Not quite what I expected

After walking, shaving and cleaning up after a group of visiting dogs, entertaining two little people, tending a small homestead (garden and chickens, with work depending on the season) I typically find myself at the end of the day wondering how I came to be exactly where I am. I am so totally not the person that I expected to be just a few short years ago. That was when I had a full time job, paid someone to do something with my hair occassionally, and wore nice clothes and dress shoes five days a week. In those days, sweats and sneakers were for my paid gym membership; these days, they're what I live in. I've long given up on using highlights to hide the gray in my hair and the last trim it had was self inflicted. I realized recently that while I'm not the person my working self would have expected, I'm probably much closer to the person I would have envisioned when I was still young and idealistic. That came as a shocker, let me tell you. If, during my working days, I had thought about being a grandmother,(which let me assure you I had not until the December day my daughter announced her pending motherhood about one month before I became unemployed) I would have expected a different role. I'd have been the cool grandma with gifts and fun outings. Instead, someone else gets that role and I've become a third caregiver, behind the two parental units, of two family treasures. Instead of buying them neat things, I shop on Ebay and devote hours of my time to such fascinating passtimes as building block towers to be knocked down by crawling infants, coloring with broken crayons, changing diapers and potty training, knitting hats, stockings, blankets and sweaters while they sleep, watching Baby Einstein and Your Baby Can Read videos, and memorizing the dialogue of Dora the Explorer. We do crafts, play for hours on the porch, and take long walks with a jogging stroller and an assortment of neighborhood dogs. I introduced the toddler to the real origin of eggs, and hold her up to watch the daily battle as chickens and squirrels compete for corn. I'm fairly certain I've spent more time with them than I did my own babies, because face it, babies are like puppies, cute, but it's largely a stage to outgrow. What's been really surprising is that sometime after number two came along, when I accepted that this was what God had intended for my life, and when number one began without any encouragement to call me "Ma"(my daughter had been calling me Mimi in an attempt to guide her), I suddenly felt at home in the role. Perhaps it was partly due to her choice of Ma and my love for my own grandmother. Perhaps it was because, as I'd told someone, I would feel like a grandmother when she had a name for me.

No, I couldn't be the spoiling grandmother. Instead I had to have rules and boundaries; real meals and nap times and more time than money. But they've got another wonderful grandmother who does the things I would have expected to do and then some, and between the two of us I think we've got the grandmother skill set fairly nailed. But even with my acceptance of my role, I hadn't recognized that where I was going was really the place I intended to go decades ago. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror as I washed my face, noting the silver streaks pulled back to an untidy bun of hair and realized that this is much closer to the older me I would have wanted to be. When I was young I was artsy and unhampered by the mores of my peers. I liked to be with dogs and be outside and away from everyone. Now, after a quarter century of working in newspapers with constant deadline pressure and the need to be "on" every time I left the house, it doesn't matter any more because it never really mattered to me. I'm back outside the mainstream, spending my mornings, a chunk of my afternoons and some of my evenings (in other words, the time I'm not with my granddaughters) caring for a kennel filled with other people's dogs. I fall in love with the dogs and the people have become my extended family. I do all my yard work, raise a garden and have a small flock of chickens. Sure, a cow and some ponies and goats might complete the picture, but I'm making a gradual transition here. In the late evenings, I knit or crochet, or sometimes do cross-stitch. I'm thinking about taking up painting again. My husband is my partner as we work on our house and outside projects. He still thinks I'm sexy, and no one else really matters. If, when I was a teenager and thinking about life as a grownup, I had really thought about being 50, this might have been pretty close to what I pictured. It's not quite what I expected a few years ago, but I think it's what I really wanted all along.

Giving Away Christmas

Most families, for better or worse, wind up with holiday traditions. They may be Aunt Ava's fruitcake, Cousin Bill's bad behavior, or the holiday ham. Sometimes they are family gatherings that we either anticipate eagerly or dread, or attend with some mixture of both.

When a tradition becomes ingrained, we tend to forget that it hasn't always been that way. Change, when it comes, is with a degree of discomfort. This year marks such an occasion for our family.

Growing up, our family gathered every Christmas Eve at the home of my dad's aunt and uncle. It was a buffet affair with loads of food and four generations of relatives scattered across two floors of the brick ranch home. The women folk had the kitchen and the upstairs area; the men gathered in a smoky room in the basement with a fireplace and a Christmas tree and we children -- siblings and cousins to varying degrees -- roamed the house in a wild mob. It was a terrific holiday tradition. Right up until the year when the great-aunt's recently divorced daughter brought two men from the halfway house where she worked to the family gathering.

(It was the '70s and there had been no interracial family gatherings. After that year, the family quit gathering there at all -- wandering in for some half-hearted holiday hello on Christmas day instead. Last year there was a mixed race couple at the family reunion and I laughed remembering how poorly our family would have accepted them three decades ago.)

Christmas day meant being dragged from our toys to visit the grandparents -- fun with the cousins, but an anxious desire to get back to my holiday goodies. We had lunch at my maternal grandparents' home then, midafternoon, went to my paternal grandparents before returning home to enjoy our loot stuffed with food and exhausted from our early morning.

When I married, Christmas Eve was for visiting my new in-laws. Once again it was three generations of one family under a roof and, when my children came along they joined their cousins with the same wild enthusiasm I once had. Divorce ended that tradition and my mom adopted Christmas Eve as her time. For 20 years we've gathered at her house for our holiday dinner. We spent Christmas Day at home, visiting my grandparents, or perhaps visiting another in-law.

This year, however, that's changing. I'm giving Christmas away, in a sense, although I'm sure that to some folks it may seem I'm taking it. Disrupting the long running tradition, Christmas Eve festivities will be at my home. Although there are a number of reasons, the easiest is to say that now I'm the grandmother and as my daughter said, "Christmas Eve meant going to Grandma's house." Grandbabies don't have to travel so far to a house where they're less comfortable, the burden of cooking for everyone won't be on my mom, hopefully the younger generation will feel less rushed with work and children.

At the same time, I'm giving what has always been my time away. While I look forward to parents, children and grandchildren gathering at my house Christmas Eve, I'm less excited about the gift giving Christmas morning being just hubby and I. For 26 years I've had children under my roof unwrapping their presents on Christmas morning, or I've been anticipating their arrival and a holiday meal.

This year I'm giving them the holiday to celebrate under their own roofs at their own pace. My son will be spending the day, barring any changes in the next few weeks, with his grandparents where he lives; my daughter with the babies at her home with her husband, who will probably have to go in to work later in the day. Neither of them will be expected to come to my house, although I'm not promising I won't show up at theirs.

For the most part, we love to hold on to our holiday traditions, but there comes a time when every family has to make adjustments for distances, deaths, divorces or new generations. In a few years, a new tradition is formed and, although those old memories are still treasured, new ones begin to pile up as well. This year, those new memories begin for us.

No bucket list for me

There are times in your life when you make a mental list of the things you want to do before you die. They call it a bucket list, and sometimes people who learn they are terminally ill make such a list and try to check off the items.

Often the list includes places to visit: New Orleans, the West Coast, Alaska and Bermuda, Europe or even Africa. Other times it would be specific activities: fly a plane, skydive, scuba dive, rappel or rock climb. It would be that book they meant to read, or write. The old friend they wanted to track down, the lost love that they wanted another chance to romance.

Nope.

While some of those things, like rock climbing, the West Coast, or writing a book, might be things I'd like to do at some point, if I were terminally ill, I wouldn't be rushing off to do them.

I'd be doing exactly what I'm doing now.

Standing at the Dobson Christmas Parade with my daughter and granddaughters, I soaked up their smiles and giggles like a dry sponge thrown in a bucket of water. And it's not like it's an infrequent opportunity that I treasured because of the rarity. After all, next to the girls' parents I'm their chief caregiver. I spend most of my cell phone minutes talking to my daughter in the morning. We frequently get together on the weekends and holidays.

But the fact of the matter is that these moments, no matter how many or how few, are irreplacable. If I were dying, I wouldn't be sad that I'd not seen the Pacific Ocean, I'd be sad that I didn't get to spend more time with the little people that have turned my life upside down the last two years.

Although they are small now and probably won't remember these long afternoons at my house, they will grow and I want to be a part of the memories they carry forward. While my "Ma Mary" has been gone for almost six years, she lives on in my memory and in the stories I tell my grandchildren. Being a part of the legacy that forms a child is the closest to immortality that we can find on earth.

As far as I know I'm healthy and may someday get around to doing more of the things I'd like to accomplish, including taking a vacation with my husband. But if that were to change, don't look for me to take off for an Alaskan cruise. I won't be trying to check off items on a bucket list.

I'll be right here, filling my bucket with drops of precious memories.

I Miss My Life, or Do I?

It seems terribly ungrateful, I know, as wonderful as my life is now, but I miss my life. My "before" life.

The life I had two and a half years ago when I complained about going to work for 45 hours a week and counted on a set amount of money to magically appear in my bank account every two weeks with health insurance and taxes paid. The life I had when I got up and put on makeup, did something with my hair and wore nice clothes. The life I had when I spent my days with other adults, most of them fairly well educated, when I knew what was happening in the world and had a part in conveying that knowledge to my neighbors. The life when I knew all the movers and shakers and had people calling me all the time.

When I had a job.... When I counted.... When I was someone, too.

It's a depressing refrain, but one I can't quite get out of my head. Especially on a rainy May morning when I don't even want to go to the grocery store, because that would involve taking the tarp off my convertible that I really can't afford to have fixed, no matter how bad it may leak. Because I've just spent more than $500 putting tires on it and making it safe, and there's no longer a regular paycheck to count on.

I know God has put me where I am now, and that there's a reason for it. My job went away to change me. I would never have quit my job to take care of one grandbaby, let alone two, yet without a job it's the logical thing for me to do. I would never have quit my job to be self-employed and take care of other people's dogs (no matter how much I love dogs), because my dad was self-employed and it was never something I wanted to be.

For those who have never been self-employed or lived with a self-employed person, let me clarify a few points. Being self employed is like being an adult in a lot of ways - a disappointment in that no, it doesn't mean you can suddenly do whatever you want when you want. In fact, there's less freedom than having a job or being a child. The difference is the final responsibility is yours and there's no one else to blame. You're the bitch you work for.

Instead of working a set number of hours, it's almost 24/7, at least in the early phases. Not working means not making money and you can't count on another busy day next week to make up for work you turn down this week. Instead of celebrating with an expensive dinner out when you have a good week, you put the money in the bank against those days when the phone doesn't ring and you begin to look at the want ads and consider alternate ways to make a living.

But back to missing my life.

Now I rise early, spend my mornings walking dogs, cleaning the kennel, and sometimes doing a bit of dog grooming. I tend my dogs, feed the chickens and turtledoves, and, when necessary, mow the lawn. I haul mulch and plant a garden. Turn on the Roomba to clean the floors while I'm outside. I wear comfy clothes, Crocs or MBTs (for walking), and my hair is always in a ponytail. I seldom wear makeup and my hair hasn't felt a stylist's touch since February 2010 when I swapped dog boarding for a highlighting job. Now my highlights are natural and more silver than gold.

Afternoons are a similar slow pace with two granddaughters arriving shortly before noon. There's lunch and naps (which allow me to go back out to dogs and yard workd) followed by playtime and dinner. I've constructed a play area at the end of the house with sandbox, pool and watertable. There's a slide and swing in the yard. When the weather's nice, we go for another walk in the evening before they go home.

All that sounds wonderful, and it is.

Do you hear the "but"? Can you see, or more accurately, hear what's missing?

When the phone rings, it's not someone wanting to talk about their issue or their day. It's someone with a dog who really needs his hair cut ASAP, or who wants their dog to come stay with me while they go to Florida/the beach/a cruise, etc. (I hate to travel, in general, so I don't begrudge them although I do look forward to one day having time off again. When I was a kid, my dad took time off for vacations twice! in the 20 years I lived at home!) I look forward to the dog's visit and add them to my calendar. End of call.

I miss conversations, just talking about politics, county government, crime, life, etc. So badly that sometimes I hold someone hostage to a conversation just because I need to talk about something that isn't related to my family or dogs. I don't realize it until afterwards, but then it's like OMG! what was I talking about? I have actually called people and apologized.

Sure, I miss caring about how I look and being out in the public eye - sometimes. But I'd rather clean a dirty kennel than listen to my last editor's crap (something they have in common), and I love being home at night and going to church on Sunday instead of wrapping up a last minute deadline.

So I realize that when I say I miss my life, it's really the people that miss. With that in mind, I'm saying reach out to people. With all the tools of conversation we have at our disposal, we're all guilty of retreating into our own unhealthy space. And I'm as guilty as the next.

I realized that I don't have to be lonely and Facebook isn't the only way to socialize. So if I know you're in the same boat I am, look out. Your phone may be ringing.

Off to the shelter

This week I committed what is likely seen as the next best thing to an unpardonable sin in dog-loving circles.

I took a dog to the animal shelter. It was the second time I'd taken a dog to the shelter in the last year, although it was the first time that the animal was one I'd fed and called by any name other than "getaway."

Unlike a lot of animal activists, I don't believe that every dog deserves the chance to live out its life. I receive mail from one of those groups that collects funds to take care of the medical needs of chronically ill animals that do not have owners. I always wind up wondering how many perfectly healthy puppies they could have helped find permanent homes with the money they collect to warehouse and medicate sick dogs and cats that will never have a normal life. I wonder the same thing when some terribly abused animal collects a slew of donations and potential owners after being featured on the nightly news.

Unfortunately as humans, we tend to ascribe too many of our emotions to the animals we love. Just because they have the same basic needs and some of the same emotions (devotion, loneliness, anxiety, depression, and love), we forget that they aren't little four-legged people with the all the emotions and thought patterns that we possess. Animals are blessed to live in the here and now, and if the here and now isn't good, they don't think 'well, tomorrow will be better; this pain will pass; someone will love me someday.' They don't worry about living out a long full life. If they had a preference, they would want it to end. Hence, there are times when it's better to say that the limited resources a rescue group has would be better spent on a healthy animal with a chance at a good life.

But of course, that's my opinion and why these groups don't get money from me.

All that is an aside from my trips to the animal shelter.

My first trip was last year after someone deposited a young mixed breed male on our road. He hung around and eventually gravitated to my neighbor's house where the overweight lab has an all-you-can-eat pan. THe neighbor put a collar on him and I figured he had a home. When the homeowner's dad came over to mow, however, the dog disappeared. In three days he was back, sans collar. Apparently he'd been hauled off and dumped again, but returned. When there was no collar returned to his neck within a few days, I loaded him in the truck and took him to the animal shelter, feeling guilty because when I called, despite all the verbal abuse I'd used to keep him from calling my house home, he came.

The dog I took this week never did that, despite being walked and fed on a daily basis and calling my house home for about six years. Her name is Dixie, but it was her second or third name. I don't know if she bonded with a previous owner, or if she'll bond with another if adopted again, but she never bonded with me. I was a source of food and potential freedom. She was a rescue dog and I don't think she had ever been well socialized with people. Dogs, however, she loved. Cats too, unless they ran. That became part of the problem.

I tried for months to place her through other groups. No one seemed interested (altho now that she's gone I'm sure someone will call with a home). Instead, because of the numerous large dogs in my neighborhood and another neighbor's attachment to feral cats, her life had been reduced largely to confinement. Her freedom meant any potential mischief was multiplied by 10. My lab, who is on a wireless fence would break out and join the fracas and there were feline deaths. I finally decided that, like a rescue group, I'd be best utilizing my resources in caring for my other dogs and not antagonizing the neighbor.

I felt like a failure to her, because I had tried and she had become, at least when on leash, a good dog. She would listen, sit, walk properly. She didn't yank me off my feet as she had when she arrived. In another neighborhood, or with someone who had more time for her, she'd probably be a great dog. But with my business and the recent addition of two grandchildren, time is at a premium and she wasn't getting any of it. She couldn't sit around and think there would be better days. She was just unhappy.

And so we rode to the animal shelter, and she never leaned against me and wanted affection. We waited for 20 minutes at the animal shelter (they don't open until 10) and there were no tearful goodbyes. She was eager to explore the fenced yard, and when they finally took her away on a kennel lead, she was wagging her tail and happy to go. I went home with a sense of relief, but without kidding myself that she would find a new home for sure. I know the odds aren't with her and the six years I gave her may be all she gets. I also know that she'll be treated humanely and fed and cared for should she not find a new home.

I'm not making myself feel better about my decision. I made a commitment I was unable to fulfill, but life changes and it was not a decision easily made. It is, however, one that other pet owners would be better off considering than those who make the choice to dump a dog on a country road or let one go without the food, shelter and attention they need.

Hope that passes!

I came home from Winston-Salem yesterday to find my living room floor littered with small bits of paper.

My Jack Russell terriers, Abi and Lucy, are occasionally prone to shredding any napkin or paper towel they can reach that has a remote trace of food on it, so initially I thought someone had left one where they could access it. When I went to pick up the pieces, however, I quickly noticed that it was really paper and the first shred had an endorsement area on it.

OMG! They've eaten a check!

"WHAT IN THE WORLD IS WRONG WITH YOU?" I blurted, the two dogs, previously eager to see me after my outing, tucked their ears and huddled on the back of the loveseat. One made a dash for the bedroom before realizing the door was still closed.

Another piece of debris revealed that the check was the weekly payment for my daycare pup, which had been delivered to me that morning with a baggy of food and a piece of a chicken treat. I'd tucked treat and check into my jacket pocket.

I turned to where I'd carelessly tossed my jacket on the back of an armchair, there it lay, a large hole chewed in the lining and the pocket pulled through the hole. The pocket itself had several holes chewed in it.

I quit scolding the dogs and blamed myself. I usually hang the jacket up. Had I done so, it would have been safe, even with a pocket smelling of chicken jerky. It was basically my fault, and I know terriers are a tenacious lot and once they have a scent they like they will find a way to gain access to it.

My first JRT, Lucy 1 (not to be confused with Lucy 2, one of my current pair) had already demonstrated that fact to me years ago. (As an aside, Lucy 1 died nearly 10 years ago. Lucy 2 had a coincidence of name when I groomed her for her previous owner, which led me to share Lucy 1's story. When Lucy 2's owner had to move, he offered her to me and, of course, she found a new home.)

When Lucy 1 was about a year old, having been a Christmas puppy, "101 Dalmations" (the remake) was a hit with kids. There was a candy bar that year that was white chocolate with milk chocolate chips to resemble a dalmation, and both children had one in their stockings. My daughter's stocking was hand-knit and long, hanging nearly to the floor from its position on her bedroom door.

That morning, when the children dumped their stocking loot, my son had a candy bar. It appeared my daughter did not, so we went back for a closer examination. We found the wrapping of the candy bar wadded in a wet mess in the two of the stocking, which we noticed was wet and smelled of chocolate. Evidently, Lucy had spent Christmas Eve sucking the candy bar through the knit. Candy was history, and Lucy didn't appear the worse for the experience.

Life with JRTs has given me other instances of their apt cleanup, such as the toddler's lunch disappearing from her high chair tray (which would involve one or both standing on their hind feet in a kitchen chair and doing some extreme stretching), chewed items that I'd have sworn were properly put away, and lessons learned about leaving nothing edible on a flat surface less than counter high.

After the check cleanup, I shared the story with the check's original owners, who considered it properly "voided," so now I only have to make sure the Jack Russells do the same.

A fat person waiting to get out

"Heavy" is my guilty pleasure. I DVR it and watch it in the afternoons while there's no one around but me. "Hoarders" has much the same appeal, but for totally different reasons.

Hoarders I don't understand. If I had my dogs, my photo albums and possibly my new laptop, my house could vanish and I wouldn't be distraught. Even the treasured heirlooms from my grandparents, while they couldn't be replaced, would receive only the appropriate amount of mourning. It's just stuff and, in general, stuff can be replaced. The attachment to everything and inability to throw away even trash is beyond me.

The people on "Heavy" are a different story. There, but for the grace of God, go I.

You see, I'm fat. No, it's not a joke if you know me. In my head, I'm a big person. All 5'6" of me, which weighed in this morning at 128.8 lbs. Even in loose size 6 jeans, my ribs visible through a small knit shirt, I'll never see myself as skinny. I understand the addiction of food and guard against it like an alcoholic working his 12-step program. When I fall off the wagon with a box of Krispy Kreme chocolate covered creme filled donuts, or a Papa John's pizza on occasion, I "pick up a white chip" and start over.

When I watch the morbidly obese people on "Heavy" trying to figure out how their lives got so out of whack and how to get them back, that's a pain I understand. But unlike many of them, I know the source of my food issues. I just can't get rid of them.

In my early school years I was an average and often sickly child. I spent the summer between the third and fourth grades sick with tonsilitis and the measles. Just before school started, I had my tonsils removed. Before that school year ended, I was bigger than everyone in my class but two girls. I couldn't stop my growth or my early puberty, but I hated it, and it couldn't have come at a worse time. Just at the age when I'm forming my own body image, I'm big, even if only for a few years. Add to this that my dad's new name for me was "Tubby" and I often wonder how I avoided becoming anorexic. Probably just because the bathroom was too close to the kitchen and my parents' room for any sneak purging and clean your plate was still the golden rule.

Instead, I languished through middle school and most of high school, outside the social loop. I made my own clothes, cut my own hair, was a total nerd and had few friends. By the sixth grade the only boy who wanted to be my boyfriend was shorter and far heavier than me. It seemed boys were nothing but a painful fantasy. By high school, I was a grade ahead of my peers and knew virtually no one. I was enough of an outsider at school that the lack of popularity seldom bothered me, and I never really knew what the popular kids might have thought of me. If a boy had expressed any interest in me, I'd have never seen the signals after being an outsider for so long. I was a senior before I had a boyfriend and even then I was playing the game without knowing the rules.

Somehow, I never really noticed when the other kids caught up or even passed me. Although thinking back I remember not being tall any more, I still remember that I felt bigger, fatter than the people around me. Looking at old pictures, however, I can see that wasn't really true. Even pictures from those most painful years, seen from the distance of age, reveal a kid who doesn't look like I thought I did.

Watching "Heavy," I see people who struggle with some of the same issues I did, but with such a different outcome. I cheer for their success at the same time that I wonder how they ever veered so far into territory that they probably at some point feared. I strengthen my resolve never to go down that path.

Walking miles each day, mixing Zumba, weights and yoga with my daily activities, and monitoring my diet with an energy that would exhaust less driven people may mean that becoming morbidly obese isn't likely to be part of my future. At the same time, understanding the seduction of food means I know that there could be a danger should there be a big change in my life.

And it means that while you may see a small person, needlessly obsessed with her diet, or imagine a person who can eat anything, my reality is a little different.

Somehow, I'm containing a fat woman who's waiting for the first sign of weakness to get out.

The Mountains Are Burning - Again

It's a mountain thing. No, really.

Down here in Surry County, we think it's just a Lowgap thing, but it's not. It's a mountain thing and one of those traditions that seems to die hard.

In the spring, the mountains burn. They've done so for decades and although they don't burn every year (and I don't even know if this year's fire, which started Feb. 14, was "set" or not), they burn.

We react as though it's a bad thing, especially if our homes are clustered so close that we can see the embers glowing after the sun goes down (not unlike the friend who made this picture). But the burning of the mountains isn't the evil we would have it be, especially if we didn't build our new mountain homes along the steep ridges and keep all those beautiful trees so close by to preserve nature.

My granny used to tell stories of the mountains burning.

Back in the 30s and 40s, and through the millennium before that, mountain families let much of their livestock run loose in warm months. While milk cows and the horses used for farm work needed to be close at hand, sometimes cattle and almost always pigs and other animals were branded (usually with ear notches that neighbors recognized) and left to wander the mountains through the warm months. There was no such thing as cars whizzing by at 60 mph to put an untimely end to the prospect of winter bacon. It was a much easier task to fence in gardens and let the animals find food wherever they could.

Hence, burning off the mountains.

Indians recognized that burning the prairies (I occasionally get a dose of the History channel from hubby) created new, tender growth that attracted game. Here in the mountains the same theory applied. Cows, sheep, pigs, whatever, couldn't eat the brush, and new growth was less likely to come up through inches of dead leaves. So the farmers burned the mountains.

If they were lucky, whoever set the fire did it on a still day in February or early March. Those who lived closest to the mountains kept an anxious eye on the wind and smoke, and if the fire turned, neighbors arrived to help keep the blaze away from buildings with wet sacks and hoes.

My grandparents had one of those farms through which the Blue Ridge Parkway eventually carved its way. The unsettled slopes of Fisher Peak weren't too far in the distance, and in the spring smoke would often curl over the mountain ridges.

I remember Granny told about one neighbor who had a white baby goat that followed her everywhere, and when the mountains were burning the goat came along when she and her family came to fight the fire. All day long the little goat followed in her footsteps as she beat a soaked cloth sack against the flames. At the end of the day, the little goat's hair was singed and he was as tired and dirty as the people who had fought the fire.

In those days, neighbors came together and only worried about what was worth saving -- homes and barns, corn cribs and haystacks. These days, it's still largely neighbors (better known as volunteer firefighters), but they fight the fire in the forest. They have to because not doing so could mean that instead of a brush fire that cleans the mountain, the fire feeds on several years of debris and grows to a blaze that leaves the mountains scarred and bare instead of ready to grow again.

It seems that, even without the livestock running free, we might be better off going back to the old ways, burning the mountains every year and concentrating our efforts as our ancestors did by taking care of homes and buildings.

The Reluctant (or Maybe Surprised) Caretaker

I never felt like I was born to be a caretaker. The whole baby doll, play house, girlie girl stuff didn't come natural to me. I'm a haphazard housekeeper, a mediocre cook (with a few good dishes, but no gourmet fare) and only batted about .750 on childrearing (they both survived and one has been successful).

My grandmother -- now she was apparently a born caretaker. Despite losing her own mother when she was only an adolescent and being booted from the house by an evil stepmother (no, it's not just in fairytales), she was the ultimate in nurturing. She spent her teen years tending house and raising other people's babies. As long as she was able she had a monster garden that filled the pantry and the freezer, her house was immaculate, there was always a meal to be had and any child needing a sitter had one. She was what I imagine the perfect grandmother should be.

With her as a role model, I feel a miserable failure. So it sometimes makes me pause to see the direction my life has taken in the last two years.

I'm virtually a full-time caregiver.

When I stumble into that bit of reality, I wonder if I had some misconception of what I was good at. Or if I'm just bumbling through what I'm doing now and that at some point I'll be found out as a fraud.

For 25 years I had a career and made good money. I knew the movers and shakers. I wrote the headlines, the editorials and the columns that helped people understand what was happening in the communities where I lived. I was, like it or not, somebody that people knew. I never left the house without being prepared for some event or at least the possibility of running into someone who knew me. Most of the things I liked to do took second, or often third, place to work, which consumed my evenings and often my weekends.

Then unemployment struck like a lightning bolt one fine January morning.

When the smoke cleared from the shattered illusions of what I expected out of life for the next 10 years or so, I was left with an altered landscape in which to live and I was, for a while, lost. As I began to find myself, it wasn't the things that I'd done for years that I wanted to pick up. It was the things I'd left undone.

I'd started boarding dogs as a sideline a year or so earlier because I saw a need and really enjoy the company of dogs. As I walked my few guests and my own pack in the mornings, I mourned for my loss of direction, and prayed for guidance. Either the job I was seeking would come through, or if I'm meant to stay here, more dogs would be good. Dogs showed up. I picked up odd jobs to supplement unemployment and the bills were getting paid. I was taking care of dogs and, while some had eccentric needs and desires, and the hours were lousy (would you rather get up at 6:30 a.m. or clean the kennels because bladders can't wait?) and seven days a week, I was happy.

Then there was the question of my eldest - the so-far successful offspring. She was expecting my first grandchild. Would I be willing to babysit? This was where the real shocker came in. Me, babysit? I had hardly spent 8 hours a day with my own children - other than holidays and weekends. And babyhood was never my favorite part of the process anyway. But at the same time in made economic sense. Why should she have to pay someone hundreds a month when I was home anyway? And where would I rather my grandchild be?

So I went for it. Nearly 18 months into this experiment (I still consider it an experiment), I occasionally chafe at the inability to leave the property during the sacred hours of nap time, but my days have become structured around a toddler's needs. And, to be quite honest, while I enjoy a "free" day now and then, I miss her big blue eyes and birdlike babble when she's not here. For the next six weeks, I'll have many of those days as she's home with her mom who has just added to the nest, and then the experiment will enter phase II. While Mom is wondering about handling two under 2, as a still befuddled grandmother, I'm doing the same.

When babysitting duties resume in late March, there'll be two granddaughters requiring my care and I'll be finding out exactly what I am made of. Will I snap under the pressure, requiring professional assistance to care for the children, if not to recover my sanity? Or will I adapt to this latest change with the same flexibility that has allowed me to get this far? Since this is not a role I'd have envisioned a few short years ago, I'm at a loss to give a good answer. Past performance, however, indicates I may manage to adjust.

What I do know is that each of these changes has enabled me to find out new things about myself, or at the very least rediscover things I'd forgotten. Perhaps the "dog whisperer" in me means I can also work with small children without losing my sanity as I keep drawing comparisons (socialization, training, etc. LOL) much to my daughter's chagrin. Once I accept that I'm going nowhere, there's something essentially rewarding and peaceful about spending the afternoon doing yard work or yarn work, depending on the season.

And the rewards, if not financial, are ample.

The dogs greet me each morning with wagging tails and excited barks as I drag my coffee-wakened self through the chilly air for "out." Cold noses and warm tongues proclaim their undying devotion, until their humans return. A brisk walk in the morning sun gives my heart the workout it needs, and sends them back to the kennel ready for rest.

The toddler greets me with a happy dance and searches for a word to call me. We're shooting for Mimi, but whatever label she pins on me I'm sure I'll accept. Cuddles and kisses share germs, but warm my heart in ways I still find surprising.

No, I'm afraid I'll never turn into my grandmother. I'll never measure up to that standard, even if I do manage to learn a thing or two from it. And I think most important thing I've learned may have come from my own perspective -- dogs or kids alike can tell when you fake it.

Love them and the caretaking comes easy.

Cold and flu season has new meaning with a toddler

I haven't had a cold for years, especially the last two years when human contact has been limited to my husand and occasional outings where I generally didn't spend a lot of intimate time with anyone.

Put a toddler into the equation, however, and all that changes.

My granddaughter comes each day while her parents are at work. We have lunch, she naps, and we spend the evening doing what adults do with little people they love, including lots of hand touching, kissing and cuddling.

All the germs I once passed by without any awareness, she tends to pick up by touching with her hands. Once they're on her hands, they go to her mouth where they incumbate until she's shedding them everywhere she goes. Eventually, she gets sick, but by then she's already shared her ailment of the month with me.

As a result I'm sick, again. Geez, I'd forgotten how awful it is to be sick. I now take pity on any fellow sufferer of anything from the common cold to a stomach virus or, heaven forbid, the flu.

The first ailment came along the end of December. Baby got up from her afternoon nap throwing up. Two nights later at the church's New Year's Eve celebration, I felt I was going to join her and a few hours later I did. Prior to that morning, I couldn't remember the last time I'd been sick to my stomach. And while the darling granddaughter was better in 24 hours or less, I was a good 36 in recovering. Her granddad, Mom and Dad also had a dose and we were all envious of her quick recovery.

Last week she came in with a runny nose, a day or so later she's acting like she feels better and I'm getting three hours of sleep and sore muscles from coughing.

Apparently whatever germs are involved are looking for one thing, new hosts. She's small and they want to move on. Once she's done her task -- spreading the love -- she gets better and those who have been given the bug of the day suffer on.

I know all toddlers are susceptible to any ailment coming down the pike and getting the bugs while she's this age means she will have fewer ailments when she gets ready to go to school. Kindergarteners who've gone to daycare miss less school, and first year teachers of little kids spend a lot of time sick. (I know because my mom taught first grade one year.)

So I guess I'll spend the winter battling every ailment that toddlers need to battle, since through isolation apparently I've lost the immunity I would have otherwise had. By the time she starts school I'll be well innoculated against most of the common ailments for a few years.

Maybe I'll invest in more sanitizing spray and wipes, to see if there's any hope for avoiding a germ or two. In the meantime, I may have to spend more time on the couch than I'd like.

And does anyone have a Kleenex?

Learning God's Love Through Parenting

If you're like me, you grew up going to church and hearing about God's fatherly love for us. That was all well and good for someone whose father was an affectionate, loving dad. Yet for me and many of my generation, those words didn't carry the same meaning.
Instead Daddy was a distant sort of figure. He was at work all the time, even though he was self-employed. The whole community counted on him and he was known across several counties, yet I didn't feel comfortable telling him about my day. Life around the house changed when he came home and wasn't as relaxed. As I grew older, there was no understanding for the pangs of adolescence or the conflicts of teen years. I don't remember ever hearing him tell me "I love you."
Granted, at some level I guess I knew my father loved me, but he was a product of his upbringing. Generations of strong mountain men who didn't betray their emotions, good or bad. They worked and provided for their families and that was all they needed to do. I have to say my dad did that and did it well. We always had food on the table, toys and clothes (although not necessarily the latest styles). I had a dog and a succession of wild pets, an allowance, and a car when I was 17. Life wasn't bad, but it did shape my view of God.
To me, God was distant and disappointed in my failures. My bad choices as a teen, my failed marriages, my acting out because I'd already failed so what difference did it make. He'd forgive me, because he was my Father, but I didn't really feel love in there as part of the equation.
Even when I had my own children, that view of God didn't change a lot. Yes, I loved them with all my heart and I was willing to die for them had it been called for. I loved them from the first time I felt them move in the womb, through dirty diapers, skinned knees, hormones and tantrums. Like me, God would have to find it easy to love the children who didn't fail.
That changed when my youngest child hit high school and discovered failing, not because he couldn't do better or make better choices, but because he didn't want to. He discovered drugs and alcohol, shoplifting and truancy. He cursed me when I wouldn't give him what he thought he needed. I made him leave home when he graduated from high school (he'd already left once on his own) and when he was 19 he was living in his car and unemployed, a far cry from the successful future I'd seen for him.
That's when I realized how much God loves us. Even though I dreaded my son's tirades and was worn down by trying to cope with him, even though he'd failed himself at so many levels and wasn't facing the rosy future he could have had, I knew I loved him. Then it hit me that God must look at us the same way.
He provides us with a plan for life, and we push it to the side to do things our way. We don't ask for His guidance and we make bad choices. We ask for things we think we need like mended relationships and better jobs, then get angry when those things don't happen. Spiritually, we wind up unemployed and living in our cars, hurt and angry because, after all, aren't we children of God? Isn't our life supposed to be better than this and wouldn't it be if He really loved us?
The simple fact is that, as a parent of a troubled child, you learn that love isn't always enough. For life to get better, the beloved sometimes has to listen and sometimes has to go through tough times, and even then everything won't necessarily be OK. Sometimes the course we're settled into will never lead to the life we could have had, but it will still lead us to heaven and our Father's arms because he loves us.
Accepting that real love means God forgives my mistakes just as I love my son through his troubles, means I've finally opened myself to more of God's grace than I ever imagined. No, life isn't suddenly full of rainbows and flowers. I'm still out of work, but my bills are paid and I have time to go to church and be involved. I still don't have a big house, but the one I do have keeps me comfortable. My wardrobe isn't the latest fashions and expensive accessories, but it suits my lifestyle. I still dream of earthly things I may never have, but I have a healthy granddaughter that I get to spend a lot of time with and, so far, my own health enabling me to do the things set before me.
My prayers haven't healed my son, but they've helped me look beyond his illness and past his struggles to help him when I can and say no when it's something I cannot do. And they've helped me put aside old hurts and learn to accept my Father's love.

Getting Ready for the Groundhog

If today with its shrouded skies and chilly temps were Groundhog's Day, we'd have spring nailed in a heartbeat. No groundhog equipped with anything less than a spotlight could see his shadow today, but that's unlikely to be the case in on Feb. 2.
Calling on the groundhog as a forecaster of spring has always seemed like an unreliable, at best, method of prediction anyway. Who decided a groundhog, who's been asleep for at least some portion of the winter, would be a good predictor of spring anyway? Just as likely to call on a snake or a bear, both of which also spend the winter sleeping -- although I'll admit the snake seeing its shadow would be a tricky call.
Besides, the whole emerging in February has less to do with spring than it does hormones. Groundhogs come out in early spring to do the nasty and go back to sleep so their little ones can be born when there's fresh greens to nibble and mama groundhog won't have to go too far from home to grab a snack. After all, papa groundhog isn't invited to share the family den and in fact moves on like the one hit wonder that he is.
Since the whole business is based on hormones, we might should pick an animal with a more predictable sex drive, like a skunk. Skunks, as members of the weasel family, must mate or die, which explains why so many of them wind up smashed on the yellow line this time of year. Pheromones are in the air and as they figure they've gotta get some or die; a Ford F150 is probably quicker and less painful than dying for a lack of love. Spring should carry the scent of skunk spray, since that aroma is such a good predictor of the changing seasons.
But while I'll confess to raising one random baby skunk, I've had a soft spot for groundhogs since my dad brought home a pair when I was in middle school. They were bottle raised, given unspellable names, Nee and Skee for short, and spent the summer dining on produce scraps from a local grocer and leftover items from the garden. We built them a high living pen out back, complete with a buried well tile for a den and a long metal pile leading to the surface. In their pen they had a hollow log to sun on and about 80 square feet of ramble room.
Skee didn't survive the first winter... Not that they responded to their names, but they were slightly different in color. For the next eight summers I gathered dandelions and clover, groundhog favorites, begged produce scraps, and in the fall scoured the local cabbage fields for leavings to see them into hibernation. Nee wasn't really a pet, as I seldom touched him although he would share his cage space with me; but he did escape once and returned, so I guess he was mine either way.
In my second year of college, two more baby groundhogs came my way. Once again they were raised with plastic baby bottles and a self-concocted formula of milk and corn syrup. They lived in a dynamite box in our dorm room, a hidden violation of the no pet policy. I named them Buddy and Ben, but Buddy turned out not to be such a pal and when he was large enough was released back into the wild a safe distance from the cow pasture that had led to his mother's demise.
Ben stayed and she was a true pet. She used a litter box, played, and in true groundhog fashion spent most of her time eating. She spent her first winter in a dark corner of the basement semi-hibernating and occasionally emerging to dine on wilting cabbage or some other scrap I might find. Her favorite foods were toasted oat cereal, bread and vanilla wafers, which she'd sit on her hind feet and devour. During waking times she enjoyed coming upstairs and playing some wild, tumbling game that groundhogs must reserve for their private moments.
Nee failed to come out of hibernation that year, so she was given his den for that summer and fall. By the next year I was married and she had a den of her own at my new home. She bit me that summer, razor sharp gashes to the bone in the index finger of my left hand, after I fell and dropped her. The fall scared her and she went into fight mode, which wasn't good with a few dogs around. While they would ignore her when told to do so, once she was upset and in fighting mode, all bets were off and I snatched her up by the scruff of the neck. That was safe, in case you ever need to pick up a groundhog, but when I decided I was going to drop her and put my other hand under her for support, well, she seemed to turn around in her skin.
She emerged the next spring apparently intent on finding a mate, pushing her way free of her wire cage and disappearing into the wilderness. I chained all the dogs and put food out - the same method that had led to Nee's safe return, but Ben had overcome her natural fears. While I was at work one day she returned to eat, then strolled up to one of the dogs who dispatched her post haste. I found only a portion of her remains, just enough to make a positive ID, and could only take comfort in the fact that the dog in question could kill a skunk (back to them again) without getting sprayed.
That was the end of my pet groundhog days. My dad no longer has the interest to sit by the hole where a mother has met her end and scoop the babies into a fishing net, and you just don't see the really little ones wandering around. Ben's demise was a temporary end to my orphan wild things days as I focused on work and eventually human babies. Later there were squirrels (again) and raccoons, but no more groundhogs.
Still, to this day I like to see the little furry creatures standing on their hind legs and nibbling a bit of dinner or scurrying through a field. They're welcome to take up residence in the wooded lot behind my house, and I hope the barking of my lazy lab will deter them from my garden, but if not I'll try to grow enough to share.
I wish that Ben had met a less untimely end, but her death taught me a lesson about returning the wild to the wild; although if I had another groundhog, considering their fate in the wild, I would probably not try to release it. She showed me there's more to the infamous whistle pigs than holes in bad places, shadows that frighten (and if the world were out to get me I'd be scared, too) and lots of eating. Nothing in her behavior, however, explained that fascination they seem to have with the shoulder of the road where so many are killed each summer.
So I'm prepared to salute the groundhog, expecting that as any small creature with common sense would do, he or she will emerge, react in fear to the world they've not seen in months, and dash back into hiding. We all know winter's not over, and if I had the option of sleeping the rest of it away, I think I'd go for it.
If, however, we get six more weeks of bad weather, I'm not blaming the groundhog. I think I'll blame the skunks.