Skip to main content

Grandmas have ticking clocks, too...

When I was in my twenties and married the typical question was - Do you have any children?
When I was in my thirties and had children the typical question was - How many children do you have? and Are you planning to have any more?
When I was in my forties the typical question was - What college are your children attending or planning to attend?
When I was in my fifties the typical question was - Are your children married? And if they weren't - Are they "involved"? And if I said no there would be so many helpful friends and relatives who knew just the right person to fix my kid up with...
Okay, so now I'm in my sixties and I think you can all guess the typical question - yup - Do you have any grand-children?
I'm happy that I do have grand-children. But it doesn't stop there. If you don't have the "maximum" possible there's still the question - When is your other kid going to have kids? Often they add - She's not getting any younger? Is she really going to wait "that long"? 

Well, it got me to thinking that it isn't only the thirty-something woman who has a ticking clock. As a grandmother I realize I have a ticking clock as well. The older I get the harder it will be to engage with my grandchildren with the kind of energy and involvement I want to be able to give them. Every year that passes I have to face the reality that my ticking clock is ticking slower and slower. In a year, two years, five years, my ability to drop down on the floor to play with one of my grandchildren may not be so easy. I may end up crying out -" I'm down here on the floor and I can't get up."

So here's my New Year's vow - stay fit, healthy, and keep pulling myself up from the floor when I fall down. I may not be able to do anything about my damn ticking clock but I can stop looking at it all the time and just enjoy every moment...

http://www.elisetitle.com/p/get-books.html

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Let's get rid of the "pipe" in pipe dreams!

I have had dreams of doing any number of things all my life. Either I or others were quick to label them "pipe" dreams. "Pipe" as in foolish, impractical, ridiculous? A lot of people my age have come to realize that dreams are not the stuff of foolishness. The other day I got an email from a neighbor/friend from my old town who'd discovered my blog. She told me she had started a new "cottage" business of selling greeting cards with her amazing photos on them. Here's her site because you all really should check out these very original cards - www.jgfischel.com It was a reminder to me that no matter our age, young, middle, older, oldest, we have the opportunity to dream new dreams, or capture old dreams and actualize them. We can stop identifying them as "pipe" dreams. I think many of us have spent a good portion of our adult lives  on being practical, cautious, and maybe feeling a little scared or a lot scared. Many of us stifled our cre

Thank God you can pick your friends!

My husband and I are about to celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of very special friends. We met Ted and Deanna 36 years ago and we've stayed strongly connected through a number of moves (ours not theirs), illnesses, life's many ups and downs. We've shared sad times and joyous times. We've traveled together, spent wonderful visits at each others' homes. I'm sure we must have shared thousands of meals together. Thousands of laughs. They've always, ALWAYS been there for us and we have always tried to be there for them. History. We have a deep and meaningful shared history. J. and I are  truly blessed to have a wonderful group of close friends and we value them all. But there are very few couples I've known and loved longer than this very special couple. You can't pick your blood relatives but thank God you can pick your friends. From the very first time we all met, J and I picked them. We were couples with young families. We were in the first dec

You can take the girl out of The Bronx, but...

Well, you know the rest. I have to confess for a long time I really tried to get rid of The Bronx. For a long time after that I thought I had. And for a long time I felt good about it. I'd escaped. No one could tell by my speech, my look, my style, etc. I used to love to hear, "You're from The Bronx? I'd never have guessed." And it's more than that. It's escaping a past that didn't fit in with my fantasy of who I wanted to become, who I wanted to be. It was an escape from a certain social class, an escape from parents whose customs, manners, interests felt alien to me - or maybe the truth was I wanted them to feel alien to me. I wanted to be my own creation!  But deep down I knew the truth. I knew it and it bothered me. I felt like there was really no escape. Not from The Bronx. Not from the lower income class that shaped me. Not from a mother who loved a bargain more than almost anything. And it bothered me. But lately something has changed. It&