"Love at Home"

I grew up with my grandparents living next door which was both ideal and burdensome.  It made for an extra set of loving and protective parents, but it also added an extra regimen of rules and authority.  Instead of having grandparents that spoiled us and protected us from irrational parenting techniques (which is what I plan to do with my own grandchildren), our grandparents helped parent, discipline, and shelter us. If the parents were gone, the grandparents were sure to step in to ensure our chores were complete (to satisfaction), we were behaving properly, and that we treated each other well. They even added some of their own expectations: grandma always thought it would be nice if we did a few "extra" jobs to surprise our overworked mother, and grandpa always needed someone to go the farm and open gates and turkey feeders.

While we resented them at times, we also forged a bond, a bond so strong that we felt about our grandparents the way we did about our parents: we loved them, we feared them, but most importantly we knew them.  I knew that my grandpa could read, watch television, and sleep simultaneously.  I didn't believe it was actually possible, so I would frequently test him: inevitably, he could answer any question I asked about the television program always on in the background even though I intentionally centered my questions on information relayed at the exact moments I heard him snore, and somehow the books he read with his eyes closed were finished regularly.  I knew where grandma hid her wintergreen lozenges, her Tab (which she denied drinking), and that she took care of anyone in the community who was taken ill or suffering misfortune.

I also knew who to call when something turned up missing. Grandma was a rescuer who had a unique ability to find anything in our house.  When something was lost--a school book, a homework assignment, a new blouse, a shoe--we called upon her and she would rush over and produce the lost item.  

As we got older, we tried to assert our independence and insist we didn't need grandma or grandpa babysitting us when our parents were away. However, I'm uncertain if we actually made it through an evening alone without one of us calling for help--usually one of the younger kids complaining that the older kids were being mean or bossy (which is just not true). Generally, we older children were convinced the accusations were made up just to acquire grandma's attention. Whatever the reason, grandma would hustle over and rather than scolding, or taking sides, or separating us from each other, she would sing. As she entered the front door, she would erupt in song: "there is beauty all around, when there's love at home. There is joy in every sound, when there's love at home." Every. Single. Time.

Annoyed, we would roll our eyes, or glare at the person who had made the phone call, or immediately begin to defend ourselves. She would not take the bait. Instead, she would smile and continue in song: "Love at home.  Love at home." While singing, she would begin doing the dishes or the laundry or any number of the neglected chores in our full and busy home; generally, we ended up helping her, both out of guilt and to quiet her down. She was a master.

Grandma has been gone a long time, but I still hear her singing that song whenever I feel angry or frustrated with one of my own kids. I may in fact have sung it out loud a time or two when they argued or pulled faces at each other or expressed annoyance with life at home.

I also hear that song in the back of my head when I think about my childhood, my happy memories, my siblings, my parents, my grandparents, and our home.  Strangely, though, all these years later I can't hear that song without feeling the urge (or a push perhaps) to dust, or wash dishes, or tidy a room.

Grandma--singing to the infant version of me

My date to the daddy-daughter date (my sister took my dad)

Written April, 7, 2015

Procrastination: My Friend!

I believe in procrastination.

I also believe in preparedness.

I feel confident asserting it is usually best to be prepared.  In fact, I preach this philosophy to my students.  When a paper is due, you should start early.  To ensure success, when you have an exam, you should study days, even weeks in advance.  When you have somewhere to be, you should get there on time.

I think of myself as a planner, as someone who is on the ball, an organized type-A personality.  And I am.  Usually.

But if I am honest, some of my work has been done last minute, in the wee hours of the morning just before the project is due.  In those moments, I have told myself I work best under pressure.  And sometimes I do.

I prepare early when I am excited about the task, or if it is out of my comfort realm, or if I expect to be judged on my performance.  But I procrastinate when I view the task as mundane or as a burden.  I leave those responsibilities until the last minute, until the deadline (real or self imposed) is near.

Grading is perhaps the most common job I own that I put off...as long as I can.  I always plan to get those dreaded papers done quickly, but I don't.   Instead, I postpone and avoid until I feel shame.  At that point, I set a deadline for myself.  A drop dead date.  And still I wait. I grade one or two, cognizant of the time it takes to grade one paper; I can't help but calculate the exact amount of time I will need to finish.  That calculation is sacrosanct.  It represents the moment when time is no longer mine--the moment I must get to work.  And I do.  I always finish on time.  As I check the task off my to-do list, I feel the joy and satisfaction of completion.

Still, I scold myself for procrastinating, and I tell myself I'm not going to pull an all-nighter ever again.  However, I know I will.  I work best under pressure.  Sometimes!

Written 14 April 2015 (after an all-nighter) 

I Believe in Cautionary Tales

I believe in cautionary tales.

In my literature class a few weeks ago, we read and discussed Maxine Hong Kingston's short story "No-Name Woman," a story in which a Chinese mother tells her Chinese-American daughter of a nameless aunt who, because of an illegitimate pregnancy, is harassed by her village and disowned by the family. As a result, she ultimately takes her own life and the life of her newborn child.  The story, of course, serves as a warning of the importance of sexual purity.

We talked in depth about the double standard women face in this dual crime, even today. But we talked more about the power and use of story as a teaching tool, as a way to warn of impending danger and peril.  Each student could relate a cautionary story they had been told and so, of course, could I.

When I was a teenager, my grandmother told me a story--a story she told me over and over again until well after I was married and had my own child.  As I remember it, when she was a teenaged girl, she was assigned to live with her older sister to help take care of her many small children. She hated it.  To escape, she fell in love with the first single man who paid her some attention.  He was tall, dark, handsome, adventuresome, and a closet alcoholic. They were soon married and she was freed of the drudgery of raising children that were not her own.  

Not long after, though, she had a tiny little human responsibility that belonged to her.  And then another, and another, and another.  She was just minutes over the age of 20 with four small children and the responsibilities of domestic life. Kimball was a miner who, unfortunately, did not escape the danger of the profession:  as a young father, he suffered a fall that resulted in a broken back, a lifetime of pain, an addiction to painkillers and alcohol, and an inability to provide financially for his family.  

The small, shattered, unhappy family moved to Salt Lake City to be closer to medical expertise.  Grandma recalled those years with abiding sorrow in her voice:  Kimball was in inconsolable pain, he couldn't sleep, and demons inhabited his dreams. To protect his young sleeping family from what he feared he might do to them in the throes of his despair, he would lock them in a room at night and not allow himself to sleep.  Grandma always lowered her voice and her eyes when, at this point in the story, she relayed she could hear him outside the room, pacing, muttering, and moaning through the long hours of the night.

One evening before locking them in, he left and didn't return.  The next morning, grandma called the police and they, with first hand knowledge of Kimball and his addictions, assured her Kimball was on a drunk and would find his way home eventually.  He never did. They found him the next afternoon in a cheap hotel room, hanging lifeless from the rafters.

Grandma went home to Ephraim widowed, destitute, traumatized, and lonely with four grieving children in tow.  Feeling like a failure, she moved in with her mother, but for her children she resolutely faced the shame that came with what she thought were the judgments of others.

She told me this story each time I saw her throughout my teens and early 20s.  This story was just one piece of the puzzle that was her life story, but a piece that seemed to carry more significance because she told me so frequently and with such emotion.

I didn't really understand why she was telling me this story until she stopped.  It was my 26th birthday, I was pregnant with my first child, and I was happily married.  She told me one last time that when she was 26, she was widowed, destitute, and lonely—even with four small children.  I could see her pride and relief that I was not in the position she had been in.  At that moment, I knew:  she had told me the story again and again and again in love.  She had told me in warning.  She had told me because she did not want me to begin my adult years in a similar situation: no education, no job, no husband, and responsibilities beyond measure.

Grandma meets my baby!

Grandma eventually found happiness with a shy, backwards, kind, middle-aged farmer who adopted her children, raised them as his own, and fathered three more.  Her cautionary tale, though, has been canonized in our family lore and passed down through matriarchal channels.  While the story didn't prevent many of us from making impulsive decisions or even save us from problem marriages, I still told it to my own daughter since grandma was not around to tell it, and I recently breathed a silent sigh of relief when I realized she no longer needed to hear it.

Written May 3, 2015