WordSisters

  • Seeing Forward and Back

    Ellen Shriner's avatar

    Ellen Shriner

    I’ve cared for enough older women in my family to see the frailties I may have in the coming years. I’ve learned to be patient with their slower pace. I accept the extra steps they take to stay in charge of their lives—switching glasses and putting them away carefully and doublechecking locks. I already do that. I’m accustomed to the effort invested in maintaining dignity—looking where I’m walking, dressing comfortably, but well. So far, I’ve managed to avoid the flat bedhead spot so many older women seem unaware of!

    Some days I feel exactly how old I am. My hip twinges a little. Or I can’t think of a word and it comes back five minutes later. I have a wealth of experiences and insights but the wisdom to know I should refrain from giving too much unasked-for advice. At this stage of life, my outlook is measured. Realistic.

    Other days I feel like I’m fifty. Nothing aches. I’m energetic, ready to tackle big projects, and confident they’ll turn out well. The future is off in the distance and looks bright. I’m optimistic.

    My thirties are also vivid—relived through the lives of my daughters-in-law. Revived by their pregnancies and new motherhood. I remember how fascinating my changing body was and how much it mattered to have a few maternity clothes I really liked. 

    1989

    I haven’t forgotten the fog and overwhelm of life with a newborn. How every little thing worries you. I also know you can grow bored by the long repetitive days, no matter how much you love your child. How ready you can be to use your brain for something besides calculating the hours since the last feeding. But the sweetness of cuddling a sleeping baby tempers that restlessness.

    When my son hands me his baby, our past, present, and future converge.

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    10 responses to “Seeing Forward and Back”

    1. Karen Seashore Avatar
      Karen Seashore

      The last line captures it so beautifully….thanks!

      1. Ellen Shriner Avatar
        Ellen Shriner

        Thank you! Your comments mean a lot.

    2. Ann Coleman Avatar
      Ann Coleman

      Oh, yes, grandchildren do have a way of melding the past and the future, don’t they? 

      1. Ellen Shriner Avatar
        Ellen Shriner

        Thanks for reading and commenting!

    3. Bev Bachel Avatar
      Bev Bachel

      What a lovely post…and a great reminder of the importance of looking both back and forward while striving to truly live each day as fully as possible.

      1. Ellen Shriner Avatar
        Ellen Shriner

        Thank you!

    4. Eliza Waters Avatar
      Eliza Waters

      I hear ya, Ellen. We make our way forward the best we can. 🙏🏼

      1. Ellen Shriner Avatar
        Ellen Shriner

        I’m not super worried about it, but I can’t help being aware 😉

    5. Carole Duff Avatar
      Carole Duff

      I’m right there with you, Ellen.

      1. Ellen Shriner Avatar
        Ellen Shriner

        Thanks for reading and commenting!

  • Gotcha Day

    Elizabeth di Grazia's avatar

    Elizabeth di Grazia

    Ani, Rosa, Juan, Aryanna (Juan’s girlfriend)

    “We missed Juan’s Coming Home Day,” Jody said. Jody and I were doing our usual morning routine with her sitting on the dog bed, her back to the furnace. Buddy and Sadie next to her. Jody and the dogs love the furnace heat in the early morning hours. I reclined with a blanket on the couch. Her memory was jogged by reading a Facebook post about a family celebrating their child’s Gotcha day.   

    “I don’t mind,” I said. “I’m not sure that it’s important to them. Maybe it just brings up trauma.”

    Jody nodded. An unspoken agreement that we weren’t going to raise the issue.

    Coming Home Day, as we have termed it, was the day that Juan and Crystel came home to us from Guatemala. Born six weeks apart, they came home within weeks of each other.

    When they were young, we celebrated as if it were another birthday. Cakes, presents, MOA visits, concerts, and waterparks.

    It was a day to recognize us coming together as a family and to acknowledge their birth moms.

    “Oh, your kids are so lucky,” people often say to us. Even Jody will say, “When I come back, I want to come back as your child.” The last time she said it, which wasn’t that long ago, I said, “You do realize that you’re not saying that you want to come back as my partner.” She laughed and laughed at the truth of it.

    It would be so easy to not complicate Juan and Crystel’s adoption and rest with the belief that they are so fortunate.

    Recently, I had a dream where I was at a large extended family gathering. Aunts and uncles. Cousins. I was in my twenties. I chatted with relatives, played with the youngsters. I kept an eye out for my birth family. They were late. Delayed. Then, I realized they weren’t coming. There was always so much going on in my home that plans often got waylaid. Or it just wasn’t important for them to come even though the celebration was for me.

    I felt this void. This loss. This emptiness. A hole where blood family should be.

    I woke up wondering about this empty space for Juan and Crystel. Do they have a dream where their birth family doesn’t make it to their celebration?

    Crystel’s birth family

    There is trauma in being abandoned. Given up. Relinquished.

    Jody and I have done what we could to make them whole with travels to Guatemala, birth family meetings, and name changes.

    At five-years-old, they asked, “Whose belly did I come from, yours or Mama Jody’s?” Jody and I explained that there was a third mama in Guatemala. The kids persisted, “No! Mama Bef or Mama Jody!?!”

    A hole where blood family should be.

    One response to “Gotcha Day”

    1. Karen Seashore Avatar
      Karen Seashore

      This is a hard truth….but I think that every adoptive family I know has faced it.

  • Home and Away

    cmkraack's avatar

    cmkraack

    College recruiting, corporate management and consulting carried me across much of the United States. Although some of that travel prompted future visits, a suitcase in one hand, briefcase in the other wasn’t the most satisfying way to explore cities and countryside. There are cities I enjoy, mountains worth the travel, lovely ocean sides. Driving across the plains or open lands remind me how different our life experiences are from fellow citizens.

    The Midwest continues to be where I am comfortable living my life. Green spaces, cities, the Great Lakes, agriculture, forests blend well. We considered moving during our careers, imagining our lives in desert lands or other river cities, even one Canadian possibility. Except for Canada, I don’t regret passing up those changes.

    Something moved me in the childhood lands of Pat Conroy and Flannery O’Connor. The charm of old Savannah and the Lowcountry areas of Georgia and South Carolina felt homey. I wanted to stay for a year, maybe two, and learn about the rhythm of that region’s residents. To walk where azaleas and trees blossomed in March, to witness the loggerhead turtle’s journey, to try Sunday church once more, to celebrate holidays differently.  Biscuits tasted better, seafood fresher, crayfish better than a slab of whitefish. 

    Weeks in Maine challenged my Midwest assumptions that farms were farms, days on the shore universal, that New England was an area of wealth and education. Spending weeks in a London flat introduced reality to daydreams of living in a congested metropolitan area. Nearly two weeks in a small Irish community felt nice, but I wanted to go home. This stretch of the south felt like it could be home as if the slower movement of my mature life would be acceptable in a place that has nurtured so many artistic folks.

    When the roof needs repair, spring returns to stormy winter, property taxes increase, daydreams happen about a mythical life in a charming setting where all seems lovely. But roofs deteriorate there, summer temps and humidity can be high, history and today’s politics lean away from my values. Best to keep Savannah on my writing retreat list and my home in the Midwest. I’ll be back with a notebook, laptop, and good walking shoes during azalea season.

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