one of the many jokes about Pinterest as a “time-suck”… Which jokes, of course, you can FIND on Pinterest…

I admit it. I have joined the ranks of Pinterest addicts. I’m not  considering that a bad thing, however, given the folders full of great ideas I’m accumulating–combined with the fact that (ohmygosh) I’m actually following up on those ideas! Most of the Pinterest jokes (which you can find as pinnable items on Pinterest itself) reference the idea that “Pinners” are too busy pinning stuff to actually use any of it. (“Honey, can you pick up pizza? I’ve been busy all day Pinning nutritious recipes for our family.”)

So I’ll defend my Pinterest Habit by pointing to the Useful Things that have already come of it.  Case in point: I had just done a spring-cleaning run-through of my closet last week, clearing out things that no longer fit, or haven’t left their hangers for a couple years…  And then I found loads of DIY (do-it-yourself) tutorials for “repurposing” clothing. I’ve dusted off my sewing machine and retrieved nearly half the items from the “give-away bag” (including the cat, who seems inclined to take up residence in it–possibly in protest of the fact that we’ve put her on a diet…) And one by one, those items I’d designated for Goodwill are taking their places–in their reincarnated forms–back in my closet… and on my person.

The cat’s NOT out of the bag…

This is good stuff! Especially since we have zero budget for clothing and (aside from a new pair of work-shoes for Keoni when he got to the point of duct-taping the soles of his old ones) we haven’t even shopped at the Savers’ second-hand store for more than a year…  So I have some newly-useful items–ranging from the three-minute no-sew alteration of my teenage son’s discarded T-shirt into a “vest” for use as swimsuit-cover, to the conversion of an unused summer dress into an empire-waist top and matching wrap (from the skirt fabric)…

busy with bracelets… Ideas sparked by Pinterest

Another category of “stuff to try”–which I’m working my way through–is the collection of recipes for making your own cleaning products and personal-care items. Those of you who have been following here for a while might remember my earlier commentary about necessary items which can’t be bought with Food Stamps–like toilet paper, soap, or shampoo…  Well, I haven’t found a toilet-paper recipe yet, but look for an upcoming post on “Food-Stamp Kitchen Chemistry”–all kinds of ideas for cleaning the house (and the people) from ingredients we can buy with Food Stamps… (Keoni just got the initial response to his application to resume his previous career in Corrections, and we’re praying our Food-Stamp days are numbered–but some of these are ideas I’d continue to use even when that’s the case…)

some of my new creations…

But the category in which I’ve been dabbling the most is playing with jewelry-making… With the help of Suzy-cat, who can’t resist the tempting beads, threads, and wires…

I’m realizing, actually, how many years it’s been since I indulged my “crafty” side. (And I’m using the word in its colloquial sense, of engaging-in-crafts, rather than the dictionary definition of cunning-or-sly…) Back when the mugwumps were little and I was a stay-home Mommy, I used to do a fair bit of craft-work… crocheted afghans and cross-stitched wall-hangings and sewed curtains and (my favorite) crafted hand-made books with pockets and pop-outs and artsy little bits and bobs… A couple years after I went back into the workforce (full-time-and-a-half!) I gave my sister my book-making supplies for use in her scrapbooking–I hadn’t touched them since I’d been back in the draining and demanding office environment.

Thanks to the Pinterest nudge, though–not to mention my newly unstructured life–I’m playing again. And jingling a little when I walk…

Many kids today have such busy schedules that a person might be forgiven for mistaking a glimpse of their calendars for schedules of heads of state. Even parents who remember their own happy and well-adjusted childhoods full of play have begun to worry that they’re doing their kids a disservice if they don’t keep up with the frantic pace of the “high-mileage mom” next door.

I remember all the spontaneous games-of-imagination we played with our friends and the neighborhood kids… No scheduling required, and no admission cost!

Terms like “hyper-parenting” and “helicopter parenting” are flying around, and emotions and arguments are running hot on both sides of the issue. Some of the statistics on the issue are pretty cut-and-dried, but the interpretation and application of those statistics are anything but. It seems that wherever they stand in their own parenting choices, parents feel “under attack” and defensive–so we get attacks flying both directions.

Everyone in our household has a library card… and when we do have a little spending-money, the folks in the second-hand bookstores know us by name!

Some parents don’t have the luxury of choice, because kid-activities are expensive!  Our son’s high school charges $180 up-front for participation in each school sport, and then there’s the required “Spirit Pack” (another $40 for team-logo sweatshirts, socks, shorts, and jerseys), and then there are the mandatory equipment purchases (not only the pricey athletic shoes, but pads, helmets, and uniform pieces), and on top of that there’s required fund-raising to pay for buses and coaches and other team expenses… I’d assumed initially that there might be a waiver or scholarship or some sort of assistance for families who don’t have that kind of money, but nope–if you can’t pay, you don’t play.

We keep our favorite picnic blanket (made by my mom) in the trunk of the car, and so what if our “picnic basket” is a paper grocery bag? We’ve enjoyed picnics at the park, the zoo, the train depot, the state capitol, the lake, the roadside on car trips, even our own yard. Why not?

I’m pleased at least that his Varsity coach expects the boys to do their own fund-raising; the J.V. coach last year blithely suggested that the easiest approach is for parents just to write a check for the required per-player fund-raising amount of several hundred dollars. That rubbed me the wrong way on several levels. For one thing, I was grounded in the “ethic” early on that a Girl Scout sold her own cookies–it wasn’t acceptable to send the sign-up sheet to work with your parents. (To this day, I’ll buy a box if a girl approaches me–even if my freezer is already stuffed with Girl Scout cookies–but when I get tackled by a mom outside the grocery store? No way.)  So I objected to the coach’s approach from that standpoint–and also from the viewpoint that we were looking at welching on our power bill just to scrape together the other required funds… (The power company can’t turn off the heat during winter months in a household with children, so we knew we’d have until March to deal with that.)

We’ve picked up board games at thrift stores and garage sales, and when grandparents ask for family gift-ideas, this is our suggestion–something we can all do together

But I digress–the point I intended to make is that even school-related activities are expensive these days, and the extra soccer, hockey, Little League, music lessons, ballet lessons, karate lessons, club teams, and other structured activities are even more costly.  Especially in a household with multiple children, a family needs to have some solid finances in place even for school sports, let alone cramming a kid’s schedule with “extras.”

Our local parks offer hiking & biking trails, playgrounds, tennis courts, skateboard ramps, swimming beaches, fishing holes and wide-open spaces for PLAY

I’m sure for some families this is a source of anxiety; watching all the neighbors’ minivans go tearing around town to catch the round-robin of games, matches, recitals, concerts, displays, and competitions, a parent might begin to fret about whether their kids are missing out on necessary experiences due to income level.  There are plenty of other families, though, who could afford all the activities but choose not to. And some of these parents, too, find themselves fretting that they’re being “bad parents” (or even “lazy” parents) because they aren’t devoting their days to driving their kids hither and yon. There’s certainly plenty of pressure on this score, even when it’s only in the form of overheard mom-talk at the kids’ school or daycare…

we match the kids’ helping-jobs to their interests… Elena enjoys her role as “kitchen apprentice” and loves washing windows, Christian likes chopping and digging and raking; Kapena likes jobs that involve machinery… And EVERYBODY likes washing the car!

I was a stay-home mom for five years, so the kids didn’t need daycare during those preschool years. I did, however, enroll Christian in the YMCA preschool for a few hours a week to make sure he got some social-time, since no one else in our social circle had kids yet. I was shocked to overhear the mom-conversations going on around the pick-up area when it came time for kindergarten registrations. Boise schools have “open enrollment,” meaning that each child is assigned by default to the school nearest them, but parents can request to have their kids moved to a different school.

All of us there at the Y would be assigned toTaft Elementary by default, but every other mother there had requested a move. Taft happens to be situated near a pocket of refugee-housing, so (although Boise is, overall, a thoroughly “white-bread” community) Taft has a much more diverse student population. Many of the kids are from Africa. Many of them are Black. Many of them are Muslim.  ”Have you SEEN the kids who go to that school?” one mother asked another, with a shudder of distaste.  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Oh yes–I can just imagine what damage would be done to our kids if they should experience other languages, cultures, or colors!  We’d better protect them from boys named Muhammed and girls in head scarves… (On the contrary–Christian now acts as a designated “buddy” for new arrivals who don’t speak English…)

We keep an eye out for events & experiences that don’t come with an admission cost… Farmer’s Market, Art in the Park, free days at local museums, historical re-enactments, festivals, rodeos, science exhibits, fireworks–and when family members visit, we ask if we can swim at their motel pool. Photos here are from the Basque museum, whaling museum, monster truck rally, Renaissance Fair, art in the park, zoo, & a motel pool.

As it happens, Taft Elementary (despite severe poverty and linguistic challenges experienced by its student population) wins awards every year for its creative and successful approach to educating kids. I had absolutely no reason to fight for a spot on another Kindergarten waiting-ist, but that experience brought home to me how seriously parents take their kids’ enrollments and activities–even at the age of five!

That’s the same sort of pressured thinking that goes into activity-scheduling for a lot of families. A lot of parents seem focused on building their kids’ “resumés” even before the kids can spell their own names. Dr. William Doherty, who has written a book on the subject of “over-scheduled” kids, attributes this drive to several factors in American life.

Imaginations are always active around here! Just ask Christian’s invisible dragon… And even our tone-deaf son ENJOYS music, though he can’t PRODUCE it well (but hey, no one is critiquing during a sing-along)…

He cites the increase in working parents (and the corresponding increase in guilty feelings about not  spending enough time or “doing enough” for their kids), a pervasive fear of a child being left out or left behind by other kids accelerating and excelling in their accomplishments, peer pressure from other parents, and an overactive sense of alarm in reaction to the cultural message that being busy is a superior state compared to “idleness.” He had this to say about what he sees as the culture of over-scheduling kids:

“The adult world of hyper-competition and marketplace values has invaded the family.  Parents still love their children and try to do what is best for them, but we’re missing our children in a culture that defines a good parent as an opportunity-provider in a competitive world.  Parenting becomes like product development, with insecure parents never knowing when they’ve done enough and when their children are falling behind.  Keeping our children busy at least means they are in the game.”

Goofing Around–an important human activity! ;)

At the same time, there are plenty of “experts” who come down on the other side of the argument as well. With all the conflicting reporting and pressure (real or perceived) from parenting-peers, many parents are anxious about whether they’re providing sufficient opportunities for their kids–and (paradoxically) worried at the same time that they’re over-working their kids.

Studies conducted in the last decade (including reports by the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, the Council of Economic Advisers to the President, and the YMCA) do show marked changes in practices and habits on the American “family front.” Pundits on both sides of the issue debate the meaning of these statistics, but they don’t dispute the stats themselves:

• A pronounced decrease in free time for both preschool and school-aged children, and a sharp decline in “unstructured” outdoor activities.
• A marked decrease in family meal-time, and the number of family dinners per week.
• A noticeable decrease in the nutritional value of kids’ meals, which may be tied to the corresponding drop in family dinners and the common practice of resorting to fast food and meals-on-the-go.
• A decided decrease in family vacation time.
• A clear decrease in religious participation among families with school-aged children.
• A striking decrease in children’s time with their parents–particularly if you don’t count “parent spectatorship” as time-spent-together.
• A considerable increase (more than doubled in a decade!) of children’s participation in organized sports.
• A clear increase in passive spectating, which includes watching siblings’  sports and activities.

The statistics aren’t in dispute, but their interpretations–as well as their cause-and-effect relationships–are still being debated. For example, the decrease in family vacation time may be due to economic factors rather than kids’ schedules. And other factors which I didn’t even list here (like the increase in anti-depressant medications being prescribed to kids) haven’t been definitively linked to over-scheduling, although many people suggest a connection. So when we really come down to it, there’s no cut-and-dried answer to this issue.

We made up a “team T-shirt” for our ongoing backyard badminton tournament… sometimes with a celebratory marshmallow roast after the games. And of course we have sprinkler-running, sidewalk art with colored chalk, backyard picnics, ballgames with invented rules…

However…  I remember a solid piece of parenting-advice my mother gave me when I first embarked on the Mommy-gig, fortified with every parenting-book I could get my hands on. When it came right down to it, though, she told me for pete’s sake to “put down the book and pick up the baby!” None of the “experts” can give us a definitive answer about how we should schedule our kids’ time–but if we look to our individual kids, we can start to form some answers.

And the answer won’t be the same for every kid! Some kids thrive on scheduled and structured activity, while other kids (maybe even in the same family) prefer free, unstructured time to play or read or invent their own entertainments.

Our two youngest are in a position to compare and decide precisely what they prefer, due to the very different lifestyles between their dad’s house and ours. At their dad’s house they have scheduled sports and activities every single day of the week, and if they’re not engaged in their own activities, they’re sitting on the sidelines or benches watching each other’s. On weeknights they eat on the go, they don’t get home to start homework until late, and even the eight-year-old doesn’t go to bed until after ten. (She has always liked her sleep, so even she isn’t happy with that arrangement.)

In contrast (as you’ve probably already guessed from my photo line-up of things-for-families-to-do), ours is not a structured-schedule household of crammed-in structured activities. Part of the issue is financial–our income for this year will probably be about fifteen thousand, while their dad’s household income is into six figures.  But even aside from the sign-up fees, we prefer to spend our time with our kids rather than constantly driving-and-spectating for them. And the kids themselves are quite clear about the fact that they prefer it too.  Especially Elena Grace–she would happily drop all of her activities if she were allowed, and the first thing she said to me last Saturday morning (with a blissful grin) was, “I could read ALL DAY if I wanted to!”  Christian does enjoy his soccer (which only runs for eight weeks of the year) and is generally in favor of his karate class, but other activities (like cello lessons–he’s the tone-deaf one) only add stress. (And a heavy item to carry back and forth to school!)

the MAIN family-ingredient!

I was offered my previous summer position at the State Park by our house, but when I put it to a family vote, the decision was unanimous: they’d rather have ME for the summer than have more MONEY in the household.

When we made the family T-shirts for our backyard badminton tournaments, the fronts all said “Vega-Tyler Team,” because the two youngest kids have their dad’s last name. But last week when we were playing pirate and singing the “Pirate’s Life for Me,” Christian unexpectedly (and off-key, of course) substituted:”Yo ho, yo ho, a Tyler Life for Me!” We can’t buy them toys, we can’t take them to Disneyland, and we don’t even have television channels–but they prefer the Tyler way of life.

And for the record, so do WE.  The mom sitting next to Keoni at Christian’s soccer game last week was going on about all the different soccer games she had to get to that day, all at different locations. She wore her complaint like a badge of honor–and if her kids all want to be playing, then it is a sacrifice on her part to put that much mileage on herself… But we’re extremely grateful that’s not our life. We’re happy operating on “Island Time” and seeking our own adventures.

Anne-with-an-E… a.k.a. MY MA

Mother’s Day cards just don’t cover it. There’s not a one on the market that’s sufficient to express my thoughts about the awesome Lady who made me.

She’s fully that (a Lady, that is) when she has a mind to be, having grown up in days when her Girl Scout uniform included white gloves and a girdle…  She could out-maneuver Miss Manners, parse sentences in her sleep, and navigate the complexities of any obscure set of social rules you could name.  She taught me early on about the ins & outs of social niceties—from rules of dress and speech to etiquette, table manners,  and deportment—all the protocols and proprieties of courtesy and culture and comportment…  She was the Audrey Hepburn of our little potato-farming hometown–a class act, through and through.

“Getting to know you”… My Mom & Me, 1974

In short, this awesome Lady does Lady perfectly…  But she also knows how to kick off her shoes! She does dancing-in-the-sand as beautifully as she does “strait-laced.” (Which is just as well, because without a hefty dose of humor and flexibility, Mothering me might otherwise have landed her in straitjacket lacings…)

I think she knew even before we officially “met” that I’d be trouble…. While she was pregnant, I used to get terrible bouts of hiccups that would set her whole stomach to rhythmic jolting—particularly distracting when she was trying to teach!  She nick-named me Sam during my belly-dwelling months–a name that could apply to either a boy or a girl, though she says she was preparing herself for a boy because she wanted a daughter so badly. You know that saying about being careful what you wish for? Well, she got me. And although people are puzzled by the name’s lack of relation to anything on my birth certificate, she has always called me Sam.

with my mom at the pool, 4 years old. We had matching swimsuits for years, courtesy of her sewing machine…

She taught me all the Lady-Rules, and it’s thanks to her tutelage that I’ve been able to move comfortably in social circles among people whose social standing, status, or “class” were well above my own means. Manners can be a passport to any situation, and she made sure I had all the visas secured before I reached adulthood. With a cardigan over the tattoos and a quick shift to a different vernacular, I can hold my own in any environment–from the PTA to speaking in a Senate Committee on the Hill. Hand me any role, and it’s something my mother gave me the tools to carry out.

She modeled the fact that a woman can play whatever different roles she chooses.  In her case, literally–she’s a natural ham and has been playing lead roles in community theater productions since her teens, beginning with the role of Anne Frank (who, like Anne of Green Gables and other denizens of stage and page, shared my mother’s stress on the spelling of Anne-with-an-E). I loved the black-and-white photo of her in a hoop-skirt as Anna in The King & I, I remember watching rehearsals of Oklahoma when I was young, and we often filled the time singing show tunes from her favorite musicals when we rode in the car.

making a “habit” of attending Drag Shows…

My favorite of her roles was the Nunsense part of Sister Robert Anne–the Jersey-accented gym teacher with red Converse sneakers beneath her habit and a wicked penchant for causing trouble. And my favorite element of that role was her pre-show warm-up when she “worked the crowd” in character, signing up volunteers for an imaginary Catholic basketball team, teasing and joking, and enchanting the audience before the curtain ever rose for the scripted first act.  I’m in awe not only of her ability to perfectly mimic any accent on the planet, but also her hilarious on-the-spot ad-libbing. The world lost a great stand-up comic when she went to law school.

A couple months after that show, the local GLBT community invited the theater group to put on a couple scenes from the play as part of the entertainment line-up for a fund-raising Drag Show. My mom volunteered me to take the place of an original cast member who couldn’t make it, which is how I ended up attending a drag show with my mom, both of us dressed as nuns.

my thirteenth birthday cake–the year I started running Track

Among her many other talents, my mother is the uncontested Queen of Crafts. She took fantastic photos and kept scrapbooks for each of us long before “scrapbooking” came into common use as a verb. She sewed almost all of our clothes, from Easter Dresses to play clothes and swimsuits. (Though I’ll say that my younger sister got the bum end of that deal; every time she grew out of her clothes, she’d get a hand-me-down set of the exact same clothes…)  She made entire matching wardrobes for our dolls as well, and crafted every Halloween costume we ever wore. She baked our birthday cakes in shapes to celebrate a favorite item or activity each year, spent hours constructing miniature pieces of dollhouse furniture, and was the creator of many of our very favorite toys (sock bunnies & rice mice, just for a start!).

At Christmas she suggested we put out carrots & water for Santa’s reindeer, in addition to the brownies & beer for Santa himself (she pointed out that he was no doubt tired of milk and cookies). We would wake to find reindeer-prints around the emptied bowls, and personal letters from Santa along with our stockings.  The Tooth Fairy also left notes, which developed into a full-blown correspondence with my sister, who asked for help building a mailbox so she could continue writing even when her teeth weren’t falling out. This is how we came to find out, among other fascinating details, that “Tooth Fairy” is a fairy-job, not unlike a paper route, which our particular Tooth Fairy accomplished by means of a flying toy-motorcycle, towing collected teeth behind her on a cloud. (Eventually her little brother took over her route, first securing my sister’s permission to use the canoe belonging to her dollhouse-family as his vehicle.)

Mother is also a helluva “handyman”–so when I got a house of my own, I always saved my DIY projects for her visits. She was far more useful than my first husband on these things, and we managed between us to replace ceiling lights with electric fans, install laminate flooring for the entire first floor, assemble a new barbecue, build garden walls, xeriscape the front yard, and various other projects. I never have been able to match her energy in the do-it-yourself arena. (Or any arena, come to think of it. I challenge any person to keep up with her at the mall! Sometimes I wish she could still put me in a stroller when we shop together…) I think about her summer garden and fruit trees (and the resulting dried fruits, canned vegetables, and rhubarb pies), the sewing machine in constant use, the impeccable cleanliness of our house, and the gazillion volunteer jobs she undertook–and I get tired just thinking about it. I have no idea where she hides her super-hero energy source.

with my Mother & my Sister (center)–representing the Girl Scout team at the Idaho Women’s Fitness Celebration ten years ago

She was determined that my sister and I would have the Girl Scout experiences she had enjoyed as a child and teen, so she started Girl Scouts in our hometown. Every girl in my first-grade class joined the Brownie troop she established, and she encouraged us in travel opportunities and leadership challenges as well as some of the “classic” activities like camping. Give me a Dutch oven and a (one-match) campfire, and I can cook outdoors like nobody’s business! (Strangely enough, I never picked up the corresponding skills in an actual kitchen… She had probably given up on me as a hopeless case by the time she sent me off to college with a cookbook titled “How to Boil an Egg”…)

No one I know can outmatch her outdoor skills, though. She used to lead two-week canoe trips through the Canadian wilderness, and her girls would “show up” the boys’ groups when they crossed paths, the tiniest girl in the group flipping a canoe above her head and trotting off solo into the woods on a portage while the boys struggled two-to-a-canoe… She and I used to giggle conspiratorially whenever we saw someone (sorry, guys–usually a man) struggling to control his canoe while actually making more work for himself.  She’d taught me the finesse of various steering-strokes, and I carried on the tradition of “showing up” the boys on my own canoe trips, always borrowing her personalized paddle on which she’d painted a dancing Snoopy. Motherhood didn’t seem to slow her down any; even when I was a toddler, she and my dad would go camping and canoeing with me (and the cats!), wedging my baby-walker into the center of the boat and letting the cats roam in its bottom…

never too serious…

My mom has always had a wicked sense of humor, and she’s a prankster into the bargain. My parents’ stories from married-student housing (while my dad worked on his Ph.D. at University of Montana) nearly all involve the ongoing series of pranks on their downstairs neighbors, who would later become my godparents. For that matter, she can take a joke as well–after all, she still married my father after  he sent her a package of shark fetuses (from his dissection lab) through campus mail! I always liked the story of how she handled her own dissection lab–she got tired of stitching up the animal at the end of every class… so she installed a zipper in her cat! That’s my mom for you…

I’ve written several times about my admiration for my mom’s storytelling, but she’s also a story-magnet. There’s something about her that just draws strangers to talk to her and tell her their stories.  I remember standing on a street corner in West Germany–I think we had stopped to ask for directions–listening to a complete stranger pour out his heart about his wife who had been killed (with their unborn second child) in a car accident, and how he wore bright colors on the outside for his daughter’s sake, but wore black underneath.  My whole life, I’ve been accustomed to turning around in the supermarket or fabric store to find my mother holding a stranger’s baby or listening to a stranger’s personal stories.  She’s the kind of person who knows her seatmates’ life stories by the time she gets off a plane, or the history of the person behind her in a supermarket line by the time they get to the cashier.  (One of her airplane-conversations, in fact, resulted in a new client who flew her to Fiji to work on his estate-planning there…) She takes herself on a dive vacation every year to some exotic spot–and never fails to forge friendships with other adventuresome folks, who sometimes meet up with her the following year at a new location.

with my Sister & my Mother (and a parakeet!) at a Mexican cantina when I was sixteen

I got my “travel bug” from both parents, and although our family was always comfortably well-off financially, we weren’t rich.  Our travels were primarily the product of my dad’s amazing planning capabilities–he planned and prioritized and budgeted to enable us to enjoy the extensive travels we did. And within the context of Dad’s detailed planning, it was our extroverted mother who modeled for us the gems that stem from people-interactions on any adventure–the collected stories, the off-the-beaten-path recommendations, the new friends… In addition to our two “big” European trips, we road-tripped all over the continental U.S. and Canada, and made some hops over the border to the south as well. In Mexico, Mother was never shy about putting her somewhat-rusty high school Spanish to work to haggle over prices in an open-air market, or ask for suggestions on an unfamiliar menu.

with my mom on a beach in Hawai’i–STILL in matching swimsuits!

As I wrote when I was describing the sailing trip for which she joined us, she’s the perfect companion for adventuring.  When I was attending University of Hawai’i, she took me up on my spontaneous suggestion that she should come visit and hang ut with me, and we had a terrific mother-daughter week of adventures. While I went to classes, she entertained herself in Hilo’s Old Town and hiked rainforest trails to the waterfalls, and when Friday rolled around ,we headed around to the sunny side of the island. We found a room at a little hotel—full of character and right on the water—where the owners lived in one of the first-floor rooms and hosted breakfast (fresh tropical fruits and Kona coffee!) every morning on the patio by the saltwater pool. She hadn’t yet gotten her Scuba certification, but we snorkeled with turtles, visited sites ranging from an old Hawai’ian heiau (temple) to an intricately-painted missionary church, attended a luau, shopped along the Kona boardwalk, soaked up sunshine on the postcard-perfect white sand of Hapuna beach, and girl-talked till late at night with our feet propped up on our balcony rail above the surf, and a bottle of local wine between us… In many ways, that week was the turning-point in our transition from our respective teen-and-parent roles to the adult friendship we’ve enjoyed ever since. (Well, as “adult” as it’s going to get, anyway, for two women who both refuse to grow up!)

three generations of FIESTY women!–my mom, my sister, & my grandma

I was eleven years old when my mom applied to law school, and I’m still wondering how she managed. We teased about her study-habits, referring to her as a Mole who didn’t come out in sunlight, and to her basement-study as the “Mole Hole.” I made a poster for the door which read, “This is the Hole / Where dwells the Mole / Whose single goal / is to pass every test”–accompanied by a drawing of myself hollering, “Mommy, Mommy, the house is on fire” and her (nose in a book) responding absently, “That’s nice, Dear.” But in truth, she was as available to us as ever. I would come home from school, hoist myself onto the second desk in the Mole Hole, and regale her with every sordid detail of the day’s junior-high dramas. She had dinner on the table every night, continued running my sister’s Girl Scout troop, sang in the church choir, and kept dozens of other balls in the air… And all the while, she maintained her standing at the top of her class–to the dissatisfaction of male classmates who told her to her face that she belonged “at home with her children” rather than taking “a man’s rightful spot “in the class rankings!  My sister and I knew better, though, because our mother has always showed us (not just told us, but modeled for us) that a Woman can do whatever she damn well pleases! Mother opened a private law practice, and fifteen years later my sister took her own place as Deputy Attorney General for the State of Idaho.

Grandy with Elena Grace

As a parent, I’m continually grateful for the “lessons in parenting” our mother provided (in the form of her parenting of us).  She was strict but never harsh. She had high expectations of us, but always celebrated us when we met them. She always separated our deeds from our selves–she never told me I was a Bad Girl, only that my latest mischief was a bad thing to do.  Manners were mandatory, hugs were abundant, imagination was encouraged. She had us each reading long before we hit Kindergarten, and she participated in every imaginable game of make-believe. She was reasonable and flexible (though my teenage-self would never have admitted it), but she never left room for doubt that SHE was the Mom. She is absolutely the model for my own Parenting.

When I told her she was going to be a grandmother, she decided that (although she was certainly ready for the grand-baby) she wasn’t “ready to be Grandma.”  She settled instead on”Grandy“–an adaptation of her Girl Scout camp-name of Andy–and I can’t think of a better descriptor for her!  She IS Grand.

I think my daughter was three or four years old when I styled my hair one morning in what has become my mom’s signature hairdo: a sassy, classy up-do. My daughter took issue with the imitation, however, and made her objection known in no uncertain terms: “You are NOT a Grandy. You are JUST a Mommy!”

Point taken–there’s no competing with the SuperWoman who is my mother. But I’m honored whenever I’m told I’m like her.  In my world, there’s no higher compliment.