Tag Archives: motherhood

Home For Sale By Owner…Life after 50

Posted on March 13, 2013 | 6 Comments

Home For Sale By Owner. I never thought I would put that sign in front of my house. But I did. I put it in my front yard yesterday, in fact.

 

It’s a red and white sign that says For Sale By Owner. I added the Home part.

If you’re interested…it’s 1400 sq. ft., 3 bedrooms, 1.5 baths, dining room, updated kitchen, central heat & air, hardwood floors, lot size 51 ft. x 150 ft. That’s the house part…you have to add the love that makes it a home. I’m taking mine with me.

“All I ever wanted was a little white house with a white picket fence with two little boys to play in the yard”….that’s a line from a long, depressing poem I wrote several years ago. You don’t want to read the rest of the poem…I promise you that!

Anyway, it’s always been important to me to have a home where my children could be. Where they could play safely in their own yard, where they could splash in mud puddles and play with the water hose, where they could sit in their sandbox and have an afternoon snack of Graham crackers and purple Kool-Aid, where they could play in the living room in the evening after supper and then have a warm bath and a bedtime story before being tucked into bed.

That was my dream…always. And parts of it came true. I have precious memories of riding dinosaurs and digging in the dirt with my kids in our own backyard, of snuggling in the rocking chair to read a story.

But now…everyone is grown up and gone. My house is too big. I ramble around in it, going from room to room with no true purpose…looking for things I’ve lost. And my backyard seems awfully empty even though I attempt to raise vegetables and flowers back there.

So now… it’s Home For Sale By Owner. And that’s OK.

Things have changed. Life has changed. I have changed. And it’s time to let go of this dream and follow another one.

One thing I have learned in Life is that homes are not made of brick and mortar, boards and shingles. They are made of love. And home is always where your heart is. My heart doesn’t reside here now.

It’s time for a family to move into this house and make it their home. It’s time for some other family to hang their heart here. The welcome mat is out…and I’m waiting for them to arrive so I can hand them the key to the front door.

So now the sign in my front yard says it all…Home For Sale By Owner. I hope the new owners will love this place as much as I did.

(By the way…it’s time for this Grandma to get an RV and travel her dreams, so don’t worry about me! I’m just taking my heart on the road and will hang it somewhere else. )

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Posted in Aging, Aging Gratefully, Happiness, Home Improvement, Life after 50, Motherhood, Parenting after 50, Peggy Browning writer, travel

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There’s an App for That…Breastfeeding App for iPhone

Posted on February 5, 2012 | 1 Comment

Motherhood just got a little more technical.

Last Wednesday my daughter left the hospital with a newborn baby girl and a list of instructions about how to breastfeed her.

How hard could it be?  Women have been feeding their babies that way for a very long time. Like…since time began.

Mother and baby were successfully doing it at the hospital. They continued to be successful at home. Everything was great.

The actual execution of the job seemed do-able. Like many jobs, the work was simple. It’s the paperwork that kills ya.

Yep. We had to keep tabs on the feeding schedule. Fifteen to twenty minutes on one side. Then fifteen to twenty minutes on the other. Feed again within two to three hours.

But what if Baby Dear went to sleep while nursing on one side and lost a few minutes of productive time by resting on the job?

Did we count that as actual feeding time?

Did we have to start over with the counting after tickling her little toes to wake her long enough to finish feeding?

What a conundrum! It had been a long time since the three adults in the household had a good night’s sleep. We were puzzled and easily confused.

I gave my daughter my watch so she could count the minutes. That sort of worked, but not really. We tried watching the clock together and keeping up with the time that Baby spent nursing.

Then we would get distracted by Baby’s adorable round cheeks and her cute little fingers and her sweet tiny ears and forget what time the feeding began. And we couldn’t count up the total on either side.

After all the excitement of the homecoming and the visitors and phone calls had finally died down and we were just clock and baby watching, my daughter said, “There must be a better way to keep up with this.”

I said, “Yes, I agree.”

I started out the door to go to my car and get my standard notebook and pencil so we could write down the time that Baby started feeding. That’s how I do paperwork.

Then I heard my daughter say, “I’ll bet there’s an app for this.”

With her iPhone in hand, she was already looking for a breastfeeding app.

“Yep. Here it is,” she said.

And sure enough, there is an app for that. It times the feeding, pauses when Baby pauses, restarts when she starts, averages the times, and then sounds an alert when it’s time to feed again.

Well, I’ll be dog-gone.

When I was a young mother with a newborn the only alert I had was a crying baby to tell me when it was time to feed her. But that was a long time ago.  It was in another decade, another century,  another millennium even.

My, how times have changed.

 

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Posted in Breastfeeding, Grandparents, Motherhood, Mothers & Daughters, New mothers, Relationships

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More Today than Yesterday

Posted on February 1, 2012 | 5 Comments

 Now they understand.

 Now both my surviving children, my son and my daughter, understand how much I love them.

 They knew, as well as a child can know, that  I loved them. But they didn’t fully understand it until they experienced it for themselves.

 My son has understood for a while now. He has two children of his own, a little son and daughter of his own to love. He knows. He understands.

 I saw it in his eyes when I saw him hold his babies. I saw that understanding in him again today when he held their little hands while walking down the hospital corridor on the way to visit their aunt and new baby cousin.

 I saw the understanding in my daughter’s face yesterday while she held her own little daughter for the first time. She loved that baby girl before she was born, and she loved her even more yesterday after she was born.

 Today she loved her more than yesterday. She didn’t know that was possible.

 Tomorrow she will love her even more. And the next day, and the next.

 I knew my daughter understood that this morning when she looked at me over the tiny, wrapped- tighter-than-a-burrito bundle she was holding

After just 24 hours in this world this little girl has a mother who would readily do anything to insure her safety and well-being. My daughter has acquired the impulse that would make parents step in front of a train, that would make them catch a grenade, that would make them do anything for their child. That impulse will grow stronger every day.

 You can never understand exactly how much your own mother loves you until you have your own child. You can guess how much she does, you can even “know in your heart”, but you can’t understand until you feel it for yourself.

 I didn’t understand it until I had children of my own. The birth and growth of each of my own three children helped me understand just how much my own mother loved me and my brother and sisters.

 I feel confident that my other son understands it too. Knowing God’s love for us has to be like knowing your mother’s love. It’s one and the same thing.

 It’s a love that surpasses all understanding.

 I love you more today than yesterday, but a little less than tomorrow.

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Posted in Mothers & Daughters, Mothers and Sons, Parenting after 50, Relationships

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Great Expectations

Posted on January 28, 2012 | 6 Comments

Last night my ringing cell phone awakened me from my nap on the couch.

It was my very pregnant daughter calling to tell me she was leaving work. That’s nothing new. She calls me almost every evening and we talk while she drives home from work.

This time she wasn’t driving home. She was driving herself to the hospital.

She had just called her fiancee’ at work to let him know what she was doing. Next she called me.

She didn’t want to get everybody excited.

Too Late.

I was  already off the couch and in my bedroom, throwing clothes in a bag. I was cursing myself for being unprepared even though I’d been expecting a call like this for a couple of weeks now.

Why hadn’t I packed a bag already?

Why hadn’t I filled the car with gas?

I had 39 weeks to prepare for this one huge occasion.

So why wasn’t I? Prepared, that is.

OMG! What was she doing driving herself across Dallas-Fort Worth to the hospital?

Did she need me?

What did she want me to do?

Did she need me to come get her and take her to the hospital?

No, she said. She just wanted me to calm down.

She was already driving to the hospital which is about 5 minutes from her house. But she wasn’t starting from her house…she was starting from her workplace which is about 40 minutes away from her house and then 5 more minutes to the hospital.

OMG! I’ll be right there, I told her.

I had to take a shower and buy some gas and get some cash and put the dog out  and then drive 120 miles. But I’d be there as fast as I could!

Don’t worry, baby! Mama is coming. Everything will be all right, I assured her.

OMG! Where should I buy gas?

Mom, go to the convenience store around the corner from your house, she said. Calm down.

OK. I’ve got to take a shower. I’m hanging up now. I’ll call you back in 5 minutes.

Five minutes later we were back on the phone and I had given up on packing the bag.

I just grabbed clothes, shoes, several books, my laptop (why?), my camera, a 500 count bottle of  Ibuprofen, a bottle of water, a blanket, several  pairs of reading glasses and three coats (why?) and tossed all of it in the backseat of my un-gassed car.

I drove to the bank and cussed out the ATM because I couldn’t read or follow the instructions on the stupid thing. Where were my dadgum reading glasses?

I went to the gas station by the grocery store…not the one by my house…and filled the tank, leaving the gas cap off.

Then I realized I didn’t have my cell phone charger for the car so I stopped at Wal-Mart and bought a charger and 3 bananas (again, why?).

I was in the Starbucks drive-through waiting for a Venti latte with an extra espresso shot when my daughter called again.

She was at the hospital. She was OK.

False Alarm.

Simmer down, Mom. You don’t have to come down here tonight. I’m going home. I’ll be fine.

Thank goodness.

I wasn’t quite ready.

I drank my latte and stayed up all night.

Today I pulled all that random stuff out of the backseat of the car. I sorted it and packed all necessary things into appropriate bags. Now several days worth of comfortable outfits hang from the clothes hook in the backseat.  The camera is charged and packed. The phone charger is set up in the car. Two bottles of water are in the drink holder. A pair of reading glasses rests beside the phone charger.

My make-up, toothpaste, Ibuprofen and antacids occupy their own little bag along with books, notebooks, paper and pens. The laptop is back on my desk again.

There’s gas in the car. There’s cash and three bananas in my purse.

My new granddaughter is due any day now.

I’m ready. I’m calm.

All my bags are packed. I’m ready to go. …..Would anyone like a banana?

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Posted in Mental Health after 50, Mothers & Daughters, Parenting after 50, Relationships

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The Road to Motherhood

Posted on January 21, 2012 | 3 Comments

 

On the Road Again

 

 

 

 

 

Last weekend my daughter Emily and I took the last road trip that we’ll ever take together… just the two of us.  On our next trip we’ll have an extra passenger in the backseat. In a car seat. With a diaper bag.

You see, Emily is pregnant with her first child, a little girl. Approximately eleven days from now, that little girl’s Mommy and Daddy, grandparents, aunts and uncles and cousins will joyously welcome her into this world.

While we all await the beginning of  a new era, my daughter and I took this last bit of time together to say a  bittersweet good-bye to the old one. We said good-bye to the last days when she will be almost totally carefree.

Road trips are something Emily and I have enjoyed  for all of her life. We’ve always liked to just jump in the car and head out on a trip. Free from care and temporarily free from whatever held us bound to our home.

Some trips were planned. Most were not. It’s never been a big deal for us to toss a few belongings into the backseat of whatever old car I owned and just drive to places unknown.

Sometimes we just drove around town and listened to the radio or listened to each other. Often, when she was  a very little girl, I would drive 90 miles or so from our home to Fort Worth to just drive around some more when we arrived there. She played in the backseat and pretended to be Fievel the little mouse who sails across the ocean to America and I pretended to be Fievel’s Papa,  while we sailed down the highway in search of our own adventure.

Sometimes we’ve had destinations in mind. Other times we’ve driven aimlessly, going wherever the road takes us. Every time we have enjoyed the journey.

We’ve made impromptu trips to hike in the Wichita Mountains, to float on an inner tube down a Texas River, to buy a chocolate dipped ice-cream cone in a nearby town, to go to a drive-in movie, to visit a pumpkin patch, to attend mass at a church in a town where nothing is familiar. We often found a serendipitous, unexpected adventure.

But, we never really needed a reason to go somewhere. Just driving usually seemed reason enough.

On these trips we’ve connected  as mothers and daughters tend to do, laughing, giggling, telling secrets, giving advice, crying, pouting, arguing,  stopping whenever and wherever we desired, but always making our way back home.

Once when Emily was a teenager and we had hit a rough patch, I forced her to take a ride with me.  We started down the highway with me angry and determined to force her to have fun and with her sullen and determined not to talk to me. It wasn’t much fun for either of us, but we briefly regained our old happy relationship.

When I think back on it now, I realize we didn’t enjoy that journey very much, but we did go the distance.

On this last trip, we drove to Waxahachie for no particular reason except because, well…it’s there.

We randomly wandered into a Beall’s store and found the perfect “coming home from the hospital outfit for the baby” that we had sought for months. We went to a movie and watched “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo.”

We stayed in a hotel where we watched comedies on cable TV and ate candy in bed. We had our pictures taken on the staircase of an old hotel where a scene from “Places In The Heart” was filmed. We stopped at almost every roadside restroom available.

It was all new to us and unfamiliar in a strangely familiar way. Serendipity.

I didn’t have to force my daughter to have fun on this trip. She was acutely aware that her new journey begins in just a few days.  She is on the road to motherhood.

While driving home from our last trip…just the two of us…we pondered what may lie ahead for Emily and her new little traveler. The road ahead may be full of curves and it might be tough to navigate for a while until she gets her bearings.

I told her that I know this for sure: the road will be long and filled with lovely sights she has never seen before. There are many adventures ahead.

And if my daughter ever needs to ask for directions, I’ll be happy to share my well-worn road map.

Motherhood is a long journey. Ask for directions. Enjoy the trip.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Posted in Legacies, Mothers & Daughters, Parenting after 50, Random Thoughts about Post 50 Issues, Relationships

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