No More Phone Calls

No more phone calls.

Once I moved out of my parents’ home, I would get birthday/Christmas phone calls from all the family and family friends. Every year I looked forward to hearing those voices of loved ones and hearing their wishes and greetings. All my six siblings called; my mother called; for a while my uncle called; and my dad; just everyone!

Now they’re gone. My dad, my my mom, my three brothers, and most recently, my sister. 

My kids used to call, too, once they moved away. But now it’s a text message birthday wish. 

Don’t get me wrong. I realize that times are changing. I realize that people leave this life. I realize that the text messages mean to them what phone calls used to mean. I do appreciate it. But I also mourn the loss of that tradition sounds with the loss of my family members and the dear departed friends.

I’m still remembered. 

As I reach my 68th year, I know I have far fewer birthdays ahead of me than behind me and it means I have to think about how I’ll be remembered. If I’ll be remembered. Who will remember?

Times change. Family changes. Traditions change. I guess it’s all good. There’s just no more phone calls 

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Just Can’t Please Me–#WeeklySmile

Yup, that’s right! This week’s smile is going to make YOU smile, too. As many of you are aware, I have been babysitting three of my grandchildren since they moved thirtyish miles away in early September because my daughter had not been able to set up daycare. The babysitting had me driving back and forth between the two cities several times a day then around November it became easier (and cheaper) to go over on Sunday evening and stay until Friday evening, unless I had an appointment back near me. It was exhausting, physically and mentally. Several times she said she was setting up daycare so I would only need to watch the kids for her a couple of days a week. I was looking forward to that then she announced that the woman that was going to watch the kids had decided to go back to work instead so I lost hope!

Then, last week, out of the blue she said she had found a place that might have openings for all three of the kids and she was going to go visit to see what it was like. I had heard it before so I sort of ignored it. That afternoon I got a text message saying all three of the kids were starting day care at the same center on Monday and it would be full time, five days a week. Wow!

I hadn’t expected that. It gave me just one more day of watching them before the weekend and then the Monday they started at the center. I cried. It kind of made me feel like I was no longer wanted or needed. I know it was silly but it just threw me! After the first couple of days, I realized I was being silly. Here I was feeling upset about finally getting a change in the situation that had been exhausting to me for months. So I not only smiled at myself, I laughed at myself.

They started daycare this past Monday and aside from a bit of a rough time getting used to a new schedule (they have to get up about two hours earlier than when I watched them) all three of the kids like it. Right now the boys are only there in the morning until the school bus picks them up because my daughter picks them up about ten minutes after they are dropped off after school but when she begins her new job in three weeks, she will be picking them up later than now because of different work hours and a longer commute. All is fine. This week I’ve actually been over there twice anyway; once because she had an after work appointment and once because it was my daughter’s birthday so we went out to dinner. So I’m still seeing them and still needed (in fact, I am babysitting them tonight so she can go out to celebrate her birthday with friends). Silly me to think I wasn’t needed anymore!

Trent over at Trent’s World hosts a weekly blog hop called The Weekly Smile where he asks us to write about one thing that made us smile during the week. Go check it out!

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Changes

I’m not the confrontational type. I’m not the loud type. I’m not the “in your face” type.

But there are changes going on inside of me; inside of my mind. Maybe it’s because I’m getting older and I know time is short. Maybe it’s because I am just fed up with things. Maybe it’s because old feelings and memories that I have suppressed for decades have come tumbling back into my mind. I’m seeing things that I saw before but didn’t face and I’m facing them, at least inside of me. I’m angry at the way things are. The next step? I think I have to start speaking out; start acting. I have to try to help bring about some changes.

What kind of things? Well, I keep seeing, day after day after day, instances where women get blamed for men’s actions and poor decisions. Yesterday, I read about a court case where a Yale student was exonerated of rape charges even after the jury was shown video tape footage of a very drunk girl being dragged to her room, barely conscious. The young woman was asked, in court, by the judge, why she had chosen to wear a close fitting cat costume to the Halloween party where she encountered her assailant. The judge asked her why she hadn’t worn a Cinderella costume or something  “like that.” So the male walks free and the female is left not only with the trauma of waking up after passing out only to find that her clothes are off and the guy is on top of her, but she is also left with the humiliation of having to testify in open court and then called a liar. The jury’s verdict called her a liar. The judge’s questions called her a liar. Yale called her a liar. They failed to stand by a female student in favor of a male student.

Why is it that when a girl gets pregnant she is blamed for it; often she is said to have seduced the guy. Why is it that no one blames the guy? It’s pretty difficult for a girl to force a guy to get her pregnant. Possible but difficult, yet it’s the girl’s fault.

Why is it that when a woman is sexually assaulted, she’s to blame because she wore provocative clothing or smiled at a stranger?

And this one, while unrelated, still gets at the point that women are always blamed. Why is it that when a man cheats on his wife or partner, it’s the woman’s fault? She didn’t pay attention to him. She didn’t dress nice for him. She didn’t wear makeup for him. She didn’t hold his interest. It’s her fault he couldn’t keep his zipper up in the presence of other women.

Yup, time after time, it’s the woman who gets blamed. It’s always our fault.

And this all keeps women down. It keeps us from speaking up and reporting attacks. It keeps us oppressed. In our place.

It won’t end or change significantly in my lifetime but I have daughters and a granddaughter and I pray that they will see this change in their life times. For now, all I can do is express my anger over the way things are and I can support women who have been victimized by the system. I can tell my stories of my experiences; there are more than one. I was blamed. Then I got smart and stopped reporting them because no one would believe me anyway. It’s time to speak up in the hopes that others will benefit.

Changes. Lots of them. The time has come.

Changes.

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Color

 

And then my favorite. This is the view as I exit the driveway of our mobile home park. There is a whole row of  those bright red trees. I  don’t know what they are but every year I look forward to seeing the bright fire red of those trees and every year, when the wind blows them all away, I want to mourn the loss of those beautiful fire red leaves. Then I wait, patiently, until the next time they appear.

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On the Outside

I mentioned yesterday that my three grown kids were at a wedding for a cousin on their father’s side. The two girls were sharing a hotel room and will be flying home together tonight. I’ll be picking them up (at the crack of midnight) tonight. I may have forgotten to mention that they were in my home town.

While driving around Japan Town in search of nice chop sticks and some rice bowls for the boys, they ended up near the house where I grew up. They texted me to ask which street. Was it 5th Street? I replied with the street address on 7th Street and the cross street. A little bit later, they texted me a picture of the house. It is very well kept and looks amazing. It’s a Victorian with a full basement, two kitchens, two bathrooms (at least when I lived there), a bay window in the living room, and a very large backyard. It has been painted a nice, pale pink. I had never seen it painted anything but white, even in the years after I moved away and went back for drive bys, the last one being about eight years ago.

I looked it up on Zillow and found that it last sold four years ago for almost $500,000 and the estimated sale price for a sale now is $978,000. It has some amazing upgrades. Indeed, much work has been put into it since my parents bought it for $8,000 around 1957. You can read about the main improvement here and here.

It got me to wondering if it was still the same house. The outside certainly is and from the photos on Zillow, the living room is basically the same with the big bay window with mosaic glass at the top. Some of the features that were there when I lived there are still there, or at least recognizable. In fact, the claw foot bathtub is still there. Not sure if it is the one that we used or if it has been replaced but it’s there.

Do the walls still remember the laughter we marked them with or the tears? Do the floors bear the tears from all the falls we took on them? And the basement we built? Is it still dark and does it still remember the spooky stories my big brothers told us all those years ago? The yard. I see in the photos that most of the fruit trees my father planted are gone. The garage is gone. Does the yard remember the laughter of the children who played there? I certainly recognized the front yard; the place where we ran through the sprinklers in the summer time; where we played with hula hoops given to us by our neighbors across the street; the place where our games of hide-and-seek and red light green light, and tag you’re it all began. The sidewalk in front of our house was where we could stand to watch Fourth of July fireworks set off at the Spartan Stadium about five miles away.

Is it the same house? Do our memories haunt it or do its memory haunt us?

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Discards & Renewal

1. I’m taking the Christmas tree down. This is always depressing to me. I really like Christmas and to see it all go away makes me sad. In years, like this past one and others, when Christmas doesn’t go quite right, I feel cheated and I want it to last a little longer. This year was bad because of the weather. Being snowed in from December 15 through December 27 was not good. I want a do-over!

2. I was getting rid of my Christmas flowers the other day. I had two bouquets. The first is still in fairly good condition. I’ve gone through twice and pulled out the dry or wilting flowers and re-arranged it. It’s lookin’ good. The second one was a bouquet of red and white roses. When I get rid of roses, I don’t get rid of them right away. I pull all the petals off of the stem and spread them out in a bowl so I can enjoy the scent for a little longer. When I was doing this the other day, I was struck by how much like people the flowers are (or the other way around). The flowers were drying and discolored but as I pulled off the outer layer of petals, the ones underneath were fresh and vividly colored. The further into the core I got, the fresher the petals were and the better the scent! Aren’t we like this? As we grow older, we may look tattered but we you look closer, we’re fresh and young and full of great things on the inside!

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