Breakfast with Pops ...

My sister sent this lovely photo of Pops (her dad, my step-father) taken at the local donut shop where they have breakfast every Tuesday morning. Tongue in cheek, she remarked that he was "so happy" I couldn't help but think of another 'grumpy' soul (besides Walter Matthau) when I looked at Pop's face ...

I was reminded of this cheerful little fellow ----->

Is it just me or do you, also, see the similarity?

What is it about men becoming curmudgeons as they grow older? And is that a fair statement/question?

I don't have any rebuttal on either issue ... and I'm not going to even start trying to defend what we old(er) women are called!

For the record, Pops will be 86 in November. He goes dancing with his "younger" (in her 70s) lady friend twice a week. At age 80 he rode a motorcycle from Oklahoma to Point Barrow, Alaska, with a 50-something fellow, taking a month to complete the trip there ... and back!

When he married my mother in 1955, he was 31 years old and owned two motorcycles. He bought a car and moved to Oklahoma the same week he married 'us.' He was fond of telling people he only married Mother because of her two kids. His older brother used to say "he was lazy and got a ready-made family." While dating my mother, the four of us loaded up on one motorcycle, with a picnic basket on the tank and went to a park one afternoon. A cop stopped him ... and when he learned that Pops didn't have a car and was taking his 'family' to the park .... the cop escorted us!

Pops was ecstatic when his daughter was born two years after they married. And yet he introduced my brother and myself as his children ... there was NEVER any distinction between his biological child and his 'step' children. Mother used to say she had 4 children ... our friends used to come to the door and ask if Pops could come out and play. He hang-glided, he built model airplanes, he constructed the best Halloween costumes, he worked hard to provide for his family, he took my mother all over Europe on a motorcycle, he scuba-dived, he danced, especially the 'Jitter Bug,' like a pro. He won over my formidable grandmother, no small feat! My mother loved him until the day she died ... one month before their 50th anniversary.

He escorted me down the aisle to be married in 1965 ... in a 'stage' whisper loud enough that the guests in the back rows heard it, he emotionally told me "Honey, if this doesn't work out, you can always come home!" He now argues that The Duck and I have only stayed together for 45 years to 'spite him!' He is a curmudgeon ... with a heart of gold. Maybe grumpy, certainly ornery, and my "Pops."

Mirror, Mirror on the Wall ...

... I am my mother after all. I've seen that phrase in cartoons and on tee shirts ... conjuring up all sorts of negative feelings, criticisms usually ... "Good grief, you ARE just like your mother!!" When we're young, especially, we do not want to be anything like our mothers ... all we see are the harpy habits, the inadequacies, the faults, the annoying characteristics, perhaps even the shape or size. Oh no, we do not want to be like our mothers. I certainly fought any comparison to my mother it seems all my life. And I felt justified ... my mother was a MESS to be very perfectly blunt ... a complicated, unhappy, disturbed MESS!!! The only time I could remember her actually saying 'I Love You' when I was growing up was when she was in a drunken stupor. I think I always loved my mother, but for so many years I did not like her.

Before the confusion and dementia robbed her of so much ... her memories, the names of her loved ones, the person she was actually ... we were able to connect ... we forgave each other ... we liked each other ... we loved each other. My mother died almost four years ago at an Alzheimer's facility in another state. I miss her every day ... I wish that I could tell her how much I love her.

These days when I pass a mirror, I'm often caught off guard ... I will do a 'double-take' because I see my mother looking back at me. Little gestures, mannerisms, the use of a phrase or a look on my face and there she is ... sometimes younger, but more often she has aged, she looks tired. People tell me that my daughter looks like me (poor dear!) ... I don't usually agree, but I'm looking at a photo of both of us at this moment and I see us tilting our heads the same way ... our smiles look alike ... our eyes, although not the same color, we have the same 'lazy' eye. I tell my daughter often how much I love her ... I learned that from my mother.

The last time I talked to my mother was the Friday before our 40th anniversary. Our daughter and husband were giving us a 'surprise' anniversary party ... and it was a surprise, although we knew something was up, we had been 'requested' to come for the weekend. Saturday, August 6, 2005, we were sent to a movie ... (one I dearly love "Must Love Dogs") When we returned we were greeted by both of our children and their families as well as several friends ... it was wonderful evening. I usually called my mother on Sundays, but knowing that the cellphone reception was not the greatest at our daughter's home, I called Friday. I was trying to tell my mother our plans, but she could not remember my name at first. She was very confused and agitated. Apparently talking about the anniversary sparked a memory of her own. She remembered that she and my step-father would be celebrating their 50th anniversary on the third of September. Suddenly she was my mother again .. she laughed and retold stories about her 'children' going to her wedding! She remembered that Pops had bought her a new dress so they could renew their vows at the nursing center .... and the very last thing my mother said to me was "I Love You."

That Saturday night, we ate barbecue prepared by our son-in-law, we enjoyed a cake decorated with a reproduction of our wedding picture and opened a gift of a King size quilt that our daughter had transferred photos onto ... photos of our lives together ... births, graduations, weddings, vacations. It was the hit of the party as we would unfold more of the huge quilt to find even more 'memories.' The next morning, Sunday, the 7th I was sleeping in ... I do not drink alcohol, I was just being lazy, lying there half asleep thinking about the photos on that beautiful quilt ... marveling about being married for forty years ... it didn't seem that long, it was only yesterday that the four of us rode motorcycles in Colorado over rocky passes and camped in the 'Beverly Hillbilly pop-up camper' ... when the phone rang. It was about 8 AM, the others were up ... sitting out on the porch having coffee and visiting. A few minutes passed when I looked up at the bedroom door ... my husband and daughter were standing there ... they didn't even have to say what I saw in their eyes. I asked "she's gone, isn't she?" Yes ... my mother had passed away in her sleep, the nursing home staff found her in her bed that Sunday morning. My mother was at peace at last ... she had known who I was and her last words to me were "I Love You." Happy Mother's Day, Mother ... I love you!

Motherhood ...

Have I told you how much I LOVE being a grandma? Yes , I know I have ... several times, right? The old joke "if I'd known grand kids were going to be so much fun, I'd had them first!" I feel that God gives us grandchildren to 'make up' for all the mistakes we make when we're parents. I have a myriad of guilt feelings about my maternal 'skills.' "I did the best I could with what I had at the time" ... some of those times weren't very good, though. It isn't that I didn't love my children ... I love/loved them more than words could ever say. But there were times ... too many times, I fear, where I had difficulty showing them my love. There were times when I was not 'there' for them ... oh, physically I was present, but emotionally I was often absent. I was a 'reactive' mother, I was a screamer. I was not consistent, it was 'easier' to give in to them than make them mind or stop whining. I didn't even know about 'time out' back then! I was young, having had two children by the time I was only 22 years old. I blamed my failures of mothering on the fact that I did not have a mother role model. My mother did not have a role model, either. And so the 'vicious cycle' continued to spin out of control for years.

My childhood was not a 50s sitcom ... there was no cookie baking, PTA member, Girl Scout leader, sewing, cooking, "Leave it to Beaver" mother ... it was what it was. My mother was an alcoholic ... she had a hair-trigger temper and lungs to go with it! She was capable of cutting you to the quick with her razor shape tongue. She had an addictive personality ... first it was alcohol, then it was prescription drugs ... a period of both addictions followed and lastly it was food, especially sweets were her drug of choice. Along the way she was diagnosed with chronic depression, also with schizophrenia at one time and then diagnosed bi-polar another time by one of the many doctors that treated her over the years. She attempted suicide several times and endured electric shock treatments. There was a family intervention and multiple admissions to the psych ward at the hospital. It was what it was. Over the years, I learned that some people probably should never have children and that giving birth does not make you a mother! My mother was a very troubled soul ... she was so unhappy and sought solace in many forms. It took being a parent myself, accepting responsibility for my own actions and several years of therapy before I was able to 'make peace' with my mother. That's when I realized that my mother had done the best she could with what she had at the time.

My mother never got over losing her father when she was barely six years old. In 2005, at the age of 84, her eyes still filled with tears whenever she spoke of her 'daddy.' She died that year, peacefully in her sleep at an Alzheimer's care center. I remember my daughter remarking "Grandma's confusion is over." And indeed while her death was sad, I felt she had been released from this trying world. With my husband's encouragement I can honestly say that my mother and I enjoyed the last ten years of her life. That's not to say that we didn't disagree about some things ... like the pronunciation of the La Quinta motel chain! You see, she was the 'English major' and had a flair for languages. She valued education, devoured books and loved to travel. She was proud of her children and even more so of her grandchildren, although she was never close to my children. As her memory continued to disappear, certain words and names of people were difficult for her to summon. We would talk (long distance) a couple of times a week, but always on Sundays. The Duck would laugh at me, saying he knew I had been on the phone with my mother, because I seemed to always understand what she was trying to say when others could not ...and I would continue to talk in her 'shorthand' speech pattern after we had hung up ... leaving out names or nouns such as "they wanted to but didn't but it's okay" ... ( that was short for "Pops and Mother wanted to go out to dinner, but the weather was awful and they couldn't drive, but they had a nice meal at the center and it was great") ... it could be very confusing. My stepfather and half-sister lived in the same state as the center and therefore carried the heavy burden of Mother's demands, confusion during visits as well as all of the complaints she would repeat ... over and over again. She had absolutely no patience ... she wanted it yesterday! Because of this tension, my mother would tell me that 'they' were in cahoots with each other and against her! Once when she was trying to tell me how 'they' didn't listen to her, she struggled to find her words and finally blurted out "two of a bird!" When I started laughing, she grinned sheepishly and joined me in a very cathartic laughing spree. My mother was so many different things ... good things, she was not evil ... she was once a very beautiful woman. She could play 'Stardust' and 'The Entertainer' on the piano by memory, she could dance as though she was floating to all kinds of tunes, but she loved the Big Band Era the most. She could run and do handstands well into her 50s. She was a whiz at Scrabble. She could make the best fudge, she wrote beautiful letters. I have chosen to remember those things about my mother.

My grandmother had been a widow with two teenagers when she married my mother's father, a younger man. My grandmother was 39 years old when my mother was born. My grandmother was not demonstrative, there was no cuddling or hugs in the home after my grandfather died. My grandmother, widowed a second time, ran a boarding house with three apartments during the Depression when men could not provide for their families. She was no nonsense, with only an eighth grade education, very business oriented, money was her safety net, her focus ... no pun intended, as she was totally blind by the time my mother was grown. My mother never spoke about love or being close to her mother. And yet, this same woman, my grandmother spoiled me ... taught me about unconditional love, "favored" me over the other grandchildren. She was the reason I became a nurse ... she was my 'anchor' in an unruly sea. I lived with my grandmother from age 3 when my parents divorced until I was 9 years old when my mother remarried for a third time. That marriage would have lasted 50 years had my mother lived for another month in 2005.

I have rambled on far too long and only scratched the surface. I wanted to give you some background before telling you about an amazing mother that I know. She is an 'older' mother, never did any babysitting growing up, was never around babies. She never talked about having children, wouldn't hold babies when they were pushed towards her. She didn't have a great role model for being a mother, but after becoming a psychotherapist, she remarked that her childhood and upbringing were so much more 'normal' than any she had seen during her career. She is sensitive, kind, loving and deeply understanding. She is intelligent and beautiful inside and out. She has a young daughter of her own now. She doesn't raise her voice, she isn't negative, she is consistent, so patient and loving. My eyes fill with tears when I watch how she interacts with her daughter and my heart almost bursts with love for both her and her daughter. A friend wrote that this amazing mother is a rare jewel and indeed she is ... for she has broken the cycle ... she is my daughter and I love her so very much.