PART 1: THE NEWS
It's been awhile since I've had a chance to
blog. Four months to be exact. I have written dozens of posts in my head since
then. Topics run through my mind as I'm walking, driving or folding laundry but
evaporate quickly, as I don't have the time to write them down because I lack
two crucial ingredients: peace and quiet.
It is harder with the second child. Somehow
when it was just one, I still felt like I could juggle everything. I could pass
off Owen to Dave when I needed to work late, balance the checkbook, go to yoga,
or have phone conversations that lasted longer than five minutes. Now, with two
of them, getting everyone out of the house with shoes on, jackets zipped and
the diaper bag packed feels like it takes an act of Congress, as British
comedian Michael McIntyre so brilliantly illustrates in this sketch.
Tonight I have some peace and quiet, nine
hours to be exact, as I'm on a plane thousands of miles above the earth on my
way to Munich to attend a business conference. I've never been so excited about
a transatlantic flight, as I typically prefer the destination to the journey. Tonight
it feels luxurious to sit alone in the dark with only the glow of my laptop to
keep me company. Finally I have time to sit, reflect and think about my
grandma, who died a few weeks ago, 18 days shy of her 97th birthday.
When my mom called from Los Angeles to tell
me Grandma had passed away, it was 9 a.m. in Chicago. I was in the throes of
shoving work papers into my bag, finding socks for Owen and slamming coffee so
I could get him to preschool and myself downtown to my office. The first time I
saw my mom's number light up on my phone, I didn't answer. But then she didn't
leave a message, which is unusual. And she never calls that early. So when she
called back the second time, I picked up.
"Laurie?" Mom said.
"Yes?"
"Your Grandma Green died last
night," she said. "She went to the hospital for a kidney issue and
didn't make it."
I stopped shoving things into my bag and
looking for socks for Owen. It had been a long time coming, given her age and health issues. Yet the news that she was gone, really gone, still came
as a shock.
"Oh," I said.
PART 2: THE GRANDMA I
KNEW
Margaret Green was my last living grandparent,
most of whom lived into their 90s. She grew up in Baton Rouge and brought a
Southern flavor to grandmothering. "Come here and give me some sugar,"
she would say with a slight drawl, her arms outstretched to pull me into a
fierce hug. She called black people "coloreds," no matter how often
Eric and I corrected her and she was forever busy perfecting her role as a
1950s housewife, whether it was wallpapering, cross-stitching or cooking a big
pan of homemade Mac 'n cheese — Eric's and my favorite.
 |
| Margaret Carter Green |
Even now, I can picture the back patio where
she and Grandpa used to relax with rum and cokes during summer afternoons, the
screened back door that thwacked behind you as you entered the kitchen, and the
den where Grandpa would sit playing solitaire, turning cards over three at a
time, hour after hour, while watching golf on TV, a pastime I found incredibly
boring.
I remember the long table in the dining room
where we gathered for holiday dinners that we were never allowed to start
eating until Grandma took her seat at the head of the table, picked up her
fork, peered at our faces and asked, "Is everybody happy?"
I remember the staircase that led to
the second floor, where the first stop was the bathroom where Grandpa used to
hack himself awake every morning, the result of emphysema caused by a smoking
habit he had acquired as a Navy officer during World War II.
Past the bathroom was the guest room with
floral wallpaper, lace curtains and black-and-white headshots of my
grandparents' four children in oval frames along the wall (my mom was third in
the lineup). That's where I used to sleep when I stayed over, my grandma
stroking my eyelids to soothe me to sleep when she tucked me in tight at
bedtime.
 |
| My grandparent's house on Havana Avenue |
The contraption looked like a flat, vertical
lawn chair that you strapped yourself into and leaned backwards to turn upside
down. Eric and I were too young to suffer back pain, but that didn't stop us
from flipping upside down and watching each other's faces turn beet red, giggling
as our toes tingled. (For a visual of a modern-day version, go here.)
This is all to say that my memories of my
grandma are fond ones, and as I sank into my seat on the El after dropping Owen
off at school the morning Mom called with the news, I felt my eyes well up with
tears. I quickly brushed them away, afraid that my fellow commuters would see
them. I didn't have time for this. I had a huge deadline at work. I could cry
about this later. Come on Laurie,
compartmentalize. But the memories kept coming.
PART 3: THE LESSONS
I wasn't just crying because I loved Grandma
and would miss the special bond we shared. She was the one who was convinced
I'd become a writer, no matter how much I dappled in other careers and screwed
around after college. "You were a favorite," one of Grandma's cousins
whispered to me at Grandma's funeral, clutching my hand from her wheelchair and
pulling me close so I could hear her.
 |
| Grandma, age 1 |
I was also crying because in many ways, my
grandma was a tragic figure. She was a wonderful grandma, everything I could
have ever wanted. But as a mother she had shortcomings that she never seemed able to
overcome. I attribute those shortcomings to a lack of nurturing that she
suffered as a child, the heavy dose of Southern Baptism that was heaped upon
her, insecurities about growing up working class and a general lack of self
awareness common among her generation.
Yet no matter the cause, she had been estranged
from all three of her living children at one period or another, particularly my
mother. Just months before she died, Grandma turned to my sister-in-law,
Sonnet, at Thanksgiving and asked, in her halted speech belabored by a series
of strokes, "Why…does…Marty…hate…me…so…much?"
So as I sat at Grandma's funeral, with Sarah
McLachlan's "I Will Remember You" playing as
attendees dabbed their eyes with tissue and gazed at Grandma's portrait, I
reflected on her life, her struggles and the lessons I could learn from them.
What I'm about to say is not meant to tarnish
her reputation or minimize her many positive qualities, as I have great
compassion for my grandma. I write this as a daughter who often struggles to accept my own parents, and as a parent whose greatest desire is to stop the
legacy of pain that seems to pass down from generation to generation, albeit in
different forms and flavors.
Lesson 1: Don't play
favorites.
Born in 1918, Grandma was the oldest of two
girls. During her funeral, her younger sister Florence, now 94, stood up and
tried to explain why she and Grandma had been staunch rivals throughout their
lives. There was so much animosity between the two sisters that they didn't
speak for decades, and their children (my mom and her three siblings) and
Florence's seven children didn't grow up playing together or sharing holidays,
despite living in the same city of Long Beach, California.
 |
| Grandma and Florence |
It wasn't until my grandpa died in 1996 that
Florence and Grandma reconciled, realizing that their issues were largely
orchestrated by their parents. Grandma had been her father's favorite, a
daddy's girl. So when Florence came along, their mother, Lillie, worried that
he wasn't giving Florence enough love and attention. She compensated by
favoring Florence and becoming highly critical of Grandma. Competition and
bitterness between the sisters ensued. So did Grandma's lifelong feud with her
mother.
My grandma then perpetuated that bias by aching
for a son. She had three daughters, one after another, and was convinced it was
punishment for some sin she had committed (remember, she grew up Southern
Baptist). So when my Uncle Charlie was finally born, it was cause for great
celebration. My mom, being the third girl, suffered the brunt of it.
Mom remembers, for example, begging her
parents for a car because they had moved across town when she was a senior in
high school and she would have to ask friends to give her rides to school and
the many activities she was involved in. The answer was no. A few years later,
when Charlie turned 16, my grandparents told him they would buy him a car if he
maintained a C average (my mom was a straight-A student). Even when he failed
to make his grades, he got a car anyway.
I realize this double standard was common
back then and in many ways, continues today. But I can't emphasize enough how
damaging it is for parents to fan the flames of jealousy among their children,
pitting them against each other with favoritism and unequal treatment.
Lesson 2: Stand by
your children.
One of the most painful things Grandma had to
do in her life was turn over custody of her firstborn child, Joanny, to the
state of California. Since Joanny had been born, there was clearly something
wrong. At 2 months old, she started having five to six seizures a day, for
reasons the doctors had difficulty discerning.
As the seizures continued, Joanny became more
mentally disabled. My Aunt Janet remembers Joanny spending hours rocking back
and forth while watching TV at their grandparents' house. In the grainy
black-and-white family videos I've seen, Joanny marches back and forth in front
of their childhood home like a soldier, expressionless. My mom, a toddler,
plays with dolls on the front lawn nearby.
 |
| Joanny, Marty (my mom), Charlie and Janet |
By the time Joanny was nine, my grandma was
struggling to care for three other children. Janet was 6, my mom 5 and Charlie
was less than a year old. Joanny became too much for her to handle so she and
Grandpa decided to have her committed to a children's hospital, which meant
turning over custody to the state.
This being 1950, there were few options for
parents with disabled or troubled children. But Grandma's parents never forgave
her. As good Southerners who believed in taking care of their own, they thought
it unconscionable that a mother would give up her own child. They stopped
speaking to Grandma and cut off contact with their grandchildren, even though
they lived next door.
"Wait, so since you were six years old,
you were never allowed to go over to your grandparents' house again?" I
recently asked Aunt Janet.
"Yes, sometimes we could hear our
cousins playing in their yard but we couldn't go see them," Janet said.
"Doris and Frank would come to our front door to ask if we could play, but
Mom would say no."
"How long did you live next door to your
grandparents after they stopped speaking to you?" I asked.
"Mom and Dad moved to the Havana house
when I was in college and Marty was a senior in high school," Janet said.
"So it must have been 15 years."
"Fifteen years!" I said. "Why
didn't you move away earlier?"
"Housing was difficult to come by back
then," Janet said. "You couldn't move around like you can now."
"Wow," I said. "Even if Lillie
and Ollie disowned Grandma, I'm surprised they ignored their own
grandchildren."
"I know," Janet said. "They
did give me and Marty electric typewriters when we graduated from high
school."
Ouch.
Joanny died of kidney failure in the children's
state hospital at age 16. Before Joanny's death, my mom remembers visiting her with
the family and taking her out for picnics on weekends. Yet I don't think
Grandma ever got over having a "defective" child or the shame that
was compounded by her parents' harsh reaction to her difficult decision to give
up custody.
Lesson 3: Do not remain
friends with your children's exes.
This was the fatal mistake that Grandma made
with my mom, and the reason that Mom ultimately cut off contact with her around
the time I graduated from college. The tension started when my parents
separated when I was 10 and Eric was 7. My grandma sided with my dad, even
though she and Mom had seemed close and we saw our grandparents often, as they
lived just 20 miles away.
My mom says Grandma told her things like,
"I know how difficult you are to live with." And even before my mom
filed for divorce, whenever she appealed to Grandma for support about their marital conflicts, Grandma's advice amounted to, "Boys
will be boys" and "You have a lovely home, a nice station wagon and
two beautiful children in private school. Go clean out the refrigerator."
After Mom filed for divorce, my dad fought
for sole custody, a move that shocked my mom because she had always been our
primary caretaker while Dad focused on his career (my mom will tell you ad
nauseam how he never changed a diaper, gave us baths or read us bedtime
stories). Throughout the custody battle, Grandma seemed to side with Dad. Why
did she do this?
 |
| Grandma and her "Berkeley man" |
We were all living in
this alternate universe of hurt, fear, anger and confusion and I think Grandma
got swept up in it. She had always liked and admired my dad, a handsome,
charming, ambitious dentist who fit the mold of the type of man she would love
her daughters to marry. Because of her humble upbringing as the daughter of a
restaurant owner who never went to high school, Grandma had always been in awe
of status and determined to move up the social ladder.
Marrying my grandpa,
a "Berkeley man" who came from a wealthy family, helped. So did the
many junior leagues, charity groups and committees she joined, as well as her
trips abroad, expensive jewelry and the shiny gadgets she loved to acquire.
Having a son-in-law who was a doctor only completed the picture.
My mom was the opposite. She was an
introvert, more practical and fiscally responsible. She was smart and
beautiful, but also a homebody who wasn't big on parties and pomp and
circumstance. Until the divorce, I think Grandma and Mom got along well enough
as mother and daughter, but it was a tenuous bond, given their personality
differences. So when crisis struck, Grandma gravitated towards Dad. Despite the
circumstances, I don't think she wanted Mom to divorce him.
 |
| My parents, 1967 |
Years later, I asked Grandma why she turned
away from her daughter at such a critical time, when she was in so much pain
over her troubled marriage, facing the prospect of going back to work to
support two young children and getting hit with criticism on all sides from my
Dad, his parents and her own parents for breaking up the family.
We were sitting on the floor in my Grandma's
bedroom in her oceanfront high-rise that she had moved into after Grandpa died.
I had just finished reading some letters that had fallen onto the floor when I
was getting something down for her from the top shelf of her closet.
The letters were from my dad and his father
to my mom, basically pleading with her
to reconsider "for the sake of the children." Reading the letters, I
had a visceral sense of Mom being ganged up on. I felt the heat of anger in my
chest as I realized the extent to which her own mother had failed to support
her.
"She was hurting and alone," I
said. "You betrayed her."
"It was a different time then,"
Grandma said, barely meeting my eyes. "And I was afraid of losing access to you kids."
"Us kids?" I said. "How would
you lose access to us? Mom got joint custody. You could have seen us at her
house."
 |
| Our family in 1981, two years before the divorce |
I don't care how much you've shared over the years or how much you like them. This is someone who hurt your child, sometimes deeply. You need to get that. And respect it, no matter how messy the circumstances. It's called loyalty.
Sure, be cordial if you see him or her at
family gatherings, send a brief note if you hear they've suffered a death in
the family. But unless your child and the ex are on extremely good terms, don't
be too friendly. Just don't. Otherwise you risk wandering around for years
wondering why your child doesn't speak to you anymore, no matter how many
people try to explain it to you.
Lesson 4: You don't always
know what's best for your children.
When my Aunt Janet and her college boyfriend
came home to announce they were engaged, Grandma ran out the front door
sobbing. Janet's boyfriend, Pete, was Catholic. This was apparently a big
problem. Growing up Southern Baptist, Grandma wasn't allowed to play cards, go
to dances or associate with the Catholic girls who lived across the street.
These were difficult rules for Grandma, being a social butterfly, but her
mother was insistent. Even though Grandma left Louisiana with her family when
she was 14 to move to Arizona, then California, she apparently took her
Catholic bias with her.
Prior to this outburst, Janet says she and
Grandma got along well. She remembers coming home every day from school and
sitting on a stool to watch Grandma make dinner while she recounted the events
of her day. But once Janet announced her decision to marry Pete, that changed
everything. Grandma stopped speaking to her and she later learned that Grandma
had gone to Pete and told him that Janet had mental problems in an effort to
dissuade him from marrying her.
 |
| Janet and Pete, 1967 |
Besides being Catholic, Pete wasn't flashy or
gregarious, which probably didn't appeal to Grandma either. He was on the shy
side, a salt-of-the-earth type of guy as solid as his big-boned German heritage
with an understated, wry sense of humor. After he and Janet graduated from
UCLA, he joined the military and they moved away to North Dakota and then Florida,
where Pete became a high school English teacher who coached baseball
and football in a small town outside of Jacksonville.
Over the years, Janet and Grandma
reconciled, but it was a bumpy ride considering that Grandma viewed Janet's
marriage as "Pete taking Janet away from me." When Pete and Janet had
children, my cousins Erin and David, Grandma and Grandpa didn't make much
effort to visit them, despite their many trips to Europe, Asia, and other far-flung places. That hurt Janet, who wanted her children to be close to their
grandparents. In my mind, this was an extension of Grandma's inability to
accept the person Janet had picked to share her life with.
But here's the thing about Pete. He was
perfect for Janet. Of all the marriages in my family, theirs was probably the
healthiest. Of course it wasn't perfect, whose is? Janet says when she could
tell that Pete was mad at her, she would look at him and say, "Is it worth
it?" And when they were both retired and at home all day together, they would go to separate ends of the house
and do their own thing for a few days until the tension subsided.
All you had to do was spend a weekend
with Pete and Janet to see that they honestly liked each other.
Watching my parent's marriage dissolve into animosity and heartbreak, I was
particularly sensitive to couples who seemed at ease with each other. I didn't
spend much time with Pete and Janet growing up, as we lived in California and
they lived in Florida. But later in my life, when I became a reporter, I
visited them during the two years I worked for a newspaper in Miami.
During this time, Pete took an interest in my
writing and used to send me emails praising my use of dialogue and description
in my news stories. He became one of my biggest fans and most devoted readers,
given our common appreciation of storytelling. In those emails, he would
provide updates on what he and Janet were up to on Lake Asbury, referring to my
aunt as "Old What's Her Name" and joking about how he couldn't get
her away from her computer long enough to feed her anything, which was why she was
so skinny.
 |
| My cousin, David, and Uncle Pete six months before he died |
When Pete died of cancer three years ago, I
was pregnant with Owen and couldn't make it to his memorial. I'm sure I sent
Janet a sympathy card, but I got so engrossed in my own life that she and I
didn't have a chance to talk about the events leading up to Pete's death or how
she'd been coping since then, until Grandma's funeral a few weeks ago.
She cried as she told me how much she missed
him, and I cried right along with her, especially when she told me that after
he had died, she found a document on their computer called, "Wisdom if any
from Pete Campbell to his son."
It was a letter Pete had written to my
cousin, David, when he knew that he was dying, a list of 12 life observations. Janet's voice caught in her throat as she told me one of them
was, "Your mother was the best thing that ever happened to me."
I cried even harder when she told me that,
thinking to myself, Can you imagine being
the best thing that ever happened to someone? And I was so touched that
this was something Pete was writing to his son, man to man. Janet later shared
the letter with me, and I got to see that what Pete had said about Aunt Janet
was even better, and wiser than the sentiment about how special she was to him.
This is the full entry from wisdom item Number 6 of Pete's letter:
Your mom has been the best thing in my life. But it was pure luck that we met and got along at first. Moral: Don’t control or manipulate the spouse. The most amazing thing I’ve seen is how your mom has grown, changed, and become an even better companion through her own efforts—not mine.
Here
are a few other of my favorites from Pete's letter:
1. Giving and showing your children how to give is the most important gift to teach. The problem is every parent wants to give to his children rather than make them earn and appreciate it. You were lucky: we didn't have much money to spoil you.
4. Troublesome bosses, relatives, associates all go away in time. Remain focused and ignore negative people. Most of the time you will get a better job that takes you away from problematic people. The rest of the time, they get fired.
8. Hemingway said that courage is grace under pressure. The fewer excuses you make, the better you become at developing courage. I still make a lot of excuses but every time I deliberately say, "No excuse" to myself, I feel a little stronger.
Pete
ends with this one, which beautifully sums up the importance of putting your
biases aside and trusting your children's decisions. In his humble way, Pete
demonstrates the grace with which he approached his children:
12. Rereading these items, I realize you already know 90% of them. See what you can add. I’ll bet you have some incredible ideas.
Lesson 5: People hurt you because they're hurting.
One
of Grandma's many hobbies was genealogy. She would spent hours searching online
and going to the library archives in various cities tracing her family's
heritage, along with the lineage of Grandpa's family and my dad's relatives. I
remember her printing out black-and-white photos on her ink jet printer of
stout, fierce looking German women holding tiny baby bundles and explaining to
me who they were and how they had come to America.
For
the most part, I found Grandma's obsession with our ancestors tedious and grew
tired of listening to her recount her latest findings. Being in high school at
the time, I didn't see how these fierce looking German women had anything to do
with whether I'd get a date to the prom or make the varsity soccer team.
 |
| Grandma and me, somewhere in my 20s |
"You
are going to be the one to break that pattern," Grandma told me.
I
remember being surprised by that comment, as I was only 16 and having plenty of
run-ins with Mom about curfew and whether I'd been drinking. How was someone
like me, with ratted bangs, blue eyeliner and a compulsion for eating all the
carbs in the house when no one was looking, going to change the course of
history?
That
was the thing about Grandma. She seemed clueless about so many things,
oblivious to her many blind spots about how her actions contributed to the
turmoil in her relationships, and yet she would make these declarations that
demonstrated her unequivocal love, faith and confidence in me.
So
here comes the hard part. How do I keep my parents, my spouse, my children and
pretty much anyone in the soft focus that keeps resentment from building? How do
I remember that when people are unkind, critical or clueless, that it's likely
the result of their own pain or limitations, which have nothing to do with me? And
how do I keep myself in that same soft focus while reminding
myself, as Uncle Pete suggests, "No excuses"?
Therapy
has helped, as has hours spent in 12-step meetings and holding out for the
right person to marry after what my friend, Filip, refers to as my many years
of "stupidly dating." (The good news: Filip, my parents and even
Grandma approve of my husband, Dave, despite the fact he grew up Catholic.)
Having children has also helped me develop greater compassion, as I understand first-hand what an imperfect science it is to raise them, how challenging it can be to fulfill their needs, and why my mom often looked so damn tired.
Having children has also helped me develop greater compassion, as I understand first-hand what an imperfect science it is to raise them, how challenging it can be to fulfill their needs, and why my mom often looked so damn tired.
PART 4: THANK YOU,
GRANDMA
I sometimes wonder
what my life would have been like if my parents hadn't gotten divorced and upended
my life at the tender age of 10 with joint custody, new partners and ongoing power struggles. Today I look at them and can't image how these two people fit
together. Yet if they had managed to have some kind of workable union, would I
still have developed an eating disorder? Struggled with depression and anxiety? Spent
so many years stupidly dating?
Along those same
lines, what would Grandma's life had been like if her mother had been kinder? Joanny
had been healthy? Her parents hadn't disowned her? Would she had been better
equipped to support her daughters' choices? Love and understand them? Recognize
her shortcomings? Take constructive action?
 |
| Dec. 2014: Grandma meets Tess 2 weeks before she dies |
I guess it's a futile
exercise to even ask these questions, given that life is what it is and we'll
never know who we would be without the adversity we suffer. I just can't help but wonder, given
how young Grandma was when she took some hard hits, and the reverberations that
sent through the family. It was such a different time back then, with such an
inferior level of social consciousness and woeful lack of resources and support
that we have easy access to today. I can't help but think, "If only…"
For me, Grandma was a
loving force. I enjoyed her company. I cherished her encouragement. I benefited
from her generosity. As I grew older, I saw how she was sometimes her own worst
enemy and understood how much she had hurt my mom. I learned to straddle the
line of loving and accepting her, and staying out of a battle that wasn't mine. It's
with great sadness that I say good-bye.
Thank you, Grandma, for all that you taught me and how much you loved me. I will miss you. I hope I continue to make you proud.
Thank you, Grandma, for all that you taught me and how much you loved me. I will miss you. I hope I continue to make you proud.
