The balance

I consider myself a good mother-in-law.  I don’t think I could write a book, and I know I make mistakes, but, generally I consider myself good.  

In a gathering of my circle of friends recently, we talked about what makes a good mother-in-law.  Of course, the perfect balance of interfering and not interfering is a skill that is difficult to achieve but it is a great trait.  An example I will give you here concerns my son-in-law, whom I love dearly, and gift giving. 

Recently, for one gift giving opportunity, my son-in-law commented he did not have a clue as to what to get my daughter.  I suggested jewelry, of course. He didn’t agree, made a remark or two about how she had a lot of necklaces already and wasn’t in to jewelry much.  (I said I love him, right?) 

The next day or so, he started sending me links to items he found online.  He was very proud of himself for finding a number of options, and they were lovely, but “upscale costume” pieces and she has a lot of those kinds of things already.  I hinted at how nice “real” jewelry is and maybe a heart shaped necklace might be good.  He said to me “She doesn’t have anything heart shaped.  She likes circles”.   ( I said I love him, yes, I do) 

So, here’s where the delicateness of being a good mother-in-law comes in.  “Well, that is true, she does really like circles but maybe the reason why she doesn’t have anything heart shaped is that its not something she would buy for herself? I mean, isn’t that something that would come from you? As her love?”  Then, the second morsel. “Why don’t you stop in to a jewelry store and see what they have? A real jewelry store, I bet you’ll see something there that fits the occasion. Trust me on this one.” 

My son-in-law is a wonderful person, and bright.  He did make it to a jewelry store and purchased a lovely heart shaped pendant with their daughter’s birthstone floating inside.   Its gorgeous, she loves it and wears it almost every day.  

On the other hand,  I totally missed the second son-in-law’s gift for my other daughter this Christmas.  I’m a work in progress, I guess. 

Oh, for a frother.

Just got back from an attempt to locate a recipe in a magazine I saw some time ago at my mother-in-law’s house.  Went through a stack of food mags and came up empty handed as far as the recipe I wanted, but, boy, there’s a lot of good sounding stuff out there in the world, isn’t there? Especially if it involves cheese.  Yum. 

At times I think it is just too difficult to be a great cook.  Other times, I review a recipe and it doesn’t seem all that hard.  I can follow a recipe for crying out loud, can’t I? I’m an okay cook, not a great cook.  By okay I mean my family didn’t starve while the kids were young.  The trick is, like so many projects, its not necessarily the cooking its the tools.  I don’t have a lot of fancy tools, pots or pans.  No frother, no stand mixer. 

I am a big fan of the small house, small mortgage line of thinking.  However, it leaves little room for “stuff”.  For example, I would really like a toaster oven.  I don’t have room for a toaster oven.  I would like a stand mixer, again, no room.  I just  realized that this may be a carry over from growing up in a trailer days...just no room.  But, on the other hand, I can’t say that I don’t have other stuff.  I've got plenty. 

I guess it is just that I don’t have the kitchen stuff that is required, or seems to be if the magazines are being truthful with me, to be a great cook.  Like a super huge pot.  I’ve got a pretty big pot.  It has to stay in the basement when not in use as there’s not a cabinet that will hold it.  My niece has an ginormous pottery bowl that she makes spinach salad in...I love that bowl but I have nowhere for a bowl of that magnitude.  Along with their beautiful family, I love seeing that bowl come in the door.  

The thing about it is, after I realize I don’t have the stuff, I realize I don’t really want to be that cook anyway.  I don’t want to spend an hour getting the perfect peaks in my egg whites or, seriously, bringing the glaze to the proper sheen.  I am really grateful for people that want to be great cooks, and have the stuff to make it happen.  I am more than happy to visit their homes. 

The back burner simmer.

Its rather odd to wake up the first few days of January and have the snow completely melted and sunshine beaming in the windows, but, hey, I’ll take it for now.  Makes it easier to get out and grocery shop anyway.  It is super cold, however, and I guess that is why this is winter. 

A negative to working at home like I do is if there is a computer issue, its all on me to fix. If  I can’t get connected in to the systems for some reason I have to go to a support queue to be managed in a way, way too long and overburdened system.  That’s how my January morning is starting out.  It gives me time to look around my desk, see what I need to throw out and begin organizing my paperwork for taxes and what not, but, gosh, patience for this is not my strong suit.  One of the trade-offs for my work-at-home life. Today is one of those days; the tech support queue is long and the time I was going to have “for myself” this morning is being spent waiting in that queue.  

I often reflect and have the time “for myself” late at night, so this is a little different for me to just be waiting here.  If I look to the left, there it is - the big pile of papers and filing.  If I look to the right, eh.  Not much.  If I look ahead, well, that’s another story.  That’s the window, that’s daydream land.  While I am waiting in this queue, you see, I have to be ready for that tech support person to come on.  I am basically stuck here...simmering.  I can’t really get up and go about my day because they might be here any second, and if I am not, boom, they let me go and on to the next one who has been willing to wait.  I’m not scheduled to work yet so thank goodness I tried my systems early. 

This is when I usually shred stuff.  I feel good about shredding things.  It makes me feel like I am so organized.  I like deciding what doesn’t need to be shredded and can just be thrown in the recycling bin.  I am constantly amazed at the amount of paper garbage that comes in our  mail.  I know we have made great progress in the land of junk mail but wow, it is still a huge issue in my house.  I stopped taking magazines years ago, we do not get the paper but I get a tremendous amount of other junkmail.  If I could figure out a way to get the bills to stop coming in the mail, that’d be perfect.  

Oh, here’s the support tech now.  I guess its time to focus on a bit of work.  That wasn’t so bad; an hour and a half.  I got some shredding done and had breakfast.  Made a call.  Its not always a bad thing to be put on the back burner! 

Conforming, or not.

I scrapped the idea of writing anything about the holidays because, well, I figured there was lots to read out there about the holidays.  “I am not going to do what every one else is doing” , I thought to myself.  That’s the way I am sometimes...a rebel.  I use to think it was charming to be someone who doesn’t always follow the rules.  Now, I’m less convinced.  Could it be that I have finally matured? Grown up? Become a conforming non-conformist?

When my son was a teenager, he and I had a few talks about conforming non-conformity.  I had this thing, you know, where I wanted him to dress a certain way, be a certain thing.  He had other ideas.  What he did not accept was that he was not an “original”.  Very few people are, truly, original.  I mean, and this is where he use to get pretty mad at me, if it is possible to find certain articles of clothing, say flannel shirts, then doesn’t that make wearing flannel shirts not original? If it is “popular” to go to Goodwill and find too small t-shirts with elementary school names on them, or city park and recreation league teams, isn’t that the norm? He and I had many discussions on “Clothes make the man, son” and he hated that phrase.  

I was pretty good about it though, and let a few pretty wild things walk out this door back then.  I wanted him to feel like he could express himself but not put himself in danger.  We traveled to Great America one October for Halloween.  In true style, he wore red pants and a brilliant orange windbreaker...and no doubt, his trademark tennis ball yellow sneakers.  The whole park was decorated for Halloween and ghouls, goblins, witches and vampires lurked.  He and his friend walked through the park, and I will admit...he was a standout.  One lovely young female vampire, standing on a pedestal, cloaked and pale, looked down upon him and said “My, my, you are a colorful little fellow, aren’t you?”  

The thing is, I love those memories about him.  He was fun.  He was fearless, in some ways.   I use to try to challenge him that wearing bright tennis ball yellow skateboard sneakers was not “original” if there was a company out there producing them.  He didn’t like it that I held that opinion, but I think he understood my point.   He was the only kid in school with them and I guess that made them original enough. 

A year or so later, he was feeling restless one night and took a stroll out of the house. Late.  Late, late.  He walked for a few miles and was stopped not far from arriving back home, by the police.  Seems a gas station convenience store was robbed and the “perpetrator” was seen wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, which is what he was wearing.  The police asked if he would go to the gas station convenience store for a possible identification.  Now, although some may have considered him a rebel, he was still a very polite young man, so he agreed.  The police took him to the clerk and had him repeat a phrase, which included calling her a name or two.  She replied the thief wasn’t him, as the thief had a noticeable speech impediment.  

"Besides," she said “He certainly wasn’t wearing THOSE shoes!” 

Blame it all on my roots...

Hubs and I had an interesting and entertaining weekend.  About  six weeks or so ago, daughter called and asked if I thought dad would like to go to a concert as a Christmas gift.  Not just any concert, but, Garth Brooks.  She loved Garth Brooks as a kid and he always enjoyed him, too, mainly because she had so many of his CDs.  Garth was doing a series of concerts to benefit Nashville flooding relief and tickets were an amazing $25 each.  

Well, I said, I’m sure he would but we are going to have to tell him because, well, he needs to know he has enough people working, etc. and oh, by the way, this is Christmas week.  But, we dove in, drove down and boogied down, country style, in Nashville. 

The concert was great.  Fantastic even.  It was loud and pure entertainment.  We did know all the songs, thanks to that middle-schooler-now-mom that loves Garth Brooks.  But what was better, and maybe even selfish, was that our two daughters were ours for the weekend.  Both their husbands opted out of the two day trip and we had them to ourselves.  (Our son was unable to attend but,  boy,  do I wish he were there).  Beautiful young women, good friends to each other and independent thinkers.  We had great fun, lots of laughs, deep talks, and now, new memories.  We didn’t get to eat the fancy meal I would have liked, but we did enjoy some tremendous music and some pretty decent pulled pork.   We didn’t dress up, which I also would have liked, but we sang loud at a dueling piano club with gusto and walked back to the hotel, talking way too loudly,  I'm sure.   We stayed up late, we enjoyed each other’s company and just let it happen.  It was the week before Christmas, and we all still had much to do, but we just let it fly.  We ate too much, spent too much and stayed awake too much.  

Nashville is a great city.  A wonderful place for a quick weekend getaway and a super easy drive from our location.  Be spontaneous and take a little trip; you won’t regret it.  Its a walking city, easy to get where the action is.  See the dueling pianos at Bang This.   Gosh, if there is a concert at the Bridgestone, take that in.  If its a hockey game instead, see that! See a college basketball game at Belmont or Vanderbilt.  You want football? Titans stadium is only blocks from where the honky tonks line both sides of the street.  There’s loads to do in Nashville; certainly lots more than I've mentioned here, and lots more than country music. 

However, if you have time to steal away with your adult child(ren), and see them in a new light, their new light...no spouse (the husbands were missed, but it would have been different if they had been there!), no kids, no schedule to speak of, not  your house, not their house ~ treat yourself.  Spend the time with the people you grew, listen to them, speak with them, you absolutely won’t regret it. 

December stuff

My holidays as a kid were a little different than my holidays now.  Since we were often quite far away from where my mom’s family lived in southern Illinois or my dad’s family in northern Indiana, there was often just the five of us.

We lived in a trailer most of my childhood..oh, excuse me. I meant mobile home.  The first one was tiny ~ 8 feet wide and 40 feet long.  I don’t have a lot of memories of this one, just the fuzzy few photographs and snippets.  The next mobile home was 10 feet by 50 feet.  My parents referred to it as “The Anderson” years later; the manufacturer.   

I don’t have a lot of things from my childhood as, well, you can imagine. There was no place to keep anything! I may have a report card or two and maybe a drawing.   I think my mom may have bought new Christmas decorations every year or something, until I was older, because I don’t remember decorations being pulled out and hung with great care.  This might speak to my yen for collecting things, although clutter is getting less and less attractive to me.  

When we were close enough to get there, we would travel to my mom’s hometown at Christmas.   My mom had been married before she met my dad and had two boys.  Those two brothers lived with my grandmother, so in order to spend the holidays with them, we traveled when we could.  I had a uncle, named Dude, with three daughters close in age to my sister and I.  We really loved visiting them.  My Aunt May and Uncle Dude would get a huge “flocked” tree every year and I thought it was the most glamorous thing ever.  It was so much bigger and grander than anything we could put up in the little trailer.  My mom’s sister and family often traveled up from Florida as well...they also had two girls close in age to us.  I just realized my younger brother, always a “man’s man”, must have been mortified during these visits!   

These memories are busting through the cobwebs of my mind this blustery December day.  I get a little sad during some of these memory walks, as I think most of us do, when we think of times we no longer have.  I don’t have contact with any of my cousins.  I don’t know their families or their homes.  We never made a solid connection with each other, I guess because we only saw each other those one or two times a year, if then.  Each of my uncles passed away, and their wives, and I wasn’t at their funerals.  My older brother Darrell lives the closest to the old town, and is in contact with what remains of my mom’s family, but, that is also a thinning thread.  

Yesterday, surrounded by aunts,  uncles, cousins and a great grandmother, my little granddaughter made her first Christmas cut out cookie.  She heard Happy Birthday sung to her by her large family.  She ran and giggled and dodged and played.  She heard laughter and banter, and licked sugar off of her sticky fingers.  It was a great cookie and memory making day.  I wish the same for each of you...make memories. 

49 reasons...

Its great how songs secure some memories for us. Songs don’t just serve as background to me, they are a piece of the memory or thought process. I’ve always thought that music is a language and some people are gifted with delivering it, as my daughter Lindsey is, and the rest of us, well, we get to receive it.

Not a musician but appreciative of music and musical gifts and talents, I have a lot of songs that remind me of things, or events. I'm sure you do, too. Or things remind me of songs. Not too long ago, my husband and I were driving along and listening to Crosby, Stills and Nash. Before Young...you know the album. As we rode along and I sang along to all the songs, he seemed surprised. He said “You know all the words to this album?” “Well, yeah, of course.” came my reply, and was equally surprised that he was surprised. Was it because we didn’t know each other then? That we have a hard time picturing each other during that time of our lives that it surprised him that I would know? I was in California for goodness sakes! Of course I know those songs!

Anyway, my sister and I use to sit in our bedroom and play that album over and over and over. Sister harmony is the best. Neither she nor I were great singers but we could sing together because, well, we just could. Or at least we believed we could. We had a floor length mirror at the foot of the bed we shared in the apartment in San Francisco. We would sit on the floor, facing the mirror, backs against the end of the bed and could prop our feet against the wall, if we needed to stretch out. We would hold the album between us while memorizing the lyrics and sing. And sing. And sing. Too young to date, and in a new place, we’d spend a LOT of time together. Sometimes we’d look in the mirror, at ourself or each other, and sometimes we would avoid looking.

I am truly thankful for people who have the gift of music. Whether its writing it, or singing it or playing it. I have always thought of music as the language of the world. Yes, I know all the words to all the songs on that great album, and lots of others, too. He's in for a real treat when I break out Janis Joplin....