Category: families

families, Life Talk

We Will See You Again

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She went out accompanied by a blaze of northern lights, some of the most brilliant seen around here in ages. Heaven welcoming a gallant soul home with fanfare.

Even after her breathing had slowed drastically, her heart remained strong until the end. We always knew her heart was bigger and stronger than most.

Her humor was one of the last things to go when the Alzheimer’s took over. Even when she was in the nursing home and couldn’t even recognize Grandpa, she would try to tease the nurses and aids. They all loved her.

They were married for sixty years. Two days before she finally died, I sat and watched him hold her hand as he told us the only reason he underwent chemo and fought so hard for life through the blood clots last year was so that he could take care of her, make sure her ending was peaceful and dignified, so that he could take care of her to the end. None of his kids could speak at that point, so I managed to choke out that he had done a wonderful job of it. They were an example to us all.

Of eight kids, six managed to make it home to say goodbye, only the one in Australia and the one in Arizona not able to get back. Fully half of the grandkids were able to come. No one fought, no one argued, no one tried to make things difficult for anyone else. Everyone acted as selflessly as human beings can act. Another testimony to the love and respect everyone had for her.

The hospital nurses teared up when their weekend shift ended, knowing they wouldn’t see her again alive.

There was as much laughter as tears around her bedside, as stories were shared and memories were dredged up and old jokes revived. Her fifteen-year-old grandson played his guitar, everyone sang, and her last days were filled with the music and laughter she loved so well.

She has been gone for a long time. Twelve years ago was when she was finally diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, at that point too far advanced to do anything but watch and pray as it slowly disintegrated the woman we all knew. The pneumonia that took her tonight was a release from that living death (twelve years is phenomenally long for Alzheimer’s sufferers – most don’t live more than five years), and our tears were as much joy for her as sorrow.

She is whole again now. She is free. She is rejoicing and laughing with her Lord.

It hurts, still, but this is a clean hurt, one that will heal. The pain of the Alzheimer’s never went away; it would lie dormant for a time, but it was always there lurking in the background. This – already there is a peace growing from the sorrow.

We will miss her. We have missed her for years. But her legacy – the love, the laughter, the strength and faith and joy – she passed that on, not only to her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, but to all who knew her. I am proud to call myself her granddaughter, and you can be sure my girls will grow up knowing about what an amazing woman their great-grandmother was.

Rest in Peace? Maybe. Personally, I suspect she is singing and dancing right now.

And laughing.

Lois Elnina Bates, May 20, 1929 (I think, but I can’t get a solid year out of anyone right now) – October 24, 2011

families, Life Talk

Grandma

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I know I’ve been MIA here on the blog for a while. I had great plans to write a bunch of posts this past weekend and schedule them to be published for the next couple of weeks.

Until I got the phone call Thursday that my grandmother was in the hospital with pneumonia. My sister and I spent most of that morning on the phone, with the result that she and I got up to my parents’ house Thursday night, while Carl took the littles to his mom’s for the weekend.

I’ve spent the weekend cooking and cleaning so that the aunts and uncles at the hospital have home-cooked food and a place to sleep if they need a break. In between, I’ve been at the hospital myself, or with Grandpa at the nursing home, or making sure my father sleeps and eats (Mom and my sister had to go to a wedding in Vermont this weekend, already planned). And occasionally (FOUR times in two days) being mistaken for my father’s wife. The ones that just mistook me for Mom weren’t so bad; I already knew we looked alike. The one that didn’t even know Mom, and just asked Dad if I was his wife? SO NOT COOL.

Ahem. Irrelevant.

Anyway, Grandma is still in the hospital, but at this point we are just waiting for the end. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s twelve years ago; her body is fading as her mind did, only in a matter of days instead of years. I’m still at my parents’ house, with the littles here with me now, and Mom and Lis back from VT, just still doing what we can for the rest of the family, and praying for Grandma.

Someday soon I’ll have a post on just what a tremendous legacy she is leaving behind. But I think I’ll need more sleep before that happens. Someday soon also I hope to go back to more writing-related posts.

For now, though, blogging is rather obviously low on my priority list. I love all of my friends and readers, but family is coming first right now. Of course!

I’ll be back soon. I’ve not abandoned the blog, or all of you.

Right now though, I’m exactly where I need to be.

Grandma’s senior portrait.

Books, characters, children, families, favorites, fiction, influences

Influences: Elizabeth Enright

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Another one of the few non-fantasy authors who have been an enormous influence on my writing and my life, Elizabeth Enright doesn’t get anywhere near the appreciation she deserves, in my opinion. Which sounds odd, considering she won a Newbery Medal for Thimble Summer. It’s been my experience, however, that most people get a blank look on their faces when you mention Enright’s name, and then only vague recognition comes with the mention of Thimble Summer.

I thoroughly enjoy Thimble Summer, but it can’t hold a candle to my favorites of hers – the Gone-Away books. Whether it is the close relationship between a boy cousin and a girl cousin, reminding me so happily of the friendship between my cousin Zach and me, or the idea of a hidden, old-fashioned community, or (in the second book) all the fun of renovating an old house (which, having lived through, is Not Really Fun At All, but Enright made it seem fun), and moving to the country after having lived in the city … whatever it was, the books were a delight. I especially like that, unlike so many YA and MG books, the adults are present and involved, while the children still have freedom to explore and be brave and get themselves in and out of trouble. We need to see more of that in books for young people!

Then there’s the Melendy Quartet. I’ve written in my favorites posts about this family – Randy and Rush and the family overall. I love them. I want them to be my next-door neighbors. I want to have had Randy and Rush to adventure with as a kid, and I want them all to be my kids’ friends. They are real, and delightful, and funny, and brave (and occasionally not), and ambitious, and loyal and loving.

I think what I like best about Enright’s books, and her characters, is that perfect blend of realism and idealism. While the Melendy gang have marvelous adventures and impossible luck, they also feel like real people, people you could meet any day walking down the road. Same with Portia and Julian and the rest of the Gone-Away crew. As for Garnet of the wheat-colored braids, despite living in the hardest of times in American recollection, the Great Depression (a farmer’s daughter, no less), there is no grimness in her; she still exudes the natural joy of childhood, mixed with a very real worry for her parents’ livelihood.

Another factor that has always personally influenced my delight in Enright is the friendship that exists between boys and girls, without any romance or foolishness, just very easy and natural. Garnet and Jay and Rush and Randy are, true, brother and sister, and Portia and Julian cousins, so romance would be quite ick in their cases, but so many writers only seem to capture the squabbling side of boy-girl family relationships, or the exasperation each feels for the other. There is some of that in Enright’s books, as there is in life, but there is also the deep and meaningful friendship that only comes when boys and girls are friends with each other, instead of boys only being friends with boys, and girls only being friends with girls. I love that Enright shows those sorts of friendships are possible, instead of assuming there must always be this unfathomable chasm between the two. Ugh! No wonder we have such problems with gender discrimination; it is so ubiquitous, even in children’s literature!

Whenever I want to capture some of the sense of my childhood, I re-read an Enright book. And in my writing, I try to keep in mind how natural and fun her characters all are, regardless of the book’s setting. When children who were created sixty, seventy, eighty years ago feel more real than children written about today, you know something has been done right!

Are you familiar with Elizabeth Enright? If so, which is your favorite book? What are some books you can think of that feature really excellent boy-girl friendships, without any hints of romance?

Books, children, families

Reading at Breakfast

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As I got up from the table this morning to carry my plate into the kitchen, I glanced back over my shoulder. Both of the littles are sitting at the table, their breakfasts half-eaten, absorbed in Little Golden Books. I’m not thrilled that they keep forgetting to eat, but I love, love, love the fact that my almost-four-year-old and two-year-old find books so delightful that they lose track of everything else.

(Apologies for the blurriness. The lighting in my dining room isn’t the best, and if I use the flash they both squinch up their eyes.)

These books I picked up at the Borders liquidation sale on Saturday. The girls had been so good about staying close to us through the crowds, and waiting for us to go through the rows of books in which there was little or no order, and besides, if Mamma and Papa are coming out with armfuls of books, shouldn’t they, too?
(Admittedly, most of the books I bought were preschool workbooks to use with Joy this fall, but I did pick up a couple for myself.)
Joy helped me pick the books out, because Grace was assisting Carl with all his philosophy books. Joy chose “Baby Farm Animals” and “The Jolly Barnyard,” and I snagged “The Color Kittens” because I remember reading that at my grandparents’ house and I want them to delight in it, too (Hush and Brush!).
My parents used to buy my sister and me Little Golden Books at the grocery store. Not every time, but frequently as a “just because” purchase. Our grandparents and aunts and uncles helped fill our shelves with more. So far, my littles have only gotten board book versions or some of my smaller ones that I’ve passed to them, so these were their first picked-off-the-shelf, carry-to-the-register, read-in-the-car-on-the-way-home Little Golden Books.
And I thrill to see them, even though they can’t read the words yet, already finding such happiness in these classic tales. I hope, in five to ten years, to have shelves full of Little Golden Books, just as I did when I was a girl. And maybe someday, they’ll have the delight of putting one of these very same books in the hands of their child and saying,
“I loved this one when I was little.”
Did you grow up on Little Golden Books? Which one was your favorite? I always love anything with illustrations by Eloise Wilkins. Does it give you a thrill to pass books that you loved as a child down to children now? Have you gone to Borders recently, and if so, did you find it as sad as I did?
characters, families, heroines

Jo March and Sundries

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This was going to be a post on Jo and Laurie, and why I don’t think they would have been a good couple, but I’ve been ranting about Amy various places lately, and realized that this post needed to mostly be about Jo, with everyone else tossed in as they relate to her.

First of all:

Even though Josephine “Jo” March did not make it to my list of favorite literary heroines, she only missed it by a hair, and only because I already had twelve and couldn’t justify making it any longer. And also because Louisa May Alcott’s moralizing-on-the-brink-of-preachiness style of writing has such a tendency to get under my skin that my irritation with her can bleed into my feelings toward Jo.

But Jo is still an old friend, and someone I admire. Her growth through “Little Women,” and then as she is seen in “Little Men” and “Jo’s Boys,” is both realistic and beautiful – she becomes a gracious and responsible woman without losing any of her strength, her independence, or her individuality. Watching her learn, with the help of her mother, how to control her temper has always been a favorite theme of mine throughout the first book. Watching her as a mother to her two boys, and pseudo-mother to a whole host of other children in the later books, is almost as delightful. Her struggles to accept Beth’s mortality, and the strength that she lends her family during that time; her fierce rebellion against growing up before deciding to turn it to her advantage; her hatred of society’s meaningless conventions … she is a dear, our Jo.

And, of course, her friendship with Laurie. O, that controversial topic. Let me state my position right off the bat:

I do not think Jo and Laurie should have been married.

There. I said it.

Now, hold off on the pitchforks for just a moment and let me explain (then you can all come charging at me again, if you like).

I don’t think Laurie ever really respected Jo enough as a person. He didn’t take her seriously. He was in love with her, that much is true, but emotion alone is not enough to build a strong and lasting relationship. As Jo herself said, he would have resented her writing after a while, because it took her away from him. He would have been embarrassed by her oddities and how awkward she was in society – or worse, he would have been amused by her, and treated her like an exotic possession, to be brought out to startle polite company.

And Jo didn’t take Laurie seriously, either. She never would have believed he truly meant anything he set out to do, and would have treated him with a calm condescension that would have infuriated and deflated his ambitions. She would have sensed that he relied on her as his conscience, and would have resented that. She would try to fit into what she thought he wanted her to be, and hated every minute of it, and ended by hating him.

At least, that’s how I see it. They were the best of friends, but not all best friends should marry. I suppose it made more sense to me as a kid, because, you see, my best friend was a boy, and almost everyone around us assumed that we would fall in love as we got older and get married. We knew, though, that such a relationship would never, ever work, that our temperaments were too alike in crucial areas and too different in others, that the very things that made our friendship so strong would destroy us if we were ever so stupid to fall in love.

And life proved us right, as we are both happily married to other people now, and still very good friends. Ethan was, in fact, the one that introduced me to my husband, and he was best man at our wedding.

Having said all that, I still cannot forgive Amy for marrying Laurie. Or for existing, for that matter. I have never been able to get over the way she destroyed Jo’s book. And I know she almost drowned/froze in the river afterward, but all that did was turn it around so that Jo was the bad guy and Amy the suffering victim. If she had killed a living pet of Jo’s nobody would have let her off so easily. Jo’s book was as alive to her and important as any pet could have been!

And then Europe. If she really was a good person by that point, instead of simply having all the outward appearances of goodness, she could have said to Aunt Carrol, “Thank you so much for your offer, Aunt, but Aunt March did always promise to take Jo and it isn’t right that she should lose this chance just because she was having a bad day due to me forcing her to do something she didn’t like and isn’t good at; please take her with you instead of me.” I hate how she was portrayed so sweet and good, and yet took everything Jo ought to have had, and calmly accepted it as her due. She knew that Laurie loved Jo, and had no way of knowing that Jo didn’t love him, but she fell for him anyway, never once thinking of her sister bearing all the family burdens at home. Selfish beast!

I’ve also never really liked Professor Bhaer, though I can accept him better in the latter two books. Still, though, I get the impression that LMA tossed him in because she knew her readers would never allow her to leave Jo unmarried. Not that I wanted Jo to be alone and single all her days (UNLESS SHE WANTED TO), but the professor was just … bland. There was nothing to him. Jo should have married someone strong, to match her, but gentle where she was sharp, and calm where she was excitable, and vice-versa. Someone with a rich sense of humor and a good view of the world. Someone – and this is very important – practical and fun, who could help her regain some of the spirit she lost during those hard years nursing Beth and after Beth died (while Amy was off in Europe stealing Laurie). Someone who viewed life as an adventure, not a philosophical treatise. Basically, she married her father, and I never liked Mr. March.

Poor Jo. She got cheated by LMA in so many ways. I can understand why so many people wanted her to marry Laurie, because of how gypped she was of a proper happy ending, but I still veer away there. Not Laurie, not a character LMA ever wrote (perhaps because she never met a man like that), but someone, somewhere, had to be a match for our beloved Jo.

And maybe he would have been able to squelch Amy, as nobody else was ever able to do!

What are your thoughts on the Jo-Laurie relationship? Did you like Professor Bhaer? Is boiling in oil too kind for Amy?

Books, families, favorites, fiction

Favorite Literary Families

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The Blythes (Meredith children) (LM Montgomery):

These were the very first families to come to mind when it came to best literary families. Anne and Gilbert are completely impossible always-loving, always-patient, always-kind, -understanding, -wise, -funny, etc, etc, parents. Of course, maybe that’s not impossible when you have a Susan Baker to do all your dirty work – the disciplining, the maintaining the household, the practical day-to-day details. Heck, I want a Susan Baker! Maybe then I can finally be the fun mom I’ve always wanted to be.

Be that as it may, Gilbert and Anne are awesome parents, and the children are just as winsome and lovable as their parents. I confess to a special fondness for Shirley, the poor unmentioned child through the latter books, who merits only a few sentences in Rainbow Valley, and one or two lines in Rilla of Ingleside.

The Merediths are not so lucky as the Blythe children – in Rainbow Valley their mother is dead and their father is neglectful. Things have looked up for them in Rilla, but through it all they have forged a funny, kind, loving friendship between themselves that is charming. Whenever I think of great sibling friendships, I think of these two families first.

The Seven-Day Magic families (Edward Eager):

I enjoy all of Eager’s families, but these two sets of siblings (and their families) especially touch me. John and Susan and their eccentric Grannie (who is AWESOME, by the way), and Barnaby, Abbie, and Fredericka with their funny and warm parents. I like that their parents/guardians are neither stupid nor unkind nor dead/otherwise absent, and that much of the magic revolves around them. Grannie gets her own adventure, with the children coming along but very definitely playing a side part; and Abbie’s entire wish has to do with her father. Very, very fun families.

The Melendys (Gone-Away Lake cousins) (Elizabeth Enright):

After listing Rush and Randy among my favorite heroes/heroines, you didn’t think I’d leave the rest of the family out, did you? The Melendys are such a delightful family – they bicker, make up, support each other, tease each other, and above all, enjoy each other’s company – even Father and Cuffy. And when a new member of the family joins them in “Then There Were Five,” it just gets even better.

As for the Gone-Away cousins … Julian and Portia always reminded me of my cousin Zachary and me. We were inseparable as kids, getting into trouble and out of it, always finding adventures everywhere we went, even occasionally including the younger ones in our mischief. I love finding literary relationships that mirror those in my own life! Alas, Zach and I never discovered anything so wonderful as Gone-Away Lake and Aunt Minnehaha and Uncle Pin, but we had some pretty marvelous adventures of our own.

The Stanton family (Susan Cooper):

My dad is one of eight children, and reading about Will’s large, loving, normal family always reminded me of Dad and my aunts and uncles. I especially appreciate how each of them has their own distinct personality, from artistic Max to motherly Barbara to vain Mary – and especially, of course, the musical genius Paul, among the others. The friendship between Stephen and Will, eldest and youngest, is beautiful, and the poignancy as it changes when Will comes more fully into his own as an Old One makes me catch my breath every time.

The Wimsey family (Dorothy L Sayers):

We don’t actually see much of the Wimseys after marriage and children, but what we do is delightful. The views on parenting and individuality in children expressed in the short story Tallboys has shaped much of my own views – and this only in a few lines! But that is part of Sayers’ genius, that she wraps truths up in such simple phrases and presents it so clearly that one doesn’t need more words than a few (something I obviously have yet to attain, given the length of these posts). And the relationship between Lord Peter and his wife (working very hard here not to spoil the outcome of the series for those who haven’t read it yet by giving away her name) is just perfect.

The Beresfords (Agatha Christie):

The marriage between Tommy and Tuppence was always described as a “joint venture,” and the way that they shared in everything, from government work to parenting to running a detective agency, has always charmed me. Carl and I have taken occasionally to describing our marriage as a “joint venture” (okay, that’s how I describe it, but he always agrees), and we too try to share in everything as an equal team – each with our own strengths, but always working together.

The Pevensies (CS Lewis):

Others have described the friendship between the Four far better than I could – if you really want to see why I love them so much, go read Andi Horton’s Valley Verdant or Kingdoms Come … or any of her works, really. I will content myself with saying that they each have a very special bond with each other, and it is precious to see.

The Rays (Willards) (Maud Hart Lovelace):

The Rays, with the exception of Margaret (since we had only two sisters), always reminded me of what my family might have been like had we lived back in that era and been just a little bit wealthier. Julia and Betsy bicker as children and grow up to be the firmest of friends. Their parents love them and guide them but also trust them to make their own decisions and own mistakes, and are always there to help them pick up the pieces and move along. Mr. Ray even allows the girls to join a different church when they are able to tell him why, telling them he is prouder of them for thinking it through and wanting to be part of a church than he is sad that they want to leave the church they grew up attending. In that same scene, he gives them one of the best pieces of parental advice ever: “You might as well learn right now, you two, that the poorest guide you can have in life is what people will say.”

As for the Willards, as seen in “Betsy’s Wedding,” they are just fun and real, and I love, love, love reading about Betsy’s trials and triumphs as a young bride!

The Marches (Bhaers) (Louisa May Alcott):

There are many things people could criticize Mr. and Mrs. March for in their parenting, but they always loved their children unconditionally and did their best to raise them according to their principles. I have always appreciated Marmee’s work with Jo in learning self-control. I do not like how they always coddled Amy – but then I’ve never been able to forgive Amy for destroying Jo’s book AND for getting to go to Europe just because Jo was having one bad day, so I would have liked to see her thoroughly squelched by her parents once or twice throughout the book. Ahem.

As for the Bhaers, the love they showered on even the most unlovable of children through “Little Men” and “Jo’s Boys” is a lovely example of unconditional love. And the fact that they go about life in their own way, regardless of what society thought, is also delightful. The brotherly love between Teddy and Rob is so sweet, too.

The Fairchilds (Tuttle cousins) (Rebecca Caudill):

Not many people, I find, are familiar with the delightful books about the Fairchilds, or “Saturday Cousins,” which introduces us to the Tuttles. And it really is a shame, because both families are charming. Quaint, of course, hearkening back to that “simpler era” so many nostalgically yearn toward, but with everything that still makes a good family today – loyalty, friendship, love, trust, and guidance.

That same thread, in fact, weaves through all of the families on my list here. The same traits that my family always strove toward, and that I now strive to accomplish with my own family. In many ways, I look toward parts of these families for guidance in my own journey through these difficult waters of raising children. I am so thankful that literature, through heroes, heroines, and families, has given us all something to look up to, and something to strive for.

I may never be an Eilonwy, or a mother like Anne Blythe, or a brilliant and sensitive detective like Lord Peter, but they all can provide me with guideposts along my own journey. And really, what more can we ask of these fictional friends?

And the end of my “Favorite Literary …” series (unless you all can think of another list of “favorites” I ought to write)! Did your favorite literary family make it to my list? Who would you have added? Who would you have left off? Does anyone in the entire world actually like Amy March?