This is me and my brother with my Grandmother Gray. And Ian, but you can’t see him because none of us had met him yet. This is February, 2007, and we were celebrating my grandmother’s 90th birthday. February, near lake Erie, with snow on the ground. But I found shamrocks… I remember I taped them to a note I wrote to Grandma about them. Shamrocks in the snow… I miss her every day.
This past week we have had some unseasonably beautiful weather, and I saw the first crocuses. This is wonderful and cheering and also a little sad, as it always reminds me of my Grandma, whom I used to call on the phone to share the good news when I saw the first flowers of spring. So, Grandma, wherever you are- the crocuses are out. And they are beautiful. Today was a no-school day and somehow or other we didn’t get our progress photos taken.
But I can tell you this. I had occasion to run around the back yard with these dudes on one of those beautiful days I mentioned. And I had FUN. My favorite part was when they were tired and I was not. STRONGER!
Day: 99
The scale has moved: -22 lbs (I am only 5 lbs away from a “healthy” BMI!)
The inches have changed: -19.75 inches
I feel: like Spring is coming after all!
I’ve walked: 125.23 miles and counting!
If the Julian calendar was a map of all my favorite fiction, February would be the Pit of Despair. I always feel like I’ve fallen in it and I can’t get out. Once we’ve assumed that I’m not turning to junk food to lift my mood, humor and encouragement are the only things that get me through. (The Wise and Wonderful Betty Gray used to commiserate with me in February. Whatever it is about this month, I’m just absolutely done with everything by the time it rolls around every year.)
In the humor department, the very unfortunately timed end of one of my favorite blogs, Regretsy, has me looking for similar sources of incisive wit. I haven’t found one yet. In the void, I have been watching a notorious internet flame war between two bloggers. Well, really one and a half bloggers, because only one of them has stooped to name calling and aggressive tactics. (Psst, if you know of a blog that consistently delivers the kind of irreverent humor April Winchell has been known for, please tell me so I can start reading it, before I’m reduced to watching Jersey Shore.) It’s really not very funny- more of an object lesson.
Reality TV and internet flame wars give us plenty of dramatic examples of tearing other people down. But even in real life, we all know people who habitually tear others down. It can take the form of subtle, disparaging comments in conversation or it can be blatant and malicious backstabbing. Either way, we’ve all run into it, and at times it can be hard to deflect it and not take it personally. For some reason, most of us don’t feel comfortable saying, “you know, that wasn’t a very kind thing to say.”
I, personally, don’t usually feel comfortable saying, “that is not a kind thing to say.” It feels like criticizing the other person’s behavior, which is rude. I’ve been taught that being rude to someone who has been rude to you doesn’t solve anything. (It really doesn’t.) But is it really rude or critical to call someone on an unkindness, or is it honest and practical? Is it loving to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they didn’t realize they sounded unkind? Is it more fair to give them the chance to make amends than to hold your peace? As someone who struggles constantly with hotheaded tendencies, I fear my quest to not just let loose my temper on the populace may be causing me to sometimes hold my tongue when I should give a calm, honest response. Let’s file this under “ways I need to work on myself,” shall we?
Speaking of working on myself, this has been a bit of a tough week. The fridge crisis is over, but the aftermath has created more than one “clean it up or burn it down” moment. Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t skip a workout to clean, but… well, February is also noted for being my annual celebration of Let’s Throw It All Out and Start Over. So I’ve been a little erratic this week.
My workout buddy Jenn and I have vowed to help each other through the February Blahs. It’s the shortest month in the calendar, and we will NOT let it get the better of us. She tells me that, statistically, this is the week people most often quit fitness plans. I think the moral of that story is, “don’t be a statistic.”
Having someone to struggle through the Battle Vs. February with me is just putting the whole “Don’t tear others down” thing in context. It will never get us where we want to go, because it pulls down a support that could help lift us up. So I hold out my hand to you now, in friendship. I will pull you up over the hump of the year’s shortest month- if you will do the same for me.
And let’s schedule a Three Stooges marathon. Or something. STAT.
Day: 85
The scale has moved: -19 lbs
The inches have changed: -18 inches
I feel: determined to kick February where it counts.
I’ve walked: 104 miles and counting!
My uncle said to my father at my Grandmother’s funeral… “Mom was love.” And I couldn’t respond because that just made me cry harder than I already was. It wasn’t an empty compliment, it was a bald fact. She was love. Don’t get me wrong, she had a temper like anyone else and she could get plenty angry, but, at the end of the day, she was love. It radiated out of her and brightened everyone she met. My son, Ian, reminds me of her every day- his sunny smile and the way he has never met someone who wasn’t instantly a friend are all her. Somehow that bright, shiny ability to see the lovability in everyone has passed itself down to him. I wish that she could have had more time to know him, and I hope that for all of us there is someone in this world who can say, when we are gone, “93 years were not enough.”
She loved the springtime flowers most of all, so I am glad to report that, under the snow that is falling right now, our daffodils are about to open up and shout, “here we are!” and make everyone who sees them want to smile back. Because that’s just how she was. It seems fitting to be waiting for the daffodils today, on her day.
We got to give a little love, have a little hope
Make this world a little better
-Ziggy Marley
Never used.
I can’t go to a thrift store without thinking of my Grandma Gray. She and I used to go together, and when we couldn’t do that, I’d call her when I got home and tell her everything I had seen. Best of all would be if something I said sparked her remarkable memory and set her to telling me stories. The world seems much smaller without her.
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t know that my grandmother, The Wise and Wonderful Betty Gray, had a sister who died when they were children. That piece of information was just a fact for most of my life. A date on the family tree and a name.
After my grandfather died, Grandma told me about her father throwing himself into Jean’s grave, sobbing that he wanted his daughter back. Jean started to be a little more real to me then. So did my great grandfather. When Jean died of diptheria, she was 9, and my grandmother was six years old. Just a bit more than a year older than Ian is right this minute. She lived 93 years. She raised five children and had 10 grandchildren and three great grandchildren during her lifetime. Part of her never stopped being the six year old girl who saw her sister for the last time.
Now I’m a mom, and I’m seeing some of the family photographs from when my grandmother and her sisters were children for the first time. I certainly saw a lot of family photos when I visited Erie, but I’d never seen these. They add a whole other dimension to this story. Because my kids take after these madcap Lynch girls by quite a bit. I see expressions and attitudes in these photos taken 100 years ago and they are the same I see every day. The haircuts are different, the photo processes were different, but the minds and personalities behind those photos feel so FAMILIAR. In every sense of the word. And Jean and her two little sisters are becoming less abstract. I feel like I’m getting to know my Grandma and my Great Aunt Eileen more- not as they were when I knew them, but as they were before the loss of their sister changed everything.
I look at this face:
and I can’t help but see this:
You can learn more about the Lynch girls on my dad’s site. Start here.
Jenny and her girls (Jean and Betty):
Me and my boys:
When one thinks of one’s “Great Grandmother,” I suppose one naturally tends to think of her as having been elegant. And refined. You know, “old fashioned.” And perhaps a bit… stuffy. I should know better. We are talking, after all, about the woman who raised the Wise and Wonderful Betty Gray. Who raised my father. Who… well, you see where this is going, right? The family Zydeco Dance Band had to come from SOMEWHERE. (What’s our Family Zydeco Dance band? Three dudes, a cowbell, and a kazoo. Need I say more?)
Thanks to my dad and my uncle, Barry, I can tell you that THIS is what I should be thinking of when I think “Great Grandmother.”
Maybe it’s a fluke. Ok. Here she is with my great grandfather:
Oh dear. Well, perhaps she talked him into it. Surely he was occasionally dry and refined.
Or not. I bet they had a family Zydeco Dance band, too. Although they had three daughters, so I suppose they’d have to have been Dudettes.
Total mileage this morning: 1.23 miles
If you are a hard-laughing, kid loving, book reader, today is your day.
If you stand tall and speak firmly though tears may fall, today is your day.
If you defend your family fiercely, today is your day.
If you have faced adversity and carried on, today is your day.
If you are always absolutely and indubitably yourself, today is your day.
Happy Birthday to the Wise and Wonderful Betty Gray. In your honor, I celebrate you and all the funny, strong, wise, irrepressible, intelligent, caring, WONDERFUL women I know.
