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.