(This is my second entry today; the first one is memes.)I've been thinking along these lines for several days, but first, go read this wonderful entry that summmer-gale wrote, because it all fits together.
My dear Colleague, who works with me in the library and with whom I spend a considerable amount of time each day, is as good and close a friend as I have. Because we spend so much time together at work, I think, we rarely, if ever, see each other outside. If there's no school, or it's summer vacation, we talk on the phone at least once a week. We have known each other now for nearly 22 years, and have seen each other's children grow up (hers are 10 to 15 years older than mine), and have shared together the deaths of all four of our parents within a two-year period.
She is a rock. I can say this because I spend so much time with her and I know her so well. But she doesn't think so. In fact, she knows otherwise for certain, because the last words her mother said to her, which she just told me the other day, were "You're such a baby." This to a woman who was over 60 herself at the time.
I was horrified. I knew her mother, as she knew mine, because they each called us on the phone every single day at work, and we had occasion to speak to them, just as we now speak to each other's children when they call. She and her mother were close; her mother lived here in town and was from an old-school, tough-love kind of place, the place where when your kid gets an A in school, you must reply "Couldn't you do better than an A? Why didn't you get an A+?" The old woman was a good mother, and loved her children, but did not know how to speak to them other than critically. It made the Colleague's brother weak and timid. It made the Colleague strong as iron, a mother and grandmother who can take charge of a situation and address every detail until the problem has been thoroughly dealt with. But she doesn't think so.
Both of her children are parents now, and are wonderful parents. Her daughter had a miscarriage last year, but just last month gave birth to her second beautiful baby. The Colleague's son is now facing a challenge that parents dread, which I will not outline here because it isn't mine to share. It is a challenge that can be met, but that will never go away. I am watching her heart break for him and for her grandchild, and she's afraid for her son. She can see that her granddaughter who is still a baby has a strong will and incredible determination and that despite what life has handed her, she will be okay. She can see that the baby is strong (amazing how it shows, even at this age), but she is afraid for her son. When I tell her that he is strong, too, like his mother, she can't seem to integrate that. That's when she told me what her mother's last words were. I told her that it wasn't true, what her mother said, at least not that way. The Colleague was probably crying, watching her mother die, and that's what her mother saw, and commented on. Maybe she meant that her daughter always had to handle every detail of every problem and not just deal with the whole thing. But that's her strength, and her source of strength. It's her son's strength, too.
These are the best people anywhere. They will be okay. That beautiful baby may not be a soccer star in her time, but she'll outsmart everyone around her, and I bet she'll dance at her senior prom, too.
A few days ago, I had cause to think about the circumstances of my life. It may have been as simple as this; I saw on one of those ribbon-magnets "Proud to Be an American" and this doesn't sit well with me because it's not as if I had a choice on that one. I'm certainly glad to be an American, but I don't know if proud is the right word. I had nothing to do with it.
My parents, Jack and Shirl, were quirky folk. I guess everyone is quirky somehow. They were both born in this country of immigrant parents. They worked from the time they were kids. My father went to college. My mother lost a year, but was glad -- ok, here it would be proud -- that she didn't drop out of high school, and finished, even though she was 19 and already working. I had grandparents who loved me, and to whom I was close. My father had his own business, and provided a home in the suburbs and meat on the table every night. We were not rich, not at all, but we lived as well as we needed to. My sister and I both got jobs when we were teenagers and thereafter bought our own clothes and provided our own spending money. (But Jack paid for the gas in our cars until after we were married. He just wanted to.)
I don't recall that they told me in so many words that they loved me on a regular basis. But I always knew, even if they were driving me crazy. I'd like to think that they knew that I loved them, even when I was driving them crazy. We were all a little more gushy in their last years, even though Shirl was crazy-making big time by then. And we did say it. When they were old, we said it more. Jack was a pretty undemonstrative guy, but he was less so when he was old. There were constant -- constant -- I-love-you's flying around between them and their grandchildren. Interestingly, what each of them did do in those later years was apologize to each of us, the Sibs and to me, for anything they had ever done to us that was wrong. Wrong had a liberal definition. What Jack was particularly sorry for, as I recall, was that he had smoked in the car with the windows closed when we were children. He felt really bad about that. I think Shirl was sorry for the bipolar years, and thinking that she hadn't sometimes been there when we needed her.
When she apologized, I did too, and told her that I would never hold on to any resentment I may have had from childhood or whenever, and I was sorry for all the times I'd been snotty to her, as a kid or as a grown person. We each let it all go. I told Jack that I had no ill feelings at all, even for the smoking. It was 1955. Who knew?
Which leads me back to closing the circle, as it were; coming back to what I was thinking about earlier in the week and which summer-gale reminded me of so poignantly. When I was thinking this all over earlier in the week, I found myself speaking out loud to my parents, wherever they are:
"Thank you."
