Wal Mart stresses me out!

I used to love shopping at Wal Mart, but then I moved here and the Wal Mart is either gross or in such chaos that shopping there is extremely stressful. And after Katrina, things have only gotten worse. I only go in dire circumstances. Last night was one of those times...A few things I noted last night:

1. Common curtesy (or safety) would dictate that if a large woman is walking briskly through the aisle, shoving your basket in front of her is a bad idea. Especially is she's carrying something.

2. If your children cannot behave, then leave them at home.

3. Don't throw away stinky diapers in the trash can next to the milk. The combination of smells is revolting...this is also a note to the management at Wal Mart that if you have stinky trash can--remove the litter EVEN IF the bag isn't full to over flowing!

4. Smelly fish do not entice shoppers to actually buy it.

5. You don't actually have to check the date on every single yogurt to find out which one is the "freshest." If it's in date go ahead and get it!

6. In relation to #2...if your child is misbehaving, giving him/her sticky, chewy, or drooly candy is a really bad idea.

7. When shopping with your partner, it looks bad on you when you call him an asshole.

8. If you don't know if you can afford all 300 items in your cart, bring a calculator and do the math BEFORE you get in the checkout line. It is NO fun to have to wait while the checker credits you back for 1/2 of your stuff.

9. Wal Mart, PLEASE hire more checkers. Standing in line for 45 minutes does not entice me to buy more bubble gum (even if there are freshly chewed pieces sitting right there on the rack for me to see).

10. An finally, checkers, please learn your produce. Limes and key limes are not the same thing!

Back from Vacation

Just back from 4.5 days at the beach. It was heavenly. I couldn't believe I could go with 4 teenagers and not slit my wrists by half-way through. Other than being messy they were perfect. Go figure.

On the ride down and back we talked about different vacations we took as kids and I remembered eating at a Furs cafeteria with my grandparents in Kansas--Wichita I believe. Papa M's nephew was a manager and he paid for our meals. He had a son name Shelly and a Viatnamese wife. I remember that being so exotic. I did wonder if they wanted a girl, thus they named their son the wrong name, but I was too afraid to ask such a crazy question as that.

We also would go to the minor league baseball playoffs in Wichita. I got a neon orange baseball and a plastic display case for it and got it signed by any man in a uniform I found wandering around the park. Who knows where that baseball is now...

Coming back home from vacation is always so hard. I resist going back into the routine even though I miss it when I'm gone.

Vacation

Heading out to the beach with the girls and two of their friends today. We're all very excited!

I went on two trips with my Morris grandparents when I was 10-11. The first one was just me and them. It was a lot of fun even if we did sleep in crappy motels and didn't go anywhere besides visiting family and the car. We drove and drove and drove.

The next trip my cousins and their parents went with us. That was 4 kids, and 4 adults in a suburban. I have no idea how we all fit our luggage in there, but it was a blast. We went to see Mount Rushmore, drove through perilous mountain passes, saw black bears all over the place, drove through prairies. Silver Lake in Colorado was my favorite. OH, and my cousins and I played gin rummy with these weird cards we found at some stuckeys--there was a round deck, a crooked deck, and another one I can't remember.

And funny enough my husband went on vacation and stayed at what has to be the exact same hotel we did in Colorado. It had a FREEZING cold "heated" pool and a hot tub. We both teased how that was the heated pool to our family and they thought us rather clever. At least I didn't convince his mother to jump in the pool where the water was "oh so warm"! My the fall out that must have come from that!

Witchy Woman

Grandma Morris looked like a witch...that was what I thought she was while I was young enough to believe in witches. She had a hawky nose, was tall and skinny and had a perpetual frown on her face. She was not a particularly loving person, and since I was a girl I wasn't in favor. I did spend a lot of time in her house and I ate her Little Debbie snack cakes (something we NEVER had at our house no matter how cheap they were) did some of her word search puzzles, read her books, and basically annoyed her to no end.

In retrospect I think she loved me in her own way, but I don't think she was happy with her choices in life and as I was a second generation result of that choice, she didn't like me.

She did like my middle brother. Spoiled and petted him rotten. I remember being so jealous because I knew he didn't deserve or appreciate her preference, but that was the way things were. On his birthday he would get a card with a $100. I was lucky to get a card. The preferential treatment was not only in my head.

Grandma M was one of those people that you talked about behind her back, but didn't pretend to love her to her face. I don't ever remember her laughing, or smiling, or otherwise showing general happiness.

She eventually got Alzheimers, broke her hip, and then sat in a nursing home until she died. It was very sad because she had been so independent minded that seeing her completely physically and mentally incapable was heartbreaking.

Visitation

When Grandma S died, I was so broken hearted. I'd been having trouble during my first semester at college, and was barely hanging onto a D in calculus. What I wanted to do was go to her funeral, what I had to do was go to class and then go down for all the family stuff after the funeral. Only when I showed up for class the professor had canceled it. I cried and cried right there in the hall because of the stupidity of the whole situation.

I was also supposed to go on my first date with David that weekend, and while he understood I remember being really afraid that he would dump me.

I know I was being irrational because of losing someone who I truly believed would be here forever. I had plans for the photograph of her, my grandmother, my mother, me and my daughter whenever I had one. I thought a five generational picture would be so awesome. Of course it never happened.

So, after I finally got myself under control and drove home, I found that talking to family, remembering Grandma S and taking some time away from all the regular stress in my life made a huge difference in my outlook. I was still so sad about her being dead though that I could barely stand it. Remember I was 19 and this was the first person close to me who had died.

That night I dreamed that Grandma S came to sit beside me on the bed. She held onto my foot and stroked my back and told me that she loved me dearly and that she would miss me but that she was in such a happy wonderful place right now. She was fine and where she wanted to be and that she would always be looking out for me.

I woke the next morning in such peace. When I went out for breakfast, my mom said she had a dream about Grandma S sitting on her bed talking to her about how she was fine and happy. It was weird, but I believed her and told her about my dream. We both know that Grandma S came to visit us to calm our grief, and that in doing so, we were able to continue to miss her, but feel confident that she didn't have to be gone from our lives.

At 36, I have lost other important people in my life and have been visited by them many times in my dreams, but she only came that one time. I know her spirit is satisfied and at peace, and while I miss her and would love her calm voice in my ear sometime, I know I'll see her again on the other side...and I'm happy to wait a long time...

Quilting

Grandma S liked to quilt. She wasn't very good at it, but she loved the social components--inviting your friends over for an afternoon of quilting was a really good excuse for gossiping and doing something besides churning butter and cooking food.

Her house was so small and crammed full of stuff, that when she had the quilting frame in the middle of the living room, you literally couldn't walk around. As I kid, I just went under. I never played under there like my mother did because I was usually being chased by my brothers or cousins and the other side of the frame was safe.

I have one quilt that she made, that I have to assume was meant as a baby quilt because it's so small. It's made of pink and turquoise polyester and is probably the ugliest quilt I own. The stitches are huge (some approaching 1/2 long) because she was almost blind when she made it.

She kept stitching up until she went into the nursing home. I expect I will be the same. And I'm sure that my great-grandbabies won't care if the quilt I made them could trap their toes and fingers with my big stitches. The bright colors that only we can see and appreciate will rock our world! And who knows, that quilt may keep off some chill and help them sleep better, too!

Grandma S was fat--very fat. I remember her sitting in her chair and taking up a large expanse of the room. I also remember thinking how on earth she was able to cook for herself and Fuller (my great-uncle who was mentally retarded) in that tiny kitchen that may have been 80 square feet and had a large kitchen table in the middle. She did manage, and she probably wasn't as fat as I remember.

When I was a kid, I was super-sensitive to fat comments. I wasn't fat and no one in my family was really fat, but a number of us were overweight. I see pictures of me and Grandma S snuggled together, and she doesn't look any bigger than I am now. But Papa M liked calling people fat. I don't know why, but he would even call skinny people fat. My mother considered it a compliment if Papa called her fat--I thought it was an insult of the highest degree.

Plus when you're a kid you always see things as bigger than they are.

So, when Grandma S really did get FAT (she probably weighed close to 400 pounds when she went to the nursing home), it wasn't really a shock, but it was sad. She could no longer get around and cook. Walking was extremely painful for her. Her legs and feet were so swollen that she couldn't wear houseslippers. She hated becoming dependent on people, but she couldn't seem to help it--she just kept gaining weight.

I have the next 50 years to work on not becoming extremely fat. I know that will be my fate if I don't get my weight in line now...scary, but I'm glad I have the ability to see and do something about it. Now, is the time!

Hair that Touched the Ground

I was convinced that Grandma Stricklin was magic. She was mysterious and sweet and wonderful and had a PRESENCE about her that made you stop and stare. She had gorgeous silver-white hair with streaks of black in it when I knew her. It was so long that she kept it braided and in a bun all the time. Her youngest daughter would go over on Sunday afternoons and wash and dry her hair and then braid it and put it back in the bun. Like Samson, I believed her power lay in her hair, which is why she never cut it.

I was at her house once that I remember when Pam was washing her hair and fixing it. My great-grandma was sitting in a straight back chair with her hair hanging straight down. It was so long that it not only touched the ground, but lay upon it in a heap. Like Rapunzel, to my 5 year old mind. It was so thick that Pam couldn't braid it all in one big braid, but had to braid it in two or three braids that she wrapped around each other to form the bun at the base of Grandma S's neck.

I remember longing to touch the hair to see if it were real, but I also remember feeling like I wasn't part of the ritual. I was definitely the observer of the containment of her power.

I remember after that wanting desperately to grow my hair out and never cut it. My hair is too curly and frizzy to grow very long, though, and it's very unmanageable once it gets much past my shoulders. I don't have the power to contain.

Great-Grandma

I didn't really know what a GREAT-grandma was until I was 4 or 5. I thought it was a grandma (and I knew what that was) who was great, or really good at her job. I had three grandmas, two who I loved as much as I loved my mother and one who scared me, so I assumed that I had two great-grandmas and one regular-grandma. I didn't have any great-grandpas, and that wasn't really all that surprising as both of my grandpas were pretty good, but in different ways, but neither were perfect.

So, in my little kid logic, I started calling my Grandma Thornton "Great-Great-Grandma" because she was just perfect at being a Grandma and I thought she was some better than my other grandma who I always called Great-Grandma (Stricklin). Distinguishing between who was good, great and really great was very important.

I remember Grandma T figuring out what I was doing and laughing and then explaining that to me, she was just a grandma and that Grandma S was a Great-Grandma because she was my other grandma's mother. I remember the light-bulb and understanding what she was saying, but also knowing that I couldn't put her in the same category as my other grandma (Morris). So, while it was important to me, I called Grandma S "great-grandma" (and I continued that until she died), Grandma T "sweet grandma" and Grandma M just plain old "grandma."

Granddaughter

I am a granddaughter. That's the first descriptor I used for myself. I'll describe all of my grandparents today and then next week go into each individually.

On my mother's side there was

• Great-Grandma Stricklin. Her grandmother was full-blood Cherokee, but you couldn't tell that Grandma wasn't also full-blood Cherokee. In fact, the nose didn't disappear in our genetic lineage until my generation--and not one of my sibling cousins has it, but 3 of my mom's brothers have it. She was one of those people who could see nothing but the good in people. I loved her with the love of a child who is accepted unconditionally for herself.
• Grandma Morris. She was my mother's mother, and Grandma Stricklin's oldest child--born when she was barely 16! She was one of those knobbly scary witchy looking old women who could see NO good in anyone. I feared her, actually.
• Papa Morris. My mother's father was a funny person who always laughed--usually at the expense of other people. I remember being SO angry at him for calling my mother "fatso" and I always tried to "cure" the harm he did her by calling her my "skinny mama." Don't get me wrong. He wasn't a mean person, but I've never been able to deal with people being mean to each other, so he made me feel uncomfortable.

On my dad's side:

• Grandma Thornton: Red-headed, big bosomed, and sweet as you can imagine. She LOVES her soaps, taught me to read with Wheel of Fortune, taught me math by playing dominos, and somehow instilled in each of her daughters (myself included, but that will make sense later) a fierce independence so that they didn't have to depend on a man for getting along in life.
• Papa Thornton: He was a tall, lanky straight backed man up until right before he died. He was always so tolerant of my silliness and curiosity, but would brook NO interference with his rules.

I always believed Papa Thornton and Grandma Stricklin would live forever, so when they died it was a terrific shock to me. Up until the last few years of her life Grandma Morris was so mean I didn't think she would die, but she did anyway, Papa Morris was always in such poor health, it seems like we were at the hospital waiting for him to die every other year.

And Grandma Thornton lives on at 94. Her last friend died just this past week--she said she's "all alone now." A feeling that has to be so lonely and sad.

Who I Am

I am 36 years old. I am a granddaughter, daughter, mother, wife, sister, friend. I am a student of literature, statistics, and research methods. I learn foreign languages easily. I am a quilter, cross stitcher, needlepointer, writer, admirer of art, musician, and reader. I am overweight and have fought that for 15 years. I am addicted to sweets. I am addicted to love and peace. I hate conflict and disorganization. I try to keep my house peaceful. I love my cats. I love the beach.

I married young to a man who still holds the key to my heart. He hasn’t clipped my wings—in fact he provides the wind to keep me afloat when I feel like taking a nose dive. I had twins within a year of getting married. I am not a complacent mother. I fight the continual demands on my physical being, my emotions, and my spirit. I want to see my children free, independent and self sufficient. Many times I can’t understand them (they’re 14 and I’m told this is rather normal).

The major events in my life that have “defined” who I am:the explosion of Challenger, meeting my husband, 9/11, Hurricane Katrina.

I was fortunate enough to have five living grandparents until I was 19 years old. At 36, I still have my favorite grandmother. They each individually affected me, and I was close to them and understand them in ways that I believe are uniquely my own. I saw into their spirits and souls because I was curious about who they were and what made them tick. They all make me a better person. I am special because of them.