Grandparenting

The Circle Game

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

Today my baby girl turns 30 and I am verklempt 🥺. When I turned thirty, I had the cutest little 4-month old baby girl. And now history is repeating itself and my daughter has the sweetest little 4-month old baby girl. It’s a joy and a blessing almost too poignant for words. It’s like once you have a child of your own, you finally understand how much your mother loves you.

Joni Mitchell’s song The Circle Game keeps playing in my head and bringing a tear.

Yesterday a child came out to wonder
Caught a dragonfly inside a jar 
Fearful when the sky was full of thunder 
And tearful at the falling of a star 

Then the child moved ten times round the seasons
Skated over ten clear frozen streams 
Words like when you’re older must appease him 
And promises of someday make his dreams

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We’re captive on the carousel of time 
We can’t return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

Sixteen springs and sixteen summers gone now 
Cartwheels turn to car wheels thru the town 
And they tell him take your time it won’t be long now
Till you drag your feet to slow the circles down 

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We’re captive on the carousel of time 
We can’t return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty 
Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true
There’ll be new dreams maybe better dreams and plenty
Before the last revolving year is through

And the seasons they go round and round 
And the painted ponies go up and down 
We’re captive on the carousel of time 
We can’t return we can only look 
Behind from where we came 
And go round and round and round 
In the circle game

© March 22, 1966; R. Joan Mitchell, then August 22, 1966; Gandalf Pub Co

1995
2025

Farewell Key West

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

I really do not want to leave Key West and go back to the cold and snow tomorrow. We’ve had fantastic Caribbean weather this whole week. It’s been gorgeous – day and night.

Hand-painted sign on a cute little Key West house
Only 90 miles to Cuba

On the bright side, I get to see my granddaughter this weekend.

That makes going back easier.

Related posts:

Bucket list booking: Key West

It’s all vibes

Key West vibe re: politics

Hemingway’s polydactyls

Here’s to Immigrants

~ MaryG ~ 13 Comments

All of these immigrants arrived in the United States dirt poor from Southern Italy in search of a better life.

My paternal grandparents, circa 1925.
My husband’s maternal grandparents, mid 1920s
My husband’s paternal grandmother (top right) and her children, including my father-in-law (bottom left) in Boston, mid 1920s

100 years later, their great, great granddaughter, a United States citizen, has just learned to roll over.

It’s wild to think that if any one of these immigrants had been sent back to Italy, my granddaughter wouldn’t be here.

Class of ‘87

~ MaryG ~ 23 Comments

I have a couple of updates for you on the college class of 1987 (high school class of 1983). Most of us were born in 1965, so we are turning 60 this year. One of my best friends from college turned 60 yesterday. She broke the ice. Now the rest of us will follow…if we’re lucky. Making it to 60 is not a given. We’ve lost people—mostly to cancer, but sudden massive heart attacks have taken down a few of the men.

I appear to be the only grandparent in my college class of about 500, which is wild. A few people still have kids in high school, so I guess we tended to have kids late, but still…it’s a vivid illustration that the birthrate actually has cratered in this country.

Another observation is that people truly do age differently. Some people look 40 at 60, and some look 80. Money seems to be a factor, but not the only one. Most people are still working, but they’re either talking about retirement or saying they will never be able to retire. “Work ‘til I die” is some people’s retirement plan.

There is both a lot of concern—and a fair bit of bragging—about adult children in their 20s. “You’re only as happy as your least happy child” seems to be true. (But if you’re posting an effusive happy birthday message, with multiple pictures, for a 27-year old who doesn’t even use Facebook, you may need to let go a bit.)

Our parents, if we still have them, are very old now. I know of only one other classmate with two living parents like me. More of our mothers are still alive than our fathers.

For the first and oldest official GenXers, the Eighties was our decade. Nobody has quite so many formative memories of those years as we do. Do not challenge us to an 80s trivia quiz, because we will win. And we will also look back on it all with slightly rose-colored glasses. We’ll forget the bad stuff and laugh about that time we ate pot brownies at school and Mr. Ullman’s physics class finally made sense.

I never did see anyone get pizza delivered to a class like Jeff Spicoli, but that would have been amazing.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out the summer before our senior year in high school.
My 1984 look
The pizza delivery scene

The Cape

~ MaryG ~ 6 Comments

I’ve been digitizing old photos over the past few weeks. I have a ton of them. There’s no way I could save all of them in the event of a fire. I wouldn’t even want to. There are too many.

Walt Whitman’s lines “I am large, I contain multitudes” keep popping into my head. I’ve gone through so many phases in my nearly 60 years. I contain multitudes. We all do.

One theme I’m finding is that we (like everyone) mostly took photos on vacations and holidays. And there’s one vacation destination in Massachusetts that everyone knows: Cape Cod. It’s known simply as “the Cape.” (There’s another popular cape in Massachusetts, but that one gets referred to by its full name: Cape Ann.)

Cape Cod is where the Kennedys summered and it’s just one of those places that everyone in Massachusetts has memories of. If you didn’t have a friend with a house “down the Cape,” then you probably rented one or stayed in a Cape hotel at least a few times in your life.

My earliest memories of the Cape include barfing after eating scallops at Thompson’s Clam Bar, having my grandmother tell me that they thought I’d drowned when I went missing at the beach one day, and waiting for the sun to come out.

I’ve been lucky to visits “The Islands” many times too. (If you’re from Massachusetts, you know that The Islands are Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket.) But the Cape is where my earliest vacation memories happened.

I’m realizing that the places where our memories were made—where our lives have played out—are quite meaningful. They’re the settings for our stories.

The Cape, August 1970
At the beach on Cape Cod, 1970, with my Italian grandmother in a bathing suit (a rare occurrence). I don’t remember how I hurt my knee, but I do remember wearing that huge bandage.

What exactly did he say?

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

From People magazine:

The Republican vice presidential candidate said that having a grandparent around the house made his son “a much better human being.” He continued, “And the evidence on this, by the way, is, like, super clear.“

“That’s the whole purpose of the postmenopausal female in theory,” Weinstein interjects, as Vance says, “Yes.”

As a post-menopausal female, I can tell you that seeing my granddaughter once a week (and providing my daughter a bit of support by way of groceries, baked goods, diaper changing, etc) IS the greatest joy in my life right now.

Have I told you how absolutely adorable my granddaughter is??? I miss her the minute I get home. She is just the cutest little snuggle bunny ever! And her mommy is doing such a great job taking care of her, that I can truly just do the fun stuff like look at board books with her, stage monthly thematic photo shoots, and dance with her in the kitchen.

I know that I have been given a great gift in that I had the financial ability to retire “early” at about the same time I became a grandma. And also, that my daughter and her family live nearby.

So back to JD. I don’t like him. He’s an arrogant little shit who reminds me of the worst millennial coworkers I ever had. (They think they know everything.) But, unlike some of my friends, I’m just gonna let that particular comment go. We have much bigger problems now.

First Communion

~ MaryG ~ 11 Comments

I’m continuing to selectively digitize my old photos and I bring you a comparison of the two methods: iPhone photo vs PhotoScan by Google.

iPhone photo of an old print
PhotoScan by Google of the same picture
iPhone photo
PhotoScan by Google

Let me know if you have thoughts about which method is better quality, because it’s too much work to do both.

Because most of these photos are stuck in the old adhesive style photo albums, I’m having to pry them out if I want to see what (if anything) is written on the back. Then I’m stuck with a loose photo that I’ve been taping back into place with painter’s tape.

The photos above were taken on my “First Communion” day in April 1973. Despite my previously described love of veils, I remember I did not like that one. It was attached to a very uncomfortable headband that squeezed my head painfully. Perhaps this was a sign of the rocky road ahead for me and the Catholic Church.

Other than the painful headband, I remember getting some religious-themed presents (a Bible locket, an angel) and being made to feel quite special with a family party after the main event at the church.

I think we look like a real mid-century Italian-American family in these photos, but my dad is no Tony Soprano. He loved his mother (my long-widowed “Grammy”) dearly and she worshipped him. He was far and away her favorite child. As the only boy in an Italian family, he was extra special and he took great care of her until her death in 1992, just a month short of her 90th birthday.

New Year’s feelings

~ MaryG ~ 15 Comments

This New Year’s is getting me down. I had so hoped that 2025, the year I turn 60, would be the year we’d finally stop seeing his ridiculous orange face and hearing his racist, lying voice forever. I had thought if we could just get through the November election, he’d fade from our consciousness. I worked hard to try to make that happen.

Instead, the shitshow continues. All the anger, fear and bitterness of the past nine years is back. I’m suspicious of old friends who seem to blame all their problems on immigrants. I’m worried that racism or god forbid—gun violence—is going to affect my family. I’m so sad for the planet. I’m scared that our new leaders are truly just self-dealers.

I used to want to try to make the world a better place for all our children and grandchildren. Now I just want to try to protect my own children and grandchild in whatever way I can.

All the expansive positivity, American pride, and hopefulness for all women I felt watching Kamala Harris accept her nomination for president is gone.

I am taking solace in the unparalleled personal, private, internal joy of becoming a grandmother. Maybe my love for this one child will save me.

The first time I got to hold my granddaughter was magical. I loved her immediately. (Photo taken by my daughter 9.24.24)

A Milestone Christmas

~ MaryG ~ 14 Comments

This year is a milestone Christmas for us—our first one as grandparents.

We know our sweet little baby granddaughter won’t remember this Christmas, but we hope to have many more where we’ll make memories she can remember.

Christmas already feels so exciting again just having this perfect little girl in the world.

Twenty years ago we were a family of four. We stuck together through good times and some not-so-good times and now we have a whole new person to love. A whole new person. Imagine that.

Merry Christmas 🎄

XOXO

Mary