A Secret Garden for My Granddaughter

Tags

art, birthday, children, granddaughter, grandparenting, Paintings

A Secret Garden for my Granddaughter, mixed media by Deborah J. Brasket

I’m painting again, thanks to my granddaughter.

She turns 8 years old next week and custom ordered two paintings for her birthday. The painting above, which I dubbed “A Secret Garden,” originally was a watercolor and oil pastel abstract, sans critters, that I painted long ago. But as much as I liked it, it seemed missing something. That’s when I added a humming bird, Audrey’s spirit animal, and wrapped it up as a Christmas gift for her last year.

She seemed to like it, but then one day said, “Grandma, don’t you think it needs some more critters down here hiding in the garden?” I had to agree with her, but didn’t get  to work on it until a few weeks ago, adding the deer and fox and quail we see on a daily basis behind our home. A reminder of the year she spent with us before she moved away again, and all the fun we had looking watching wildlife together.

But she also wanted a painting of a white kitten with blue eyes in a teacup. We spent many hours looking at images of kittens on Google, as well as foxes, bats, and other creatures that she’s interested in.

I finished the one below just a few days ago. I modeled the tea cup after a child’s china set I gave her when she was three-years old. I hope she will approve. She’s very particular. I’ll be taking both paintings down to her for her birthday next week, along with a long frilly princess dress, glittery shoes with heels, and a pink, faux fur carpet for her bedroom.

Oh, to be 8-years old again!

For Audrey with Love, mixed media by Deborah J. Brasket

 

Home Schooling Again, & Who’s the Boss?

Tags

children, coronavirus, grandparenting, home schooling, Parenting, personal, Stay at home

I home-schooled my two children for six years when we were sailing around the world on La Gitana. And now, so many years later, I’m home-schooling my 7-year old granddaughter since schools closed because of Coronavirus.

My daughter was a breeze to home-school. My son, not so much. We tussled from time to time. His daughter is taking after him that way. The other day when she was defying everything I was asking her to do, and then making demands of her own, I was at my wit’s end. So we had the “Who’s the boss?” conversation.

Do you remember that conversation from back in the day? I clearly remember it with my own mom many times, and later with my son. I never cared much for it no matter which side of the fence I was sitting, and yet here I was again, repeating patterns of old. Thinking this will not end well. And wondering, do parents even have that conversation anymore? Is it politically correct? Should we be in negotiations rather than drawing lines in the sand?

Clearly I was having misgivings, but I plunged forward nevertheless. The truth is, my granddaughter probably takes after me as much after me as she does her dad. We are both extremely stubborn.

The conversation turned out about as well as I could hope. The most she would grant me is that “adults” are the bosses of their “children,” but her eyes slid away from me when she conceded it, and her mouth looked doubtful. Clearly she was not going to say that I was the boss of her. She was letting me know this mild concession was solely for the sake of preserving screentime, or anything else I might want want to withhold until I got what I wanted. Not because she really believed it.

Which was fine by me by then. A compromise, of sorts. A truce. I’d take it.

We were both ready to move on. And she did settle down and do her schoolwork.

But later that day she took me aside. She had been thinking about how things had gone sideways earlier that day and she had some suggestions about how we (meaning me) could handle this better next time.

Instead of having the whole “who’s the boss” discussion, I could give myself a time-out, go into my room and think about what was upsetting me so much. I could sit cross-legged on the floor and breath deeply (she demonstrated how). I could play relaxing music of ocean waves on my phone. Or better yet, she could give me a spa day and paint my toenails. Big hopeful grin.

“Now can we go look at photos of newborn kittens on your phone, Grandma?”

I marvel at this child every day.

“I’m Praying for You, To Die”

Tags

darkness, family conflict, grandparenting, hate, personal, Prayer

Nocturne in Black and  Gold by James McNeill Whistler

I get this message about once a week from my granddaughter’s mother. It goes into great detail about the pain she hopes I will suffer.

As some of you may know, I am trying to gain permanent guardianship of her daughter after she was taken away from her mother by Child Welfare Services. This is not the first time her daughter has been put into my care by the courts. I raised her from age 2 1/2 years to four years.

This message I get is by no means the least hostile or vicious. It’s just I can’t repeat in a public forum the vile things she says on a regular basis about me and my son, my husband, and even her own mother, who all support me in this effort. Things that would make a sailor blush.

Most of the time I can blow it off. I know it’s the ramblings of an angry, unstable mind.

But every time I sit down and try to write a new blog post, these words come to mind and won’t go away. So maybe I just need to get it out there so I can move on.

I like to blog about what’s forefront in my mind, what excites and inspires me, and yes, what disturbs and troubles me. I guess I just can’t wrap my mind around the kind of darkness that would say such things. It’s staggering to me. If nothing else it’s inspired my own prayers to go much deeper than ever before.

Despite this spiteful barrage of texts and emails I receive from her, there’s still much that inspires me each and every day of my life, not least this precious child who lives with me.

And I’m painting again, at last. A new watercolor class. Soon I’ll be back to my novel. In the meantime, I may re-post things I wrote about years ago that still inspire me.

Please bear with me until I get my groove back.

And say a prayer for this woman who lives in such darkness, who wants to blame me for the loss of her child instead of looking into the mirror. I used to feel deeply her pain, empathize with her as a mother, but she’s worn me out with her hate. Now I am ever more determined that this child should never go back into a home where such vileness lives.

 

From Pete the Cat: It’s All Good

Tags

books, children, grandparenting, inspiration, Judy Blume, Junie B Jones, personal, Pete the Cat, Reading

One of the joys of grandparenting is revisiting stories I loves to read my own children and sharing them with theirs. What fun it was to read to my granddaughter some of her father’s favorite books, Judy Blume’s Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, and Superfudge. Equally fun is discovering new favorites all her own, like the audibles we’re listening to of Junie B. Jones series narrated in that delightfully scratchy and droll voice of Lana Quintal as Junie B. rebels against riding the stupid smelly yellow school bus, and gets back at that meany boy Jim who invited everyone in room 9 to his birthday party but her.

A new recent favorite is the Pete the Cat series, and my personal favorite I Love My White Shoes. This groovy blue cat with the yellow eyes and long skinny legs has a new pair of white hightops that he loves, loves, loves! So much so that as he strolls along he sings this song: ” I love my white shoes! I love my white shoes! I love my white shoes.”

But then, “Oh no!” he steps into a huge pile of strawberries, turning his white shoes red. What does Pete do? Does he cry? “Goodness, no!” He just keeps strolling along singing his song, “I love my red shoes! I love my red shoes! I love my red shoes!”

And when through a series of accidents his shoes turn blue, then brown, then wet and white again, what does he do? He just keeps strolling along, singing his song, which changes according to the circumstances: “I love my blue shoes! . . . I love my brown shoes . . . . I love my wet shoes . . .!”

The illustrations are so vivid and cheerful, the cool cat’s insouciant optimism so infectious, with the repetitious sing-songy verses undercut by unexpected riffs from the past (Everything is Cool! Groovy! Rock N’ Roll!), we don’t even mind when, at the end, the story points to itself and sets out the “moral” in black and white on the page:

“The moral of Pete’s story is

No matter what you step in

Keep walking along and

Singing your song . . .

[turn page]

because it’s all good.”

So simple. So wise. And for all its triteness, so encouraging to this grandma and her little granddaughter, each of us in the throes of transition, our lives turned upside-down since she’s come to live with me, not knowing what will come next as I petition for permanent guardianship,  the decision so completely out of our hands.  

All we can do and must do is just keep strolling along, singing our songs, reading our books, enjoying our sweet time together in the here and now, come what may, regardless the shifting landscapes and incidences that continue to color our lives.

Knowing, like that great, wise, groovy Peter the Cat says: It’s all good.

[NOTE TO READER: While the Junie B series is new to me and my granddaughter, it’s been around for a long time, since 1995! Pete the Cat is not as young as he is cool either, having debuted in 2010. If you younger parents and grandparents know of newer book series you think my sweetie might like, please let me know. She’s an “old soul” first grader.]

 

 

Life’s Sweet Longing for Itself

Tags

children, Family, grandparenting, inspiration, Kahlil Gibran, Parenting, personal, Philosophy, spirituality, The Prophet

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.

They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not from you.

I first read these words from Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet when still in high school, a child myself, although I did not see myself that way. His words moved me then, even as they do now, so many years later, when I am raising a granddaughter.

Then I truly was “life” in its earliest stages “longing” for the life that was to be, that stretched out before me in what seemed an endless and exciting unknown potentiality.

I didn’t want to be hemmed in by the hopes and expectations of my parents, nor by their fears and warnings. I didn’t want to “learn from their mistakes,” as they cautioned me. I wanted to live my life as an adventure, learning from my own mistakes, not theirs. My life was my own and no one else’s. I wanted to risk all, moving at my own direction, and good or bad, I alone would take responsibility for the life I chose. Such were my longings then.

So I found Gibran’s  parenting advice immensely inspiring,  both for myself as I was moving beyond my parents into adulthood, and also for the kind of parent I wanted to be to my own children.

He goes on to say:

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

Now, as the mother of a grown son and the guardian of his child, The Prophet’s words still move me . . . and admonish me.

How I wish now my son had heeded my warnings, and that they had been louder and clearer. How I  wish he had chosen paths more safe and sane, had lived up to all the potential I saw in him then and see still.

But those are my fears, my regrets, not his. I must loose him and let him go, and see the direction in which he flew as his own choice. It was never mine to make or change or regret. I had longed when young to make and learn from my  own mistakes, and so must he. But that learning is his alone to make or forsake in his own good time.

As for his child, my little granddaughter, she too is an arrow who will fly beyond my bending, beyond my ability to see or guide her life’s flight. Will my warnings to her be louder and clearer? No doubt. Will she heed them, or long to learn from her own mistakes, as I had, as her father must? We shall see.

She, as her father, is in the Archer’s hand. And I must trust, trust, trust that each will reach that mark upon the path of the infinite toward which the Archer aims with gladness. They are, after all, Life’s sweet longing for itself.

As am I.

Chaos Can Take a Hike

Tags

books, chaos, Family, grandparenting, Politics, Vikings

I wrote the following post For Love of Chaos in August three years ago, when I had my little three year old granddaughter living with me. She’s six now and again living with me. So times haven’t changed much in many ways, including the wrecking-ball politics we saw on the nightly news, then as now.  And I still enjoy watching The Last Kingdom on Netflix.

But chaos itself I can do without. I’m weaning myself away from cable news, and the dark, edgy stuff I used to like to read and watch I now avoid.

Now my nightly reading is Judy Blume, Tales of a 4th Grade Nothing, and Super Fudge, stories I used to read to my children when they were young. I read a chapter to my granddaughter before bed and she loves them just as much as her dad and auntie did. It’s so cute when she gets excited and starts giggling and covering her face when Fudgie does some new crazy thing that drives his big brother Peter nuts.

O give me light, give me laughter, give me snuggles and giggles. Chaos can take a hike.

For Love of Chaos, Trump, and Wrecking-Ball Politics

(First posted August 2016)

Since becoming the full-time nanny for my little granddaughter, my reading tastes have taken a decisive darker turn. Instead of the lyrical literary novels I’m usually drawn to, I’ve been on a Viking binge.

It started with Bernard Cromwell’s The Saxon Stories, upon which the acclaimed BBC series “The Last Kingdom” is based. It continued with Judson Roberts’ “The Strongbow Saga“, Giles Kristoan’s “Raven Trilogy”, and James Wilde’s books about Hereward, the English hero that some claim the Robin Hood tales were based on.

The question puzzling me for quite some time is why this dark turn toward such violent reads? What is it that draws me to them and keeps me reading?

I may have found at least a partial answer in one of Kristian’s books, when the young Viking Raven muses on “the love of chaos.” How even in the most life-threatening moments, when absolute silence is needed to keep death from descending and destroying them all, part of him wants to cry out and “turn that still night into seething madness.” Part of him wants to “break through the thick ice of that mute terror, for even chaos would be better than waiting, than expecting the fire to reach out of the night and eat your flesh.”

Perhaps we’ve all felt a bit of that “love of chaos” at some time in our lives. Felt in the face of some extreme danger a wild giddy urge–to run the car off the edge of a dark winding road, to step off the edge of the cliff into the wild-blue thrill of free-fall. Perhaps all extreme sport enthusiasts harbor a bit of this in their hearts when attempting their death-defying stunts. The mad desire to push past the edge of all reason into a wild unknown.

Maybe my turn toward these violent reads is a dormant “love of chaos,” the urge to experience, if only vicariously, that death-defying thrill. To travel with these warriors into a dark unknown as they risk death and destruction in a daring quest for gold and glory. To risk all to see what great gain may stand on the other side. Or not.

I can’t help seeing some of this “love of chaos” playing out on the political stage today in what some have called a kind of “wrecking-ball” mentality in some American voters. Their impatience with restraint, nuance, diplomacy, and what they see as political correctness. The wild urge to tear it all down, all apart, and see what rises out of the ashes. They see Trump as wielding the wrecking ball that will destroy the status quo in the wild hope that out of such chaos will come gold and glory.

I’m far from being a Trump fan, but I do understand that wild impulse. In certain seemingly hopeless situations, throwing caution to the wind has a strong appeal. The desperate hope is that chaos itself will become the cauldron out of which a new, better world will emerge.

This urge toward chaos has strong a strong corollary in nature, in the violent upheavals that impose a new order: The shifting Teutonic plates that broke apart to create the continents and seas that sustain life today. The glaciers that ripped away vast chunks of earth to carve out spectacular canyons and riverbeds. The wild-fire that brings so much destruction, yet germinates new seeds for future forests.The list goes on.

“Out of chaos the dancing star is born.” So sang the poet.

Perhaps this love of chaos is etched into our DNA. We can’t escape it, but we can try to understand it, in ourselves and each other.

I’m hoping our better angels, our more reasonable natures, will prevail in the November election, and we do not trust our future to the chaos of wrecking-ball politics. But it’s important to try to understand what gives rise to these desparate tendencies. To not make the mistake of thinking we are above it all, that only the others, the so-called “deplorables,” have such dark urges. Hate, racism, xenophobia, terrorism–if we look deep enough into our own hearts and minds we will find the seeds of each, whether lying dormant or on fertile ground. We have to see this, and understand it in ourselves, before we can understand it in others. And learn to rein it in.

Young Raven learned to rein in his urge toward chaos that dark and deadly night, and he and his companions lived to fight again for gold and glory. Learning when to let our wilder urges move us forward, and when to rein them is what will move all of us closer to our own common goals, whether they be of gold and glory, or peace and prosperity and a better world

Resting in the Grace of the World

Tags

Addiction, comfort, Family, grandparenting, greif, Nature, opioid crisis, personal, spirituality, Wendell Berry

“Crystal Light” by Erin Hanson

“When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.” ~ Wendell Berry

I have not lain down where the wood drake rests, but I am coming to find a kind of grace in letting loose, more than letting go, in pressing steadily forward without attachment to the outcome, in a kind of letting be, come what may.

My granddaughter came to live with me at the beginning of summer and she is with me still, having started first grade at a nearby school in which I enrolled her. I am petitioning to become her legal guardian. This comes with the blessing of my son, but not the child’s mother, who will fight this. Both are struggling with addiction, both victims of this opioid crisis.

I grieve for my son and my heart breaks for the mother, even as I fear for my granddaughter. Sometimes it seems overwhelming.

Then I take a deep breath and do what must be done, regardless the outcome.

I move toward “the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought or grief.”

I rest in “the presence of still water,” and feel “the day-blind stars waiting with their light.”

I cannot say I “am free.”

But I do feel the grace of the world, and love of God, surrounding me and mine. I lean on that, and it comforts me.

Secluded Pool, Secret Garden, & Summer Plans Gone Astray

Tags

art, grandparenting, oil pastel, painting, personal, watercolor

I haven’t been painting as much this year, but I thought I’d share these two. Both were meant to be abstracts, but the one became a secluded pool and the other, while more abstract, I think of as a secret garden. Secret, I suppose, because it exists only in my mind. Both are watercolor and oil pastel.

One we’ve framed but not hung yet.  Unfortunately, I forgot to photograph it before it was covered in glass, and you can see some reflection there at the far right.

My plans for the summer—more painting, more writing—have gone astray. The acrylic class I was supposed to take was cancelled. And then my six-year-old granddaughter came to stay with us for a couple of months. So I’ve been spending more time in the pool and playing games with her than painting or writing.

But I did finally get back to playing the piano again, teaching my granddaughter to play, and then playing duets with my daughter who plays guitar when she was with us last week.

And we’ve been watching parades of the wild turkeys and quail with their baby chicks passing behind out house, and the deer eating our roses, and hundreds of the squirrels scampering across the hillsides and digging beneath our oak trees.

My granddaughter will be with us a few more weeks and I am going to cherish every sweet moment I have with her. She’s still young enough to love cuddling and holding, and we’ve been reading lots of books together. I am so blessed to have her in my life.

The writing and painting can wait.

Primary Wonder, Age Three

Tags

Deborah J. Brasket, Denise Levertov, granddaughter, grandparenting, life, National Poetry Month, poetry, Primary Wonder, wonder

Primary Wonder, Age Three

Walking with our granddaughter
Whispering and waving
Our wings
Sniffing for bats.

What do you smell grandma?
Trees
What do you smell grandpa?
Clouds

by Deborah J. Brasket

Inspired from a backyard outing with our granddaughter after re-reading this poem by Denise Levertov.

Primary Wonder

Days pass when I forget the mystery.
Problems insoluble and problems offering
their own ignored solutions
jostle for my attention, they crowd its antechamber
along with a host of diversions, my courtiers, wearing
their colored clothes; cap and bells.

And then
once more the quiet mystery
is present to me, the throng’s clamor
recedes: the mystery
that there is anything, anything at all,
let alone cosmos, joy, memory, everything,
rather than void: and that, O Lord,
Creator, Hallowed One, You still,
hour by hour sustain it.

by Denise Levertov

Grandparenting, Dark and Light

Tags

children, Family, grandparenting, grandparents, memoir, Parenting

I’m writing for the first time in months—my granddaughter started preschool today. She’ll be going twice a week now. I miss her already.

I haven’t had time for writing or anything else since she and her dad came to live with us five months ago. Caring for her has stirred up my world in all sorts of ways, and nothing has really settled yet. The past, the present, the future swirl around in my mind, some bright and sweet, some dark and scary.

I love her beyond words and we are very close, maybe too close.  What will happen when she and my son move out? Last week he took her unexpectedly for the day and my home seemed so empty and I felt so lost. I didn’t want to do anything—not write, nor read, nor clean, nor paint, nor walk, nor just sit and think, alone, undisturbed—all the things I wish I had time to do when she’s with me. I couldn’t wait till she came home so I could scoop her up and feel her small, sweet body melt into mine.

We spend our days playing and singing and dancing together. It’s filled with sweet cuddles and kisses, silly games puffing our cheeks and popping them together, playing with puzzles and legos and coloring and reading stories. We swim and pick roses and watch Disney movies together. Making up stories and pretending to be kittens and crocodiles. She loves to play hide and seek, where she hides in plain sight and I pretend I can’t find her while she laughs and giggles, and when I do find her, she demands—AGAIN!—and hides in the same place once more.

But by the afternoon, I’m tired. I’m wishing for a few moments alone. I’m wishing she could play by herself for longer than five minutes at a time, stopping her play to look for me, to demand to be held, to read a story, to come back into the room where she’s playing.

I try to get her to nap, but too often it’s late in the afternoon when she does, at 3 or 4 or 5, when I know doing so that late means she won’t want to go to sleep before 9 or 10. More often she doesn’t nap at all.

“Grandma needs quiet time I tell her,” time away from her is what I mean, but she doesn’t understand that, doesn’t understand that demanding my constant attention frazzles me as the day wears on. Even sitting her in front of the TV to watch cartoons (bad grandma!) doesn’t help as much as you’d think—every commercial she looks for me, and it’s the same with movies. “Come watch with me, Gwamma,” she says in her sweet, tender voice, pulling at my arm.  My heartstrings tug, and my nerves tighten.

And then there’s the tug-of-wills, where she tests my boundaries, doesn’t listen when I tell her to leave something alone, to not go in there, not do that. I haunt parenting advise forums on the internet looking for ways to discipline, to cope, to mellow.

What did I do when my children were young?

I don’t remember my daughter ever wearing on my nerves with the demand for constant attention, or defying my will the way my granddaughter does now. My son defied my will on a daily basis, but he wasn’t as demanding of my attention as she seems to be. Still, we had our tug-of-wars too. I remember one dark day when I needed him to take a nap so badly and he simply refused to stay in his room.  He’d come out, I’d put him in, he’d come out, I’d put him in, over and over again, like puppets in demented play, him crying and me yelling at first, then me crying and him yelling. I thought I was losing my mind. We were stuck in a hysterical repetition, like a broken record that would not stop. I don’t remember how it ended.

I do remember that I let him play in our fenced backyard by himself for long periods of time when he was a toddler, where he had a swing set, and sand box, and lots of toys. Something I can’t do with my granddaughter where we live now. Even so, he “escaped” several times, wandering off down the street—three years old—to visit grandma five blocks away, or to visit the little green store across a busy street.

Once a police officer brought him home to me. I hadn’t even known he’d gone missing.

I was a bad mother. If that had happened today, I would have been arrested. But things looked different back then. Children were encouraged to spend the day outdoors playing, to be independent. Little boys wandering off with a penny in his pocket to buy candy at the neighborhood store was “cute.” It showed his independence and adventurous spirit, not my poor parenting.

The thought of my little three-year-old granddaughter doing something like that today horrifies me. The thought of her living alone with her father on a busy street with chance of unlocked doors giving her access to the great outdoors makes me want to keep her here at home with me forever.

And yet, and yet, the other day my nerves were so frazzled I wanted to lock myself in a closet just to have a few moments alone without her, without hearing that sweet, tender voice calling out, “Gwamma, where are you?” And I wondered: Is this what drives some parents to lock their children in closets? The thought was so mind-chilling I wanted to sit down and cry.

Instead, I gathered my granddaughter in my arms and let her melt against me.

“I didn’t know where you were,” she tells me frowning, holding my face between her small hands.

“Don’t leave me,” she says, as she does several times every day.

“I won’t, baby,” I tell her. “I’m not going anywhere.”

But I will leave her. Or rather, she will leave me eventually, when her father finds a place for them to live that’s closer to town, closer to his work. Will she think I abandoned her, betrayed her?

Part of me longs for the peaceful life we had before they moved in. And part of me is terrified at the thought of them leaving.

Treasure what you have now, I tell myself. Don’t think about the past or the future. Now is where we are. Where my arms and heart are full. And while my poor nerves may get frazzled at times for want of the peace and quiet I sometimes crave, it cannot eclipse the wonder and joy of this child and how she fills my heart with light.