missed.

School starts in two weeks. I’ve paid most of the fees, got the schedules set up. Filled out the beginning of school forms. While Howard is at GenCon we’ll probably have the traditional end-of-summer family outing where I drag my kids someplace and then make them stand together for a photo. I do try to pick locations that I think they will like. Though it is possible that I’ll be so tired that I just make them stand together in the back yard. Or maybe I’ll just catch them at a moment when they’re all watching the same movie or playing a video game all together.

We’ve not done any further work on the dirt patch which used to be our deck. I do walk out there occasionally and look at the leaky sprinkler pipe I dug up. I was going to google sprinkler pipe repair and get it taken care of, but then there was an Eagle Project instead. I suspect this will continue to be the case throughout the rest of August. That’s fine. The cooler weather of September is probably better for fixing up the yard anyway.

While writing this post I scanned back through my blog to see if there were any other loose ends that I ought to update. It is funny how the events I chronicled in May, June, July seem simultaneously recent and long ago. August has barely begun, but it feels as if summer is pretty much over. Part of that is because once school starts, my brain assumes it is September. I’ve got two weeks left. I need to remember to stop, breathe, pay attention rather than rushing from one project to the next.

A Movie for Patch

By / July 31, 2014 / 2 Comments

Howard goes to lots of movies, particularly in the summer months. He averages about one per week. This is mostly because Howard loves to see movies, but he also reviews the movies on his blog. When schedules allow, Howard likes to take kids with him to see movies that the thinks they’ll enjoy. Thus it was planned that Howard would take Patch to go see Guardians of the Galaxy, which looked to be a film that Patch would love. They invited Link to go along, but he declined. Kiki and I had a conflict and Gleek is at camp. So it was going to just be Howard and Patch. Then the conflict evaporated, so Kiki and I gleefully bought tickets to join the trip. I was glad to get out of the house and go do a thing.

When Patch found out that we were coming along he was quite sad. He likes us, but suddenly his cool solo trip with Dad had turned into something else entirely. Patch is our youngest. He’s the only one who is still a kid rather than a teen or an adult. Though judging from the way he’s shot up the last few months, that won’t last much longer. He’s headed into sixth grade and I expect this to be kind of a rough year for him emotionally. It’ll be even more rough because he gets his heart set on things and then is honestly hurt if they turn out differently. I could tell that this was one of those times. He tried to be kind and considerate. He understood that Kiki and I hadn’t meant to intrude. He didn’t throw a fit or even get angry, but I could tell that part of what he’d looked forward to was gone from the trip.

We left early for the theater because we had to stop and pick up a prescription. I suggested that Howard drop off Kiki and I to do the pick up. Then he took Patch to McDonalds. We haven’t been eating out much in the past six months, so this was a real treat for Patch. It also gave him a bit of solo time with his Dad. Food and prescription were both picked up, then we headed to the mall where the theater was located. Once again Kiki and I took off, leaving Patch and Howard to eat their food and wander the mall separately. Since we’d bought the tickets in two batches, it was easy to say “See you in the theater.” We actually saw each other before that. We passed in the mall and I caught Patch’s eye for a moment. Then I looked away quickly and used my hand to shield my face, pretending I couldn’t see him at all. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see his grin.

So Patch got solo time with his dad. I had some time with Kiki. Then we all had a fun time at the movie and talked about it all the way home. In the end Patch admits that he’s glad Kiki and I came because now he has a sibling with whom he can quote movie lines. I think he’s also glad for that time with his dad, where we all acknowledged that what Patch wanted was important. Also he’ll get to remember all of us pretending not to see each other in the mall. It was a good evening.

I Don’t Think this is the Tuesday I Ordered

By / July 29, 2014

I’m certain that I did not request to be awakened at 5am by a cracking sound in my neck followed by pain. An hour of stretching, laying on rolled towels, and using a ball for pressure point therapy, all failed to fix whatever it was. So I had a morning of pain, smelly lotions to loosen muscles, and slow movements. Fortunately Howard was able to help me reset some of the alignment, which means I remain stiff and sore, but the pain will subside when my muscles decide to unlock.

Also on the not-entirely-expected list, Link picked an Eagle Scout Project. He’s working with Habitat for Humanity to build a tool shed for a community garden. It is an excellent project, well suited to Link, and obviously needed. Yet suddenly the next few weeks have an array of project related tasks to complete. Many of them have more to do with paperwork than with the actual project. BSA runs on paperwork. I think one of the hardest parts of the project for me will be keeping my hands off. I can picture all of it in my head. I can make it happen. But this is Link’s project, not mine. He is the one who has to make it happen. Not me. That is the point. My role should be limited to asking “Have you thought about this? How do you think you should handle that?”

Related to pain and loss of sleep, extra napping was necessary and stole some work hours.

I knew that today was the day I sent Gleek off to Church Girl’s Camp for five days. I put it on the calendar months ago. I’ve seen it on the calendar many times since. Yet somehow I arrived on Sunday and thought “Oh. That’s this week?” She packed up all her things yesterday and I helped her review them this morning. We went to the church and I lingered for a bit because I need to make sure that a leader was aware of Gleek’s daily medications. I watched Gleek as she joined with the other girls. Last year I spent two months with lots of attention focused on Gleek and camp. I wasn’t certain she could handle it or I wasn’t certain it was fair to the leaders to impose her particular bag of troubles on them. I didn’t know what the stresses of camp would do to Gleek’s anxieties. I had to skip out on half of the writer’s retreat I wanted to attend because I needed to be the one who sent Gleek off to camp. Last year camp was hard and full of anxiety, which is why it surprised me that it sneaked up on me this year. It arrived and I hadn’t been thinking about it. That in itself is a huge measure of progress from last year to this year. Gleek went off to camp happy and I feel confident that whatever difficulties the leaders have with her will be within the range of challenges that are normal with any thirteen year old girl.

After the pain, sending Gleek to camp, the nap, and the eagle project paperwork, I really thought it would be time to sit down and get some focused work done. Unfortunately my brain decided it needed to do 1500 words of writing first. Not writing on my fiction project, nor writing in a blog post. Nope. It was pages of dumping out the contents of my brain just to see what is in there. I have to do that sometimes. It helps me figure out where the anxiety is coming from. Today’s fun anxiety symptom is heart palpitations. Haven’t had those in a while and they seem directly related to the pain, so I know they’ll go away. Yes I’ve had them checked by a doctor. I wore a heart monitor and everything. There is no physiological reason for them. They’re caused by anxiety, and in this case, pain.

I’ve now reached 4:30pm. This day was similar to what I thought it would be, though I’d hoped to get a lot more work done by this hour. Life can not always be executed as planned and I just have to roll with what comes instead.

Sunshine and Cousins

By / July 18, 2014

This year the Tayler clan, Howard’s siblings and their children, all bought passes to the local water park. We declared that Friday mornings was the time when we’d try to meet up there on the theory that a water park is more fun when you have more people you know to play with. Not everybody can make every week. In fact this morning was the first time our branch of the clan has been there. We packed up and arrived just when a set of cousins did. I watched as Kiki and Link ran off together. Gleek buddied up with a same age cousin and Patch partnered with me. We went down slides and jumped in the wave pool.

Having a pass to the park makes all the difference for us. Our first time in a new place always feels stressful. I’m on high alert because no locations mean that kids will react or wander off in unpredictable ways. Until I learn which areas draw my kids, where I can expect them to be and whether I can trust them to return rather than being so excited that they are lost in the crowd, I always keep the kids close. When we first went to this park, it felt big, like they could get lost and I’d never find them again. Now we’ve been often enough that it just feels friendly. They do run off in pairs, but they always come back to our home base on the “beach” of the wave pool.

I’d hoped for more visiting time with my sisters-in-law, but the visits came in snatches as the needs of the kids pulled us in different directions. I watched one of them follow her toddler in and out of the shallows of the wave pool, trailing after a tiny being who was exploring her world. Kiki would gladly have taken over trailing duty, but this particular toddler spurns both Kiki and me, clinging to her mom and siblings instead. Kiki did get to play with other young cousins. Link got to ride his favorite slides until the lines got too long. Patch and Gleek played to their heart’s content.

A water park is not a peaceful experience. It is full of noise and motion. There are people everywhere and it only gets more crowded as the day continues, which is one reason why we try to arrive at opening and leave by lunchtime. Yet, despite the crowds and noise, there is a relaxation that I find there. It is a location that demands I be fully present. We pack very minimally when entering the park, because we don’t rent a locker. All our stuff just gets piled on the ground. So I only bring things that are required, passes, car keys, towels, shoes. Everything else is left outside and somehow that includes my business thoughts and my to do list. There are not very many places where that is true. My brain is almost always churning, but on family outings I can quiet the churn and just be.

“I like the real beach better.” Kiki said. I agree. It was less than a month ago that we spent a day on Sunset Beach in California. The ocean was huge and restful. It was not crowded and the wind whipped away all the noise so one could feel alone with the waves. Unfortunately that beach is a bit far for weekly visits. So we’ll spend time at the water park with cousins instead.

Deck Update

By / July 12, 2014

I am so very tired, but I completed what I hoped to do. We now have a small deck with salvaged railing.

Obviously we still have a lot of clearing away work on the old deck. Not mention the massive pile of rotted wood which now sits in my driveway awaiting a trip to the dump. But we can now safely exit our house and it is sturdy enough to last us a few more years. We checked underneath and the combination of a concrete pad and being out of the line of fire for the dryer vent means what remains is still sound.

It is enough for one day.

Demolishing the Deck

By / July 13, 2014 / 9 Comments

Some time before we bought our house, a previous owner built a redwood deck in the back yard.

I took these pictures of it three years ago when we made a family project out of pressure washing and re-staining it. Look at how lovely it was. Particularly note the even-ness of the deck planks.

Having seen what is underneath, I’m certain the trouble had already begun, but none of it was evident from the surface. It seemed solid. Then last year we started noticing that the planks were uneven. Some of them were pushing up. Others were sinking.

I took the picture after we’d already spray painted a warning line on a particularly bad spot and after I’d removed some railing. Most of the deck was still solid underfoot, but some of it felt…soft. We figured we had a rotten beam. Howard and I discussed options. We don’t have the money to replace the deck. To get at the bad spot, we’d have to pull apart everything. We knew once it was apart, we probably couldn’t get it back together. We decided that demolition was what we had to do, because it was going to be a safety hazard otherwise.

It was hard to decide that staring at the surface. Everything I could see looked nice. I felt bad making a mess of all that beautiful wood. But I got out the drill and pulled off the railings. Then we pulled off the trim.

You’ll note there is still a section of railing close to the back door. We’re hoping to save that portion of the deck as it feels solid and we need some sort of landing for the back door lest we step out and fall two feet to ground level.

It doesn’t look so bad in that picture. There were an abundance of spiders and bugs as we removed boards, but most of the structure seemed okay. Until you looked close.

There were spots of dry rot. And every single trim board was partly rotted away at the bottom. You can see where the ends of the boards had dissolved back into dirt.

With the railing and the trim out of the way, we started pulling up the planks.

That support beam was not one of the soft spots. It was under a spot that felt solid. Note the underside of the plank.

I’d imagined that perhaps I could give all the wood to someone who could use it. But pretty much every board had some kind of rot or fungus on it. When we got all the planks up, the extent of the rot was apparent.

The entire sub structure of the deck was on its way to becoming dirt.

There were beams we could crumble with our bare hands.


In fact, Kiki did crumble one up, just for fun.

We used a crowbar and a 4′ wrecking bar to get the planks up. Except usually we only had to get one end loose and then we could yank it up with our hands. Either the boards were rotten or the screws were so rusty that they just broke.

We were careful as we proceeded, because bugs, spiders, and weird things. Fungus is weird.

I don’t even know what this thing is, except it is growing out of one of the major support beams.

It’s about the size of my hand and looks like a face hugger alien. But it doesn’t twitch when poked with the end of a crowbar.

As we got closer to the house, we found the jungle of lint.

You see, the people who built this deck did a really good job. The deck was very sturdy. Built to last, and that is why it survived for almost twenty years. Unfortunately they also did something very stupid. The dryer vent blows into the enclosed space underneath the deck. It supplied warm, wet air into the enclosed space for twenty years. No wonder fungus grew and the wood rotted.

Here the narrow two inch slit for air to vent from the dryer.

That was all under the deck planking.

So, whatever we decide to do with the space that no longer has a deck, it will be something that allows the dryer to vent in open air. I bet our clothes will get dry faster too. I admit I’m also excited that the hose faucet will also be in the open. We used to have to reach into a hole in the deck in order to reach the faucet. It was half-jokingly called “The Spider Hole.” It was excellent spider habitat, particularly for widow-type web spinners. As we were demolishing we only spotted one that might have been a black widow. The others were brown, but every bit as creepy.
The square part around the faucet is clear because I removed the spiderwebs in order to detach the hose. It looked pretty much like the adjacent square, with all the webs and egg sacs.

The planks are all removed. Later this evening we’ll tackle removing the rest. All of it is going in a big pile on my driveway. We’re going to have to borrow a truck to take it to the dump, but I think that’s a job for another day. For now I leave you with a picture of our cat who is confused by this project.

Summarizing the Vacation

By / June 29, 2014

“So how was your vacation?”
It is a question to which I really should have an answer. I usually start by saying “Good.” because on the whole that is true. When everything is averaged out it was a good trip. If I’m feeling more honest or whimsical I’ll say “Hard to summarize.” This is also true, because the trip had three distinct stages and each one could fill an entire conversation. Often I’ll follow up with a few highlights, things I think will interest the other person. Because I’m almost always in a small-talk sort of conversation and if I try to really unpack my trip experiences I’ll be like that person who sits down and makes everyone look at slides until they’re bored to tears. I don’t want to be that person, so I keep it short and bright.

Yes parts of my vacation were dark and difficult, but only because of the emotional baggage I packed along with me. Leaving my house, Howard, my responsibilities, for two weeks was deeply unsettling to parts of my psyche. As a result I had odd anxiety reactions on the drive, frequent difficulty sleeping, and restless dreams. Of the many benefits from this vacation I think the biggest is that I have just demonstrated to that piece of my brain that I can leave for an extended period of time and it will not result in disaster. Howard is fine. Comics got made. Kiki shipped the packages. Nothing else turned into a crisis. This is good. Had there been a crisis, I’m sure we would have managed it. Instead I had to manage that part of my brain which was certain that crisis must be imminent and kept randomly flooding me with jolts of adrenaline which I then had to calm down from.

The only reason I planned this extended trip was because of my parent’s fiftieth anniversary and giving them space to go on a trip was the best gift I could think of. I would never have scheduled things this way otherwise. Now the experience is giving back to me, because I can picture an extended trip not ending in disaster. I couldn’t before. Any thing of the sort was auto-filed in the “not possible” bin. And perhaps in years previous it truly wasn’t possible. The emotional work I’ve done to sort out my anxiety is reaping benefits. Add in Howard’s anti-depressants and the work we’ve done together to identify and recalibrate family patterns, and many things become possible which would have been miserable before.

Of course we have so many things scheduled for the rest of the year that this new knowledge will have to lay idle for a while. Next year is not quite so full. Yet.

My vacation was good. I learned things about myself. I got to see beauty. I put my toes in the ocean and wore out my legs with walking. I went wallowing in nostalgia. I spent time with my Grandma. I gave time to my parents so they could vacation. I reconnected with family and friends. I spent time with my kids. It was a good trip. I’m glad to be home.

Over the River and Through The Woods

By / June 28, 2014

Over the river and through the woods to Grandmother’s house we go.
I sang the phrase to my kids as we headed east from Marysville, California on I-70. The road still feels familiar to me, though I haven’t seen it in a decade. I traveled it multiple times each summer throughout my childhood as our family went to visit Grandma’s house. The words really fit our journey as the road winds up a canyon complete with trestle bridges over the river,

three tunnels,

and lots of woods.

Sometimes the woods are broken up by impressive rocks.

It is a stunning drive. I highly recommend it, but be prepared for winding roads next to precipitous drops. Also pick a day with nice weather. In bad weather the road can be downright terrifying.

As we drove I subjected my kids to nostalgic stories. I think they half listened, but speaking the stories mattered to me, so I talked. We were adding two hours of driving to our trip home in order to stop by and see my Grandma’s house. I’ve felt a longing to see it in the past few years.
It is a strange little house tucked into a tall pine forest.

Who ever built it, used local materials and much love in it’s construction. It is created with a combination of local rock, pine logs, concrete, and clapboards. The roof is made out of sheets of airplane metal. There isn’t anything standard about this house.

I can see the love that went into creating it. There are small details everywhere. I know the love that went into maintaining it. Grandpa was always fixing things and making things better. It was their shared project and they had many a lively argument about how things ought to be done. Or rather, Grandma filled the air with words while Grandpa pretended he couldn’t hear her because he’d “lost” his hearing aid again. Then Grandpa would fix things how he thought they ought to be done.

Right now nobody lives in the house. It is watched over by a neighbor except during the times when my parents bring Grandma up to stay for a bit. Grandma can’t stay by herself anymore, not safely. I’m sad to see the place empty. Grandma loves it still. My siblings and I love it too. It is a place of memories. I remember the giant garden they used to grow.

That high in the mountains there is only a short growing season, but Grandma and Grandpa managed. They even coaxed a peach tree into bearing fruit though their neighbors said it couldn’t be done.
Here is that same garden plot today.

I was pleased to see that Grandpa’s rock wall was still standing.

It’s been there for a very long time.

We didn’t get to go inside. Grandma has the only key and she doesn’t like people going inside when she is not there. Part of me felt strange driving two hours out of my way just so I could spend thirty minutes crunching through dried leaves to look at the exterior of a house and take pictures. Stories spilled out of my mouth as I walked with my kids. I would point to things and tell them how those things used to be. In my eye “how it used to be” is so clear.

Pretty sure my kids just saw the things as they are.

Grandma keeps talking about selling the house and land. She knows she’s not taking care of it, but letting go is hard and the effort necessary to make it ready for sale is beyond her. My parents will sell it after she’s gone and we will all grieve. We all love the house, but none of us want to live there. It is in a tiny town with few jobs available and the house itself is problematic in a dozen ways. The rooms are oddly shaped. It is all constructed under the assumption that the primary heat source would be a wood burning chimney in the center. That never worked well, so now there is a wood burning stove and a smattering of built-in electric heaters.

One year my parents brought Grandma up in the spring to discover mushrooms growing in the front room carpet from a leak in the roof. They called a guy to come fix it, he took a look and quoted a really high number. My parents gulped and agreed to pay it. Then the guy started working for an hour and said “never mind. It can’t be done.” and left. They finally found someone else willing to do a completely non-standard patch job. I doubt a single thing in that house is up to current safety codes. Yet there is a piece of my heart that looks around and says “surely this can be saved and made beautiful again.”

It will likely be purchased by someone who wants the land and who will tear down the house and the garage behind it. So I took pictures, many pictures. When the time comes, I’ll help clear out the contents and I’ll take even more pictures. Because someday when I drive over the river and through the woods, Grandmother’s house won’t be there anymore.

Grandma’s Patterns

By / June 24, 2014

My Grandma is ninety four years old. She’s still pretty sharp. She tracks the hours in the day and days of the week. She keeps track of who ate breakfast and who did not and then will try to get the non-breakfast-eating folks to eat an early lunch. She takes care of herself, but she is heavily dependent on contextual reminders and daily patterns to help her remember what she needs to do. The sun goes down, that means it is time to close the drapes. Six o’clock is dinner time, which means five o’clock is time to start cooking dinner. She has breakfast with one cup of coffee made exactly the same way and drunk, not out of the coffee mug, but out of a small bowl. The patterns of her life wore deep grooves into her mind and now she depends on those grooves to keep on track.

There are times when the grooves lead her astray. The other day she was counting how many places to set for dinner. I told her six, but that didn’t match what she thought. She knew that Sandra has four kids and that we were also feeding herself and my youngest brother. She also knew that my oldest daughter had already gone home, but somehow couldn’t subtract that daughter from the count of my children when figuring how many plates we needed. We talked it through three times before Grandma said “Okay. I’ll believe you.” It was an acknowledgement that she doesn’t always know what is going on around her. I’ve seen her make many of those while I’ve been here. Another example was when the power went out one morning. Grandma was convinced that someone had deliberately turned it off and not told us. “Why would they do that? They ought to tell us.” She also was convinced that we could find information about the outage in the newspaper which had arrived before the outage. For most of her life the newspaper was the place to go for announcements and information. I’d explain why that wouldn’t work and that the outage was an accident. She’d nod and accept the information, but ten minutes later she’d notice that the power was out and we’d be back at the beginning of the same groove and have to run through the same conversation again.

My Grandma grew up in the south and lived the prime of her life in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. These were the decades when the patterns of her life were set. I see this in the patterns she lives now. She gets up in the morning and, unless I’m already moving and fixing breakfast, she’ll start planning and cooking breakfast for everyone. Because it is a mother’s (and grandmother’s) job to feed the children even if those children are adults and fully capable of fending for themselves. She routinely fixes plates of food for my brother and my dad, because that is what women do. If I don’t clean up the dishes right away, she’ll start doing it. I’ve been working to find a balance, because I must not take away all her usefulness. That is not good for her. But neither is it good for a ninety-four year old woman who can’t keep her balance without a walker to be fixing food for a completely healthy forty year old woman who has energy to spare. The easiest compromise is for Grandma to sit in her chair and give me instructions while I fix the food. When Grandma can see that the job is being done according to the proper pattern, she is content to let some one else do the actual moving around.

“We need to have some bread with this.” Grandma says. I would not have added bread to the main dish and three side dishes we’ve already put on the table. But I don’t argue. It isn’t worth the energy to push against that particular groove. All dinners must have side dishes and bread, so I put them on the table rather than spend all of dinner having conversations about how we really ought to have bread with this. If it were very important that we not have bread, I would push against that groove. If I pushed often enough on the same point, Grandma would learn to alter her patterns. But her patterns are her lifelines, I’m reluctant to take any of them away from her unless it truly matters. Most things don’t.

Except…
last night at dinner I found myself hopping out of my chair every few minutes so that Grandma would not. I ended up sitting down to eat last. I’d cooked the meal, then I cleaned up after the meal. As I did, I realized that if I were staying more than five days I would have to push against some of those grooves. Because this is how there is generational transmission of sexist life patterns.

There are some things about the patterns that are good. My family would benefit from more regular meal times with a greater variety of home-cooked food on the table. Living around Grandma’s patterns would help me accomplish that. But there is no reason for me to hop out of my chair and dish up food for a sixteen year old who is fully capable of wielding a spoon. Grandma thought I should
“Aren’t you going to fix a plate for your boy?” she asked.
“No, he’s standing right there and he can serve himself.”
“Mothers should always serve for their kids. My mother had seven kids and she always served us. Even when we was grown.” Grandma grumbled, but then let the subject drop.
So, I guess I do push on some of the grooves a little, but the longer I stay here, the more I find myself falling in with them to save energy. Grandma is still strong even when she is genial and willing to acknowledge how often she gets confused.

My parents return later tonight and I’ll hand back the job of caring for Grandma. I’ll be very glad to return to my own life and patterns, but I’m also glad for this chance I got to spend time caring for Grandma. It was great being a kid and having Grandma cook for me. Now I get to cook for her and that feels like a full circle of love. Perhaps the memory of this trip will help me as I attempt to establish more regular meal times at home. Though my efforts will be focused on making sure that all the people in my house take turns with the preparing and cleaning up.