Oh, Baby!

Our grandson, Willem Paul, arrived Monday morning, a little early, but fortunately healthy and ready to take on the world.  It hardly seems possible, but the experience is even more wonderful and exciting than our friends said it would be.  I received photos via computer to share before he was two hours old.  At three days old, Willem had his first New York cab ride, going home from the hospital.  Pastrami sandwiches, a Yankees game and the Staten Island ferry can’t be far behind.  I wonder if he will think and talk with a Yogi Berra accent as in “Dis milk is good” or “I like dose graham crackers,” or “Dese diapers are dirty.”

Willem might be a New Yorker but he has received a ton of greetings from his “peeps” in Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, Michigan, Wisconsin, North and South Carolina, Illinois, Florida and Mexico.  There have been

lots of questions such as “Who does he look like?”  At this age, I think most babies can look like anyone and everyone, depending on the camera angle.  Several people see a resemblance to Willem’s Uncle John’s baby pictures.  Someone said he looks like Paul but also noted he has hair – a definite contradiction since the babies on Paul’s side of the family (and mine, too) are always bald. When David was a baby, my dad called him “Slick.”  Still, looking for family resemblances in babies seems to be a favorite pastime.  Once, when David was about a year old, the woman in front of me in the grocery store check-out lane turned aroundand said, “That baby looks just like my dentist.”  (Yes, she was a patient of Paul’s.)

Another big question for us as grandparents is, “What is the baby going to call you.”  We know grandmas,grannys, mimis, grandpas, pas, papas, poppys and many variations. A high school friend sent her good wishes along with the most original grandparent names, Mamie and Ike.  When Cindy chose to be “Mamie,” her children’s name for their grandmother, Bill’s choice was a no-brainer.  Unless Willem has other ideas, I plan to be “Nana,” like my own two grandmothers.  (See my March post, “A Tale of Two Nanas.”) Paul hasn’t decided for sure, but a friend’s grandsons call him “Bob” so Willem may wind up calling at least one of his grandfathers “Paul.”

The most important question is, “When are you going to see him?”  We have plane tickets and plans for a

six-day visit with Willem in mid June –plans we made several months ago based on a June 1 arrival date.  I am a responsible person –the kind of person who keeps commitments, follows through on promises and doesn’t cancel out at the last minute.  This week, I am scheduled to fill in for Paul’s office manager, attend an Acclaim awards event, play in two golf leagues including one where you get a zillion demerits if you don’t show up, get my hair cut, go to the Playhouse, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.  

However, I still remember how nice it was when both my mom and mymother-in-law lent a helping hand when David and John were new babies and Paul went back to work. To be honest, I’m also dying to see Willem in person; so, I told  David and Megan I was available if they needed me.  When they took me up on my offer, I started canceling things as fast as I could dial the phone.  In fact, even though the idea of ever skipping a high school or college class used to send my anxiety levels to the danger zone, I would skip anything and everything for an opportunity like this.  Well I might not skip a dinner date with Paul Newman, but, anyway, he’s dead now so I’m not in a big rush to see him.

It’s just as well I’m leaving town because my mind is clearly not in Cincinnati. Wednesday I spent a long time

looking for the steno pad containing all my to-do lists and finally found it under my arm.  I wondered why my bike shorts were so uncomfortable on Sunday’s ride until I realized I was wearing them inside out and backwards.  Before I leave on Tuesday, however, I guess I should practice diapering and review my Dr. Spock so I can be a competent Nana. Then again, maybe I’ll just wing it; and, if I leave my reading glasses at home, they probably won’t ask me to help cut Willem’s fingernails.
P.S. The photos are all courtesy of David and Megan 

What Did I Have I Don't Have Now?

My six year love affair with golf has hit a rough patch, and the relationship seems to be deteriorating.  Now, I’m not saying it’s on the rocks, but it’s certainly on the pebbles and I don’t mean Pebble Beach.

It all started with a brief, early flirtation  in the late 70's when a friend and I took a few golf  lessons and tried playing on one of the public courses.  In the end, pregnancy and post pregnancy forced us to constantly recalibrate our golf swings and led us to forsake the golf course for the racket club which also had a nursery.

 I renewed my acquaintance with golf when Paul and I joined a golf club six years ago. Things started slowly between us, and we had no unrealistic expectations.  I played with a congenial group of beginners, and we encouraged each other.  It was a good day when I scored below my maximum of 11 strokes on every hole, although we were an upbeat group and referred to an 11 as “a double thumbs-up.” The day I called my dad to tell him I’d broken 80 for nine holes was a real milestone.

The relationship, like any other, has had its ups and downs – lovers’ quarrels you might say.  Many times the troll who lives inside golf holes has put out an invisible hand and stopped my perfect putt on the rim of the cup.   I've hit out of sand traps, creating sandstorms ala Lawrence of Arabia and turning my sunscreen-coated body into human sandpaper. (Sandblasting doesn’t make your teeth whiter.)   I've tried to hit over ponds, lakes and streams, sending countless balls to sleep with the fishes ala Lucca Brazzi in “The Godfather.”  Seduced by the occasional magnificent drive or incredible putt, I learned to ignore those little blips.

After lessons and lots of play, my game improved to the point where I sometimes reached my goal of a nine-hole score below my age.  When a beginning golfer with a high handicap starts playing well, the reward is more gifts and prizes than any male admirer could ever provide.  The usual flowers, jewelry and candy (in the form of chocolate golf balls) came my way along with visors, socks, golf gloves, glassware, gift certificates and a lovely, salmon-colored shawl.  This propelled the affair into the “hot and heavy” stage; and I found myself sneaking out to the golf course or the driving range 4 or 5 days a week - sometimes, more than once a day.   At my peak, I scored a 49 for nine holes, a marvelous feat for me, even though the husband of one of my friends said the odds of  a player with my handicap scoring that well were about the same as the odds of me being eaten by a shark on the golf course.

The romance started to fade after I came back from three intense days at a great golf school playing more like

a chimp than a champ.  Now, the game has turned on me like a snake, without so much as a warning rattle.  I can’t hit far, I can’t hit straight and sometimes, I can’t hit at all.   I’m not telling my current handicap because you probably wouldn’t believe it; and, anyway, my brother says handicaps don’t go that high.  Now, the only thing I do well is trick shots like driving the ball into a rock wall so my tee shot winds up behind me or ricocheting the ball off of an out-of-bounds marker, forcing my cart partner to take cover.

Can this relationship be saved?  Well, even though I feel betrayed and discouraged, I’m not ready for a total break-up yet.  I still enjoy the beauty of a golf course, the friends I’ve made through golf and the weekly golf league lunches.  I also have a cute, new golf skort that I want to wear this summer; and, at this point, I’m perfectly positioned for the leagues’s “Most Improved Player” award.  Plus, a woman I met on the Woodson Bend golf course at Lake Cumberland told me about a new golf game that sounds promising.  “I play Best Ball,” she confided in her soft, sweet, Kentucky drawl.  “I hit it and, if it isn’t my best ball, I hit it over again.”

 If you want to know how I really feel, click the following link  for a musical postscript  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UG66GQUvvns

An Essay on Virtues

I find the virtues of self control, discipline and restraint to be highly overrated, maybe because I don’t have them.  Keeping on a regular program of exercise and weight work-outs is a real challenge for me.  I have hidden books of crossword puzzles and Sudoku from myself when I needed to get some work done around the house.  I also moved the games that came with our computer into the Recycle Bin to keep from playing non-stop Spider Solitaire. After I retrieved the games from Recycle in a moment of weakness, I had no alternative but to banish them forever from my life by emptying the entire Bin.

Sweets hit me like a tidal wave drowning any feeble urge I might feel for moderation.  I can’t keep cookies, cakes or candies around because they call to me no matter where I am in the house. Sometimes I find myself ransacking the house in a sugar frenzy. Occasionally I get lucky like the time I miraculously scored York Peppermint patties from Paul’s box of leftover camping food.  (Of course, I have to hope that he will have forgotten them by the time he packs for the next trip.) 

Holidays pose tests which I usually fail.   Unless I wait until 4:00 p.m. on October 31 to buy Halloween candy, I wind up doing quality control on most of a bag of Reese’s peanut butter cups every year.   It’s hard

not to start every one of the Twelve Days of Christmas with a few cut-out cookies  as an eye-opener.  One time I bought Easter candy for a visit by David, Megan and John, with extras to send to John’s girlfriend in California.  As Easter approached, however, I decided that the girlfriend probably didn’t care that much about candy, and, anyway, she would never know many opera cream eggs and coconut goodies everyone else got.  So, I ate three of hers, along with most of her jelly beans.  By the way, once you’ve eaten more than a critical mass of goodies you’ve been saving for other people, there isn’t enough left to make a respectable showing, so you might as well finish off the rest.

For the record, though, I am not the only one in the family with self control issues.   Paul is very disciplined about his exercise routine, has no interest in puzzles or computer games and would be more likely to leave his sock drawer in a mess and throw out all of his radios than to succumb to M and M’s  or Oreos in the morning. He has been known to O.D. on pizza, but his Achilles heel is garden stores and greenhouses. Yes, Paul is a plant junkie.   The yard of our old house was too shady for the more interesting and colorful annuals and perennials; and he got lots of hostas from friends, so that kept his urge to splurge somewhat in check. 

The real Paul surfaced a few times, like when he and the boys decided to plant a small section of his parents’ unused garden plot and wound up cultivating a huge area with everything from tomatoes to potatoes and peppers to pumpkins, plus squash, watermelon, corn and fifty basil plants.

Our current house has lots of sunny space for perennials, earning Paul the title of garden store’s “Man of the Decade.”  When he brought home more perennials and herbs than the gardens at the side of the house could hold, he found places for the overflow across the back
of the house. I think he encourages winter die-off in some of his plants because it gives him more buying opportunities in the spring.   His irrationally exuberant buying streak came to a climax two years ago in early May, or at least, I hope that was the climax.  I was out of town

when he went to buy a couple of new perennials and some annuals for our three outside pots.  Without my influence, he dove deeply into the greenhouse, lured down the aisles by the siren songs of anemones, hydrangeas, Jacob’s ladders, clematis, rosemary, thyme and just about everything else except cactus, I guess.  When he came up for air at the check-out counter, he had over $400 worth of plants on his carts.  The shock of that experience did reform him somewhat and he doesn’t visit a greenhouse without a chaperone now.

So, I’m not alone; but I am admittedly the family member with the biggest self control problem.  Last Monday, however, was different.   I exhibited a surprising amount of restraint in Macy’s baby department, and nobody was even around to give me the credit I deserved.  I went there to buy gifts for two baby girls and found lots of adorable items to choose from.  I looked at dozens of sundresses, onesies and little stretchy sleepers (or “union suits” as my dad called them) in pink and lavender with flowers, butterflies and strawberries on them before I made the final selections. 

Then, somehow, I found myself among racks of overalls, onesies and sleepers in blue, tan and green with
cars, trains and dinosaurs on them.  All of a sudden, I was carrying another seven or eight little plastic hangers of clothes.  Several things stopped me before I reached the cash register.  I thought of David and Megan’s apartment which already contains bikes, guitars, photographic equipment, tons of books and CDs and four seasons worth of their clothes.   I thought about the stroller and other baby items they have already accumulated as gifts and loans.  I also thought about the upcoming baby shower their friends had planned and all the baby goodies with which they will be showered.

In the end, a previously untapped fountain of self control bubbled up from within me, and I did not buy one thing for our grandson who is scheduled to arrive around June 1.  Well, to be honest, I did

buy one thing, but only one. When there is so much temptation and everything is on sale, just buying one thing is really the same as not buying anything, although I don’t seriously expect Paul or any other male to follow this line of thinking.  Anyway, I can never claim to be a model of self discipline; and, yes, it was me who finished off the half-eaten pint of Graeter’s raspberry chip ice cream; but occasionally I do keep myself in check.

Road Trip

We’re just back from a week’s vacation which included a five day road trip to Monticello, the Blue Ridge Mountains and the surrounding Virginia countryside.  The views were spectacular with the seasonal beauty of  spring greenery dotted by dogwoods and red buds.  Riding in a minivan with tilt-back captain’s seats, listening to Sirius radio with a clear signal even in the most remote places and stopping when we needed to stretch made the eight-plus hour drive zoom by.

Naturally, we did some reminiscing about family road trips of the past.  Our family vacations were a lot of fun if you didn’t count the driving part.  Long car trips all started with a 3:00 a.m. departure so, as my dad put it, we could get some miles under our belts before sun-up.  He would pack the car the night before, but

we always had to haul out last minute items like coolers, pillows and toothbrushes to stage-whispered commands of  “SHHH,” “NO, THAT GOES IN THE TRUNK” and “DAMMIT, DON’T LET THE SCREEN DOOR SLAM AGAIN.”  After all that, I guess there was a possibility that one or two of the neighbors might still be sleeping, so we would hold the car doors closed while Dad eased up the driveway and slowly pulled out of our street.  Once we had turned the corner and were part way down Westbrook, he gave the word and we slammed all four doors in unison. I’d love to know where that idea came from.

The real problem was that there were three of us kids, which was one too many.  Opinions varied as to which one to leave at a roadside rest stop. Should my parents jettison the whiner, the troublemaker or the

up-chucker?   They were never able to make a decision so we squeezed into the back seat, fighting over the window seats.  Sitting in the middle was the triple whammy. You had a hot, sticky body on either side, you didn’t get a window and your feet had to straddle the hump.  My mother had some system for deciding whose turn it was for the middle, but I know for a fact that I got it much more often than anybody else.  My only defense was to get carsick which might be rewarded with a stretch in the front seat.

When the roar of the crowd got loud enough, Mom’s solution was to reach into the back seat and blindly deal out a few smacks to any stray legs or arms.  Naturally, her target protested, “I wasn’t doing anything.”  A believer in centuries-old mothering techniques, her response was, “Maybe not, but this is for the next time.”  My dad, a long time Cincinnati Bell employee, lost patience with the back seat bickering and regularly threatened to install three telephone booths.  That sounded good to me – it might have been a little claustrophobic but at least those little creeps wouldn’t have been touching me. 

With air conditioning and the current in-car video equipment, road trips with kids can be more like a day at

the movies, without the popcorn (or judging by the condition of many family cars, maybe with the popcorn.) We amused ourselves with highway Bingo, tallying license plates from different states and that old stand-by, Three Thirds of a Ghost, a game which loses something after the youngest member of the family is the ghost for the 400th time in a row.  We also had a game called Hi-Q with a lot of little plastic pegs that you jumped around on a board.  I can’t remember exactly how it worked. As car entertainment, however, Hi-Q was history after my brother made a rubber band slingshot and accidentally shot a plastic peg between my dad’s eyes and his glasses while he was driving.  Impressive but not something you’d want to repeat.

Paul and I weren’t exactly eager to do road trips once we had kids. (You’ll have to ask Paul about his family road trips, the last of which involved seven kids on a three week tour of the West and California in a station wagon with a ton of luggage piled up on a rooftop rack.   Not an adventure for the faint of heart.)    What little enthusiasm we had was dampened pretty quickly after a car trip to Michigan when David was about 6 months old.  He was fine in the car seat on the drive there, but, over the weekend, he learned to pull himself up to a standing position.  From that point on, sitting was one of those “been there, done that” experiences.  Having to sit in his car seat for the drive home threw David into a rage that lasted for the entire six (or was it sixty) hours.   It was several years before we attempted another road trip of any type.

Eventually we did venture out on short family road trips to places like Spring Mill, Indiana and Red River Gorge, Kentucky. Longer drives took us to Chicago for sightseeing and Michigan for skiing and time with

family and friends.    Later, vacations in British Columbia, Wyoming and England began with airplanes but also required significant road time.  Road trips with our kids all had one common element – the ending.  It made no difference if the drive took one hour or ten hours. It made no difference if our route went through beautiful, mountain scenery or dull, flat spaces.  It made no difference if the trip offered interesting stops along the way or was a straight slog through mile after mile.  In the last 10 to 15 minutes when we were desperately trying to get to our hotel, the rental car return or our front door, chaos broke out in the back seat.  Then, from the depths of primal parent instinct, those familiar, spine tingling words would erupt, unbidden, from my lips. “Don’t make me pull this car over.”  Sometimes that worked.