I remember growing up my Dad seemed to be overwhelmed at times, especially with four children spaced pretty widely apart. I’m not sure if it would have been easier, frankly, if we had been born closer together, as a bunch of babies and toddlers at one time can also be very frustrating. As can a bunch of teenagers! And he really tried hard to give us a better life and to treat us all the same when it came to opportunities. The sad part about that was we often didn’t feel he saw us individually, and he often made corrections to his parenting style based on how the one who came before us had fared in a particular situation. If one went to private high school, then all would go; even though I remember being pretty happy with my public school and my friends there. It was a good move, but at the time it was crushing. I tried to do college, but the large mid western university who chose me by default (the other smaller schools gave me waiting list options), was not a great fit. After two years of doing everything I could to try and love it, I realized I wasn’t really an academic and really wanted to get out in the world on my own. Even joining a sorority, Delta Gamma, was not enough of a life for me to stay. Dating was strange because it was during the Vietnam war and most guys I met were doing everything they could to avoid being drafted; staying in school being the primary one. Becoming an alcoholic seemed it might be second. Partying was huge at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and I was a bit too pragmatic and patriotic to enjoy that social life for very long. I think my Dad had had a lot of fun at Cornell and at his fraternity; he also met my Mom while on a blind date with someone else at Wells and they married soon after college, just before the war. He wanted me to have that same fun experience but I was not cut out for it. Overly responsible meant I wrote home saying perhaps my college fund would be better used if a younger sister had dreams of being a doctor or something that required six years, while I left early to go find a real job. I learned at age 80 he had referred to that opt out as me being dumb for not finishing college, so my next in line sister was told to go to junior college instead. Not exactly the result I had hoped for.

All of this is to preface my Dad had a hard time saying the good stuff to his kids. I don’t know if that became more difficult after his experiences in WW2 where, if he forgot to tell someone how to execute something correctly it might cost them their lives, or if he was naturally just trying to help us grow up to be responsible; because if that was it, he did it well, as I think we all veered toward overly responsible as adults. Something we all missed though was praise. Not that we needed a lot of it and not when it was not warranted. Just a little sometimes when we did something worthy. I heard it said that a parent needs to couch their criticisms in at least ten times the amount of pointing out things a child does right. I think we had just the reverse scenario. Dad did not think he needed to point out what we got right, just to teach us to correct what we got wrong. Since he also rarely gave us much information about why it was wrong, and more of a ‘because I said so’ instruction, I found I was usually walking on eggshells, not knowing exactly what I might do wrong that could trigger him. The good result is I did much more explaining to my own sons when they were young, hoping they might be able to reason their way through their lives with some advance knowledge of the things that needed attention as well as why they were going to be important, both in society and in their future relationships. That has proven to be true as I see them as adults, very confident in their own lives.

My older son said this to a friend who had met me at a birthday party for his daughter, many years before. He was saying how the conversation had been significant to him and so deep by comparison to most with people you had just met. Bob smiled even replaying it to me saying, “Yes, my mom doesn’t do small talk”.

I always thought that was somewhat of a curse, at least in polite society-type gatherings. Yet I have always said the opposite of your gift can often seem like a curse. In understanding my children growing up, even trying to explain them to each other, I often fell back on that nugget of truth. My son who is a musician can also be very particular, even obsessively so, about certain things. I think having a wife and his own children has softened a lot of that certainty, in expecting things can actually be perfect, but I could also see that his eye for precise details was radically important to becoming the incredible artist he has become. We need to look deeply at the things we may call flaws in others, particularly when we love them. There are always clues to the gifts that are also hiding there. It can be very helpful when we think we are training our children. There comes a point where we realize they are in fact raising us. If we are given the opportunity to focus on them deeply, as I was as a single parent, not distracted by any seemingly more important relationship, we are always noticing the buried treasures that have been a part of them since birth. Or at least that is the way it has seemed to me. They don’t grow up; they grow into who they are. I always felt as though I was just providing an invisible fence to keep them from running into a street, or to a place they were not yet ready to enter. It was fencing more like one you would see around a large horse farm; very open so you could observe all that was going on just outside the fence. I always thought when they are ready they will choose their path. But I never wanted them to feel they were trapped behind walls they would want to escape. Love can feel like that to children sometimes and they bolt too fast, before they are ready. There is a magical medium area where they can be close enough to see what they want but also safe while preparing for it. That would be my ideal parenting style if I could do it over, and stay consistent about it. That is what I like best about grand-parenting as well. Always looking for their special gifts and interests while also keeping their fences in good repair.

It was a cold, rainy, Wednesday evening in February in New Jersey. I had a sitter for my two boys, one my newborn son who was my unexpected pregnancy at age 38. The team who had come to speak at our Presbyterian church had set out about fifteen chairs and there were three or four guest speakers, to hopefully enlighten and drum up enthusiasm for our church to be a part of the launch of a new pregnancy center opening in a nearby town.

As the time neared for the meeting to begin, there were still about fourteen empty chairs. I had taken my seat, center of the front row, as I was very interested in learning more about something that might have made my own recent experience quite a bit easier. I could sense their sadness, as it began to be clear that no one else was coming. After an uncomfortable foot shuffling time for the speakers, I took a moment to speak to them from my audience of one. I basically said I know this seems like a disappointing turnout to you, but if you knew how deeply this matters to me, and how I will be able to encourage others to join me because of that, you would realize that the audience you want to be present is here. Please continue as if the room is full, because you do not have to get other people on board. I’m here and I am supposed to be. I didn’t come to listen, I came to be a vital part of this ministry.

And that was the beginning of my 30 year journey with pregnancy centers all over this country. I helped to start that one and became a counselor. I later moved to upstate New York and helped launch one from our church there. I became a part of one in southern California. And later in St Petersburg, Florida, I helped draw our church members into a struggling one in the heart of the city, although not in their neighborhood. The most needed and busy ones were often located in the parts of town many church members were not familiar with. Those centers were also the very grateful recipients of their more available contributions of both time and money and the briefly worn infants’ clothing that was passed their way. I later attended conferences as centers formed alliances to keep them open and current with federal and local laws; efforts to shut them down and protests against them continued over the decades, until Roe vs. Wade was overturned as a federal law returned to the states. I was there as centers raised money for ultrasound machines and hired nurses to perform those amazing visual signs of early life that would change so many hearts and minds. And of course I was there in a counseling room, coming alongside many young women who were struggling to make a decision that would forever change their life and those of everyone around her, in one way or another.

I was always impressed with the volunteers who had been on both sides, actually all three sides, of the issue, as many had been adopted as babies and not raised by the one who gave birth to them; they were so grateful for the chance they had been given to experience a wonderful childhood and family. All who had experienced this situation themselves were among the most humble and effective counselors, as they had a heart for each woman surpassing the desire to save a baby at all costs. It always hurt me to hear the phrase I saved a baby today, as I always wanted to follow up with and how is that woman doing? The opposite was often true across the street from one center where there was a Planned Parenthood. I was the only one who ever thought we actually had something in common, because my heart was always for the mom making that final decision, and I knew from meeting many women over the years who volunteered there that their hearts were toward the woman as well. I experienced many church women who felt they were definitely doing God’s work saving a baby from abortion, as indeed they were, but they sometimes failed to realize it went so much deeper than that. They often were extremely disappointed if the woman chose abortion after their counseling about all options available to them, and they seemed to feel it a personal failure; whereas the women like me, who had experienced the agony of the decision-making themselves, were much more likely to form a bond with that woman that often drew her back to the center, even after her abortion choice, to participate in a totally anonymous, loving, post-abortion counseling series done with peers and facilitators who had also once chosen that similar path.

The last thing anyone needs in that situation is harsh judgement from anyone representing God’s love. Of course God loves that tiny life then forming, but He has also loved that precious woman for a very long time and His heart is breaking for her as well. He will not abandon her, no matter what path she chooses. And just like my response to the leaders who gave the pep talk at my church that cold evening years before, she did find her way to the center to listen and learn. God’s timing is a part of her journey, whether she knows it at the time or not. The center and counseling are but another part of her path. We don’t know where that decision will lead in her life, but we do know Jesus told the parable about the lost sheep. He said the good shepherd always went after the one who strayed and left the 99 obedient ones behind to do just that. This ministry was never only about the babies, as much as so many of us want to protect and save them. In my experience, if the mother can actually feel God’s love and acceptance, if she can truly envision a path for herself and that baby, she is much more likely to choose to carry it to term, and that is where choice really comes into it. Subtle condemnation, in my experience, particularly veiled Christian judgement, rarely saves either of them.

I think that’s a good thing. I think it means when I’m done I’ll go fast. Maybe I’ll die the way that I lived, constantly on the move, hopefully not in a car crash or anything painful for a long time. My mantra of my last act has been ‘God, please use me up then take me home fast, if possible’. I do think that may happen. So I’m always a little prepared to be on my best behavior with everyone just in case. I’d rather leave them laughing, or at least not mad at me. It’s pretty easy, actually, as I’m moving a lot more slowly than I did in the past. I don’t have as much to say and these days I’m very grateful to have this little note thing on my phone so I can wake up in the middle of the night and talk to it, just so I don’t lose track of any story I wanted to remember.

I’ve had one heart attack, but I didn’t even know I was having one exactly. Maybe the hospital didn’t either. I didn’t find out until years later when they did a test where they ran dye through my veins and somehow saw my heart like the center of a tree; it had rings in it that somehow showed them that I’ve had a fairly sizable past heart attack. Well, there was that time I drove myself to the emergency room at two in the morning, afraid that my dog wouldn’t know what to do if I keeled over. Then he might die of hunger because nobody checked on me every day and I lived on a very quiet road and didn’t know my neighbors very well; I could easily have gone unnoticed for maybe even a week and I didn’t want to do that to my dog, who had been nothing but faithful. He didn’t deserve that.

I got up and googled it and found I had at least four signs of a possible heart attack. My Dad, his mom, both had several heart attacks before their deaths at ages I was now reaching. I drove myself to the nearest emergency room. They of course put me on treadmills and did all kinds of stupid stuff, keeping me in the ER all night, then sending me home in the morning with an acid reflux pill; only for me to find out five years later that probably was the heart attack now showing up in the rings. Oh well, at least I was home to feed the dog by noon the next day.

A three year old’s response to my saying No to his “I want……” request for goldfish crackers at 9 am. I try to explain once again that his want is not a need, nor is it a request that I will always honor. His reply to that is a quick “Please I may have goldfish” as though throwing in all the ‘good’ words I love to hear, all at the same time, will magically change this scene in his favor and I will grant his request. As any other parent or grandparent knows, that sudden scrambled vocabulary cuteness often does change our hearts to give in, at least the first two or three times we hear it.

It’s the equivalent of pretty please with sugar on top, but turned upside down or backwards in a way we want more of because it tickles us so. Soon all their words will be tidily said in perfect sequence, but how we love the mix ups while they happen! I think it saves many a cross reply, as we often have to turn our faces to hide a smile even when we are being stern. He is so good with words and manipulation of the ‘kill her with kindness’ variety vs meltdowns, totally confident the right words might get him exactly what he wants. He isn’t in the least bit pleading when he rephrases his request, which I call a soft demand. The insecure child in me is so “impwessed” as my granddaughter used to say, that it often works. And even when I say no, he just smiles and turns back to his play of the moment, knowing full well it will probably still work the next time he tries it. I often think of how we sometimes try the same thing with God, sweetening the prayer requests just a little if they seem a bit self centered, hoping He may be swayed by our momentary cuteness, maybe just one more time.

Said little Raleigh to me when we were going out for a ride on his balance bike, circling around the little Mr. Roger’s neighborhood I live in. Staying on the sidewalk. Wearing a helmet. Watching out for cars when we crossed the street together. Strange dogs on leashes. Wandering ducks from the pond looking for food.

A strange request? Perhaps. Probably just a thing he said in passing, with no deeper meaning involved. I could and did answer “Yes, honey”; of course, I meant only while he was in my care, but of course we didn’t talk about that. The simplest answer is the easiest with a three year old. As most all grandparents who have had both the blessing and the curse of remembering too much from their own child-rearing years, I know keeping a child safe is a huge duty and an overwhelming responsibility. There are so many possible ways for a child to be hurt; physically certainly, but emotionally often even worse. Because you never saw it coming.

Years later we will learn from our children, their therapists or their spouses, where we had in fact not kept our children safe. Where they had been harmed, usually unintentionally and often unknown for years, in ways we never realized were even possible, in part because we had yet to sort out our own emotions concerning our upbringing and our binding family ties. There isn’t enough time to do it all and keep on track with everything that is happening at lightning daily speeds while raising kids. As parents we do the best we can with what we know at the time. Unfortunately at first we only seem to know either how to instinctively repeat what we learned from our parents or to attempt the completely opposite approach, having learned as adults that what we absorbed as a child was not always beneficial, so perhaps the opposite of it would be better? Unfortunately the opposite usually was not better, just swinging the emotional pendulum to the other wrong side, rushing past the centered balance we wanted but had no way of recognizing. From unnoticed to hovered over. From neglected to spoiled. From discounted emotions to always being allowed very big feelings, both seeming unacceptable to us, but the unknown norm also somehow unattainable. Balance seemed very distance when viewed now from the other side. Where do we turn for guidance, and how will we recognize the center if we have never experienced it?

The things we most need to learn to embrace our best life are never really taught to the young, except perhaps in the school of hard knocks. We enter parenting with highest hopes, but it is the most complicated mess of responsibilities and job titles we will ever encounter, especially if we are picking up the slack for another parent, one either emotionally absent, physically or sometimes both. I used to think I was reparenting myself as fast as I could, while trying to navigate the potholes that may well show up in my children’s lives if I am not successful. It seemed like a wild race against time, and I often failed to be one step ahead of where they needed me to be.

We can only improve the gene pool little by little if we really pay attention and try harder and harder in the fog in which we often find ourselves. From dysfunctional to mis functional to what…normal? At the ripe age of 80, I can say I have yet to meet anyone coming from a ‘normal’ family, as everyone has ways they have had to make adjustments. Yet seeing those small positive gains made by my children as they parent are huge in our family legacy. I am always noticing those ever so slight increases and crediting them to the balance column in our generational inheritance. It isn’t easy. Yay team!!

My youngest son had just been relocated to the fifth new home of his six years on earth. He adjusted very well every time, but in this one he also started school. He was quite self assured and already dressed in a style that showed his flair for being comfortable in his own clothing choices, even if he stood out from his peers. I was raised to be very conscious of both fitting in and being properly appropriate in my choices of attire. In self esteem I drew a short stick; it was extremely important to me that I not somehow hand that on to my children, even though I had no idea how to project its opposite.

I used to buzz cut my boys hair, at least until they began to notice girls around age 12. Soon after he started school, it was time for a buzz cut for my youngest. We put a kitchen stool in their bathroom and he sat down facing the big mirror. The stool put him at just the right height for me to work around his whole head and stay even. I did something different this particular time. I buzzed the right side front to back but stopped an inch onto the top. Then I did the same for the left side, stopping at the same place. I wasn’t finished but I stopped to look in the mirror at his reflection. He had one solid strip of hair up the middle, perfectly done and because it was growing out a previous buzz, all the hair was neatly the same length. I saw his eyes looked amazingly large all of a sudden, too and I asked him, “You know that mohawk you been asking me for years, do you still want one?”

Those big eyes got even larger and he said “Yes Mom!” He had no reservations, but I of course had to follow up with “What if people laugh at you?” He spun around and looked me straight in my eyes and said “Mom, if they laugh at me, that’s their problem.” I guess I didn’t hand it on after all, in spite of myself.

I am reading a book in which this particular writer’s mission and gift is to encourage others to find their voice writing. I was reading this morning about how we may associate a particular smell with our deepest memories.
I was telling several friends recently about the smell of coffee and how I loved waking up early when I am visiting my son and his family, so that I can share a cup of coffee with my daughter-in-love in their kitchen as she gets ready for the day ahead and meals needed, starting with breakfast. It is perhaps my favorite part of my trip out west. I love catching up on their world through her eyes, as she recounts recent adventures large and small, in the months just passed or the ones ahead. The love she has for each of them even in struggle moments is always most evident, and because I share that with her, I feel as though I am on their journey as well. The memories of those early morning hours come drifting back as I sit here months later with my coffee.
The times I shared with my Mom over coffee when we lived with them after I moved my tribe of three to Florida in the late 80s were also some of my favorites. The coffee my Mom drank was never the best and later, as we had so many better options, I wondered why she still drank the plain black Folgers she faithfully brewed each morning.
I know now that it wasn’t the coffee. It was the peaceful time to write, think, feel and process that was so special about starting her day that mattered.
I had a beloved grandmother who also wrote letters to her family each morning about six am, probably with a warm cup of coffee beside her. My Mom often started her day with her famous tiny yellow legal pad and black flair pen notes to our family and her wide circle of friends. I come from a long line of morning writers it appears, as I recount these memories. Savoring the smell of my early morning coffee is even nicer now as I think about my heritage of women with pens.

I remember when my youngest was about five and he suddenly became sick to his stomach. He ran to the bathroom and quickly put his head over the toilet bowl. I got a clean wash cloth and ran it under the cold water and held it against his forehead while he emptied his stomach into the bowl in fits and starts. When he was nearly finished he turned his little head toward me and said “Were you trained for this?”

I thought of all the ways a Mom, even a brand new one, all of sudden seems to acquire an entirely new skill set, somewhat resembling a grandmother/nurse. The fact that it seemed odd to my son made me think about how amazing it is. After a flash, or many flashes, of intense labor and delivery pain, a selfish teen turned irrational twenty something incredibly becomes a protective, caring parent for a small infant, without taking any courses or getting some type of license. Things that our Mom or grandmother used to do come flying out of our memories exactly the moment they are needed. Somehow the next generation manages to get enough healing solutions to their smallest problems to carry them forward into adolescence, where they can begin caring for themselves. This moment made me think how special all that generationally passed on healthcare truly is. Our glycerin on boo boos to make them stop pulsing, mud on bee stings, calamine lotion on almost everything that itches, and hydrogen peroxide on any cut that needed cleaning….. because we couldn’t google anything in those days. You had to be confident, so you were! Maybe not so bad a solution.

Several years after my divorce from the father of my son, I had a brief romantic reunion with someone I had dated prior to my marriage. He was also divorced many years by that time and we were reintroduced by mutual friends. I was busy running/owning a gift store in New Jersey and raising my five year old son as a single mom. I rarely dated, but I really loved the friends who put us back together. Neither of us were great relationship material at that time, but we did enjoy each other’s company a couple weekends when my son visited his dad and new wife, as we now lived in different states.

Anyway, the result of those brief encounters was an unexpected pregnancy that threw me into a rapid decision making process. Having already borne a child, I knew the fetal development and how quickly the baby was forming. After that, one can’t easily think its a baby when they want it and only a mass of cells when they don’t. I quickly realized, in the fifth year after Roe vs Wade became legal, that many of my friends were self-avowed feminists at that time. Assume that, as a divorced woman, most of my close friends now were single, divorced, or unhappily married. It was the way one got sorted after a divorce in those days. I didn’t have a definite position then and was willing to see the pros and cons of each side in an individual’s life: I was wary of mere head knowledge and always preferred real life experience over wishful thinking. This was no longer hypothetical for me, so given a very short timespan to decide and because I didn’t want my developing fetus to have any more body parts than it had at that moment if I was considering termination, I quickly devised a test to use when seeking advice from my very few close friends or relatives. I asked them “have you ever had an abortion, a child out of wedlock or given a child up for adoption?” as those were the three not so great options I was facing. There were also no Crisis Pregnancy Centers that I was aware of in 1977.

The result of my test was I lost one friend who had an abortion that I had actually driven her to, who refused to talk when I called her asking about her feelings afterward; she hung up on me in tears. Most others didn’t pass the test and only could offer what they thought they would do in my place. Not helpful. My doctor had told me in a check up he didn’t know how I had ever conceived my one child, as my female parts seemed upside down and sideways. This wasn’t a birth control method I should have relied on. When I was back in his office for the pregnancy test six months later he handed me the name of a doctor who would take care of my ‘problem’. I was never in his office again for care or advice. My own father wrote me I was never going to have enough time, money or love beyond what I needed to raise my one child and owed it to my son not to have another. Also that no man would ever want to take that on in a future marriage. Feeling somewhat at a loss to make the right decision, I scheduled an appointment to terminate the pregnancy. The night before I called a friend in California, someone I had dated but we were coasts away; both divorced, crazy busy and again, neither of us the most stable at that point in our lives for solid relationships. I should add that I had also driven to the other state to get input from the father of this child, who was supporting his ex and their three children already. A heavy drinker and again, not a great candidate for long term solidity, though he did think I should not terminate, yet offered little else in the way of a path forward.

My phone call to the friend in California cast the final vote. Though as a man he had not had an abortion personally, his only natural child was aborted without him even being consulted and it had made an indelible impact on him. When I told him I said I really wanted to know how I was going to feel twenty years from that moment and make my decision based on that. His wise response to was “What are you doing the next nine months you couldn’t do pregnant?” I found myself laughing and crying on my end of the phone, suddenly surrounded by light standing in my dark basement at nine pm. I had just found my true north on this matter. I cancelled my appointment the next morning and went forward with the two choices I then had left. My friend had bought me grey time in a mostly black and white scenario. I went to talk to adoption agencies and then later, about the fourth month, I decided I would not only carry but raise that unborn child. When I shared the news with my wonderful five year old he said “Oh Mom! Remember when I threw that penny in the fountain at Bloomingdales? I wished I could be a brother!” While I didn’t blame him for this odd outcome of his penny request, I did love that he said he wanted to be a brother, not just to have a brother! Although he did get that wish too, if it was one. The two of us had the relationship, guts and grace to follow through with my decision and I have never had a moment of regret.