My grandmother died in August.  The memorial service will be held for her this weekend, and my mom has asked me to speak.

I could put together something easy, talk about how I’ll miss her, share a few memories, but I feel as someone who conveys my thoughts on “paper” that I should be able to string together something a bit more substantial.

Gram suffered from Alzheimer’s for the last ten years.  In the last few years, she had few words and the only way I could tell she recognized me even remotely was by the way her face lit up a little when I entered the room.

My grandfather passed away when I was only four.  My grandmother was only in her early 50’s–far too young to be a widow.  She had to find work, had a life to continue living.

She wasn’t the traditional grandma.  We did go to her house for dinner every once in awhile.  All the major holidays were celebrated together and she was always with us to celebrate our birthdays, but it was the 70’s and 80’s.  She was going on cruises with her girlfriends.  She was dating.  She got remarried.

Mom and I have discussed it before.  My grandma wasn’t very “grandmotherly” in many ways.  She didn’t play with us, she didn’t demand to see us once a week though she only lived 20 minutes away.  I’ve been used to her being gone from us through Alzheimer’s that her death has been a bit easier, but also because I never thought of her as a central force in my life.

As I think through the words I want to share this weekend though, I realize she was there in so many ways.

There are traditions at Christmas that I’ve continued with my kids that she started for my sister and I (hiding a bag of chocolate coins in the tree for us to find on Christmas day).  I still make her meatballs and spaghetti sauce because that’s what sauce should taste like to me.  She always had extra mashed potatoes for me at Thanksgiving because she knew I could eat my weight in them even when age was in the single digits.  And though she never had very much money, she saved to take my sister and I on our first trip to Disney World and she took me on my first trip overseas–two weeks just the two of us in England and Wales.

My grandmother wasn’t a warm, plump, cookie-baking grandma with a bun.  She always had a cigarette in her hand, more shoes than Imelda Markos and never went without her lipstick, but she loved me in her own way.

And she certainly never really judged.

Don’t get me wrong.  She was very certain about some of her beliefs–no matter how much she contradicted herself, but well…

She went along with Aunt Bev and I when we got our tattoos and even joked with the artist–this behemoth of a man–that she had each one of her wrinkles tattooed on.

She bragged to everyone who’d listen that I had a job in Washington, DC with NARAL while in the same breath telling me how “pro-life” she was.

Or my favorite conversation sitting around my aunt and uncle’s dining room table with her and my mom.  She just blurted out over the table of broken lobster carcasses “Amie, have you ever smoked marijuana?”

I was 25 and felt like it was safe to be honest.  “Yeah grandma, I have.”

She looked me right in the eye and said “you know I used to grow it, right?”

I had no idea what to say.  I looked around the table at her two daughters.  My mom scoffed thinking maybe she was losing her crackers, but my aunt just laughed with a knowing smile.

“Oh yeah!  Remember that great bay window I had in the old house?  It got the best light.  I used to grow it on that windowsill in with all my other plants.”

I saw my grandmother in a completely different way that night.

She was young once.  She had loves (she was growing it for her boyfriend at the time–and I’m not making this up–his name was John Paradise.  He was 5′ 3″ with his platforms on.  He had a big mustache, wore polyester shirts open to his navel with big gold chains).  She didn’t stop living just because my grandfather died.

In reflecting on my grandma, I’m now aware of the tenacity required for her to keep going.  She could have retreated, lived through her grandchildren and no one would have questioned it, but she didn’t.  She didn’t give up.  The woman wore skin-tight satin pants into her 60’s.  And she looked good!

My grandmother gave me the two women who have had the biggest impact on my life–her daughters Bev and my amazing mom Jean–but she gave me so much more too.

I’m grateful I had this opportunity to understand that.

Holy cow!

I had no idea how exhausted my mother must have been during the holidays when I was a kid.

I have my three boys, the husband, my parents and brother in town. Not THAT many people, and I’m bushed.

My mom worked as an ER nurse when I was Santa-believing age. She regularly hosted twice as many people in a smaller house on a much smaller salary and never let us see her crack–not even once.

I am not worthy.

I’m 39 years old and it’s taken me this many years to get all of my presents wrapped before Christmas Eve…to have a dinner prepared the night my parents arrive (what? I take them to restaurants with cloth napkins!).

Mom hasn’t had to cook one thing so far this holiday (sure she just arrived this afternoon), I have all the groceries purchased for meals through Friday (even stuff for lunches) and I’m almost done with my cooking (yeah, so I’ll be up REALLY late).

But I’m kinda proud of myself.

I also can’t see straight let alone carry on a conversation with anyone.

So if you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s not because I don’t love you. I do. But the torch has been passed and I’m the “mom” of the family now, and pretending to be organized is EXHAUSTING.

Merry Christmas!!!

Most of you are just waking up.

I’m still wearing the same clothes I put on after my shower yesterday morning. I couldn’t sleep last night.

A bunch of good friends came over last night. I had a little get together. I didn’t stress about it. I didn’t freak out about the way my house looked. I didn’t even worry about the food. Everything came together just fine. People arrived. We laughed. We had great conversations. New friendships were formed. It was a fantastic evening.

I checked my Blackberry after everyone left. I like to look at my calendar for the next day before I go to bed–to make sure I didn’t forget anything.

There were six missed calls on my phone.

I wasn’t able to get back in touch with the callers. It was late. But, I was able to get a little information. The thing is my parents were already in bed.

The news could wait until morning.

My mom could have one more peaceful night’s sleep before we start the whole routine all over again.

We’ve done this so many times before.

I’m just not used to my new role as the one who breaks the news.

And the fact that I’m not there to support them…I think that’s even harder.

It was a pretty afternoon (every other hour it didn’t rain today) and it started like this:

And as any parent might expect, it ended like this:

My parents divorced when I was 10.

I hesitated on that first sentence for a few seconds, because I have a difficult time referring to my initial father figure as my “parent.” I’m pretty sure he fed me and clothed me and loved me to the best of his ability, but his best just didn’t hold up. As a matter of fact, he ran dry on parenthood after twelve years or so.

He probably should have just adopted a dog.

My mom and I often discussed her first marriage as I was growing up. She had moved home right after nursing school because she had no money. Without money, she was without a car–and therefore a job. Without a job, she couldn’t afford a down payment for an apartment, so she married her high school sweetheart. She knew he wasn’t the right guy, but she felt like it was her only option.

My mom’s greatest wish for me was to grow up and gain the skills to be independent. She wanted me to fall in love, she wanted me to get married, she wanted me to have children, but not because I had no other choice.

The constant refrain when it came to dating or marriage was: Never commit to someone you want to change, because they never will.

When it comes to your children though things are different. You can’t walk away when your child makes awful decisions. You must try, as you have from the time they were small, to teach them the skills to make good choices.

But what if they never learn?

My sister’s battle with addiction began when she was an early teen. More than twenty years later, it’s still a constant battle. My parents (my whole family) went through all the stages–some taking much longer than others–denial, embarrassment, guilt, enabling, anger, support, grief and begrudgingly after many years and much heartache–acceptance.

There was nothing we could do to change my sister.

We couldn’t “fix” her no matter how badly we wanted to.

The choice to get better or let addiction claim her life was hers to make. All we could do was love her. We didn’t have to like who she was when she was using, all we could do was love the girl behind the addict.

So how do I reconcile these two messages about relationships? Honestly, until I started writing this post, I had never thought about the ways they contradict each other. Don’t love someone you want to change, yet you can still love someone even though you know you have no power to change them.

I guess I’m going to choose to focus on the central theme: love.

It would be tempting to ration the love I’m willing to share knowing how little control I have over the people I choose to give it to, but that’s not me. I just have to remember to give it freely –never with any strings attached–because they may just drag me places I don’t want to go.

This post was inspired by Julie’s Hump Day Hmmm. Check them out.

I know new posts have been pretty sparse around here, but springtime here in the wilds of Northern Virginia (and when I say wilds I mean the Target parking lot on Saturday morning) speeds by at breakneck pace (or that might be how I drive to work every morning).

So aside from my regular duties protecting poor little corporate America from mean ole lawmakers and their big bully constituents, I’ve been busy ensuring that America’s youth understands that our national pastime is indeed a sport played outside and does not involve controllers and a big screen.

Of course, I’ve also been spreading beauty far and wide (What? My house is on the corner, I have to plant on two sides).

I’ve been sowing the seeds for a bountiful harvest (if you call a few salads and enough jalapeno peppers to start your own salsa company bountiful).

And well, the kids do need a rinsing off every once in a while.

So there we were with all of our outlets properly protected.

We were living in a two-bedroom townhouse and our itty bitty guest room was taken up mostly by a queen-sized bed. That first week I would stand in the doorway after our new roommate had fallen asleep and my heart would clench at the sight of that tiny little guy in that huge bed.

I had so many mixed emotions. He was so little and so beautiful and he looked so damn adorable sleeping so soundly surrounded by that big mattress, and yet my heart would break that he was having to sleep in a bed that wasn’t his.

And boy was I pissed at my sister.

How the hell could she put this amazing little boy in this position–ripped from his routine, living far away from home and with people who weren’t his parents?!

He came to live with us in the middle of the NCAA basketball tournament. How do I remember? Because we took him to the bar with us to watch the games.

What?? That was our life then.

It was a local joint. We didn’t drag him along to a club. It even had a restaurant attached. We set the kid up at the bar with a plate of chicken tenders and french fries and some orange juice to wash it down as we sipped our Miller Lites with the rest of the gang.

Chicken nuggets and orange juice were the staple of his diet at that point. Along with hotdogs and ham, he ate very little else. He was allergic to milk so that ruled out a number of foods. As a baby, he had been a picky eater never wanting to eat baby food from a jar. We had to mix it in with his formula to get vegetables in him. That combined with my sister’s eating habits, he hadn’t developed a very broad palette.

It was probably a good thing too. Just getting used to the responsibilty of having to have dinner ready for someone was tough.

The thing about kids is that they can’t take care of things by themselves, so we were forced to start building a routine. I mean somone had to cook for him, someone had to give him a bath, someone had to read him a story, someone had to help him get his pajamas on and someone had to tuck him in. Or at least he had us convinced of this.

A week after he arrived I turned 30. The hubs had planned a big party–probably to rub in the fact that I was turning 30 before him (thirty-three whole days before him). The night before my party (my actual birthday) I got a call from my parents. I assumed they were calling to wish me many happy returns.

But it was just my dad on the phone. He was calling because he had news.

Mom wasn’t there with him because she had dropped everything and flown up to be with my aunt–her only sister and my second mother. It had fallen to him to tell me that my aunt had been diagnosed with liver cancer.

I took the news with some tears, assured my dad that I wasn’t upset that he had to tell my on my birthday, hung up the phone and the three of us went out to meet some friends for dinner.

These friends–K & P–would figure prominently in our ability to manage our plunge into parenthood. I told them calmly about my aunt’s illness. They listened, probably not understanding how devastated I was because on the outside I appeared fine. They talked and played with our little guy at the table and patiently endured the cheesy restaurant where we met because I thought it would be kid friendly.

I went home that night and sobbed.

Sure our three year-old nephew had just moved in. Okay, I had just started a new job doing something completely different. So what I was turning 30. But the news of my aunt’s cancer?

It was just enough to push me over the edge.

I can say now that the following months would mostly be a blur, and the parts I do remember? Let’s just say I wish I didn’t.

If you missed the first installment, you can find it here.

“Your sister’s in jail and you need to come get him.”

I was at work–in my new office. I took a deep breath and thought for a moment.

I have to tell the hubs. He’s NOT going to believe this. How could she be so stupid?I just started this job two weeks ago. How do I explain that I need
to take a day off already? How much do I share with my boss? How do I
explain that I’m going to be a parent?

My new firm was small. They appeared to be a family, but who ever really knows in those circumstances. I decided that laying it out there was my best approach. I knew there were going to be tons of adjustments and they needed to understand what was going on.

But were they going to be okay with this? I mean seriously
I just started this job.

Thankfully, my boss was amazing. Turns out he had a brother who was a bit of a “challenge” himself and he completely understood my situation.

Honestly, what happened next is a blur to this day. I don’t remember packing or going to the airport or even the plane ride home. I just remember getting off the plane and seeing him.

He was so little. He was so adorable. He had no idea what was going on.

The hubs and I had started dating the same year he was born, so he knew us both well. I was his god mother and we spent all the time we could with him whenever we were at my parents. We knew he’d be okay with us, but how were we going to explain that he was getting on a plane and coming to live with us–for how long we had no idea.

With my sister’s MS, my nephew was accustomed to her being hospitalized from time to time. We decided that the best approach for now was to tell him that she was sick and couldn’t take care of him so he was coming to stay with us for a while.

In reality, we had no idea what was going to happen. We didn’t have a lot of details about her arrest, about the process of hearings, about sentencing. Honestly, we didn’t have much experience with this, though enough that my parents had finally reached their breaking point and refused to post bail (and I was completely behind their decision). We just had no idea how long he’d be living with us. Three years? Five years? Her attorney thought it would be in that neighborhood.

The hubs had stayed behind to get things ready for our little guy’s arrival. I didn’t know what to tell him we’d need. My mom was getting his clothes and some favorite books and toys together. But what did we need at our house? I left it to my husband to figure it out.

When I came home Sunday evening I brought with me one huge bag and one little guy. What had the hubs gotten to get our house ready? A super-sized box of outlet covers.

Oh yeah, we were prepared.

Part III

We had been married for nine months when we got the call.

We were going to have a kid–a three and a half year-old kid!

Wha?!

Parental responsibilities were to begin in forty-eight hours!

Holy shit on a cracker! In forty-eight hours?! What do I need? What do they eat? Where will he sleep? What does he do when we go to work? What about when we’re at happy hour?

There had been those three days a month after our honeymoon when I thought I might be pregnant, but it was a false alarm. Even then, I would have had nine months to prepare for the arrival. But this? We weren’t getting much notice.

Then I found out why.

Life with my sister has never been what you’d describe as predictable–life with a drug addict rarely is. I’d lived through screaming matches, visiting hours at rehab, sketchy friends, suicide attempts, rehab, dropping out of school, “your sister has run away,” “well, I’m going to live with Dad,” parents kicking her out, rehab, wrecked cars, the MS diagnosis, arrests for posession, rehab and then finally “I’m pregnant, can’t work, not married, but I’m keeping the baby anyway.”

Seriously, mom’s Christmas cards were always the first ones opened I’m sure.

I was fully prepared to step in if the MS ever got too bad for her to care for my nephew. This had been made clear to the husband when he was still just the boyfriend. Luckily her disease had progressed slowly and my nephew’s birth didn’t cause her any loss of mobility (as we were warned it might). The possibility of taking on his care seemed a long way off.

But of course there I was on the phone getting the “your sister’s in jail and you need to come get him now” call.

I know, hindsight is 20/20. I should have seen it coming, right? As stupid as it sounds though, I just didn’t.

Part II

I have a fondness for this day we celebrate our collective Irish heritage–both real and imagined.

I don’t necessarily imbibe in green beer, though I have, and I did enjoy corned beef and cabbage today (a first). I don’t love St. Patrick’s Day because I’m particularly fond of bagpipes or long lines at Irish Pubs.

I love St. Patrick’s Day because I’m adopted.

I’ve always known I was adopted. I went straight from the hospital to my parents. I’m taller than both my parents, but I am a brunette like my mom. Like many modern families, my parents divorced and my mom remarried when I was 10, so I mainly grew up without anyone questioning if I was adopted because they knew the guy I called my dad was actually my step-father.

In my sister’s case, the fact of her adoption was a little more obvious. My first real memories are of the events surrounding her adoption when I was 3 1/2. She actually went home with her biological family for a few months before coming to us and we know that she is of Puerto Rican descent.