Mairzy Doats and Regrets

I have no idea why or how, but a song my grandmother used to sing popped into my head. I started singing it out loud as I walked down the stairs in my office building (don't worry - no one else was there).

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?

Now, if your elderly relatives didn't sing this ditty to you as a child, you're probably wondering, "What the . . . ?"

It's what they call a "novelty song," and it's from the World War II era. It became popular on the radio, and the G.I.s fighting over in Europe liked it too. (Rumor has it they used the nonsensical lyrics for passwords.)

While she could be quite stern, my grandmother had a playful side - from convincing me that she could change red lights to green with her mind, to honking at cows (she told me they understood that to be a human "hello") - and she sang this song enough that it's taken up residence in my memory, popping out from time to time.

Walking through the near-empty building, I started humming it. It had been a while, so it took a second to get the whole verse. But when I did, two very different senses hit me, of goofy pride that I'd remembered the lyrics, and bittersweet nostaglia.

I still miss my grandmother, gone more than five years now. I regret the time lost that I could have spent with her, thanks to my family's absence from Maine for 15 years. We got along famously when I was small, but we never got to know each other as fully-formed adults. I think she would have liked me as an adult.

Lost in these thoughts, another emotion crept in:

Guilt.

I felt a slight pang of remorse, knowing that I was depriving my parents of grandchildren. Of that relationship my grandmother had with me.

And maybe, also, a little sad that I will never have a grandchild, no one with whom to share goofy songs, dubious psychic powers, and secrets that only grandparents and grandchildren share, things that too cool for Mom and Dad to know about.

I still feel it as I write; there is no wrap-up paragraph to explain how I dealt with these emotions. I don't know if there really ever will be. That slight tug at my soul, and at my decision to not have children, might remain forever.

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Oh, and in case you have no clue to what the song's about, sing it out loud.

No? Okay, sing this out loud: Mares eat oats and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. . .

Pretty silly, isn't it? But it makes me smile. Perhaps it made you smile, too. Teach it to your kids - they'll probably love it.

A Gift from Italy

My cousin Rich, who is stationed in Italy, sent me a wedding present!

His wife is due with their first child any day, and I was tickled to see that items in the box were wrapped in baby diapers! Diapers have come a long way - did you know they have Velcro flaps now? Amazing. Anyway...

They sent us two beautiful Italian crystal wine glasses (suckers are HUGE), a bottle of wine and best of all - boxed wine!

Now, I know what you're thinking. "They shipped a big 'ol box-o-wine to the U.S.?" But that's what's so awesome - it's not what you think it is.

In a cardboard sleeve were three little boxes - juice-box style! Individual servings! I couldn't get over it. So cute!

On the bottle of wine was a blue sticky-note that read "For celebrating!" And the boxed wine has a note reading, "For on the go! :)"

Good night, sweet pup

My family's beloved dog Benson has passed away.

Faithful to the end, and a fierce protector of the family and home as long as he was physically able. My parents originally got Benson as not just a pet, but as a sort of alarm system as well - my neighborhood had quite a few break-in's at the time, our house included.

I could hold him in the palm of my hand when we first got him, but he soon grew up to be a compact-yet-muscular dog, sweet to anyone who made it into the house with our permission, but heaven help the stranger who walked up to our yard.

My mother's third child, he thought he was a lap dog even though he weighed at least fifty pounds. He shed like it was going out of business and would jump on you, sometimes leaving bruises from his heavy paws and thick claws. Until a few years ago, he'd get so excited when he saw me that he'd go into a frenzy. His eyes were the sweetest things on earth. I think he could actually understand my mother, and my brother was his alpha male.

If you're not an animal person, it is probably impossible to comprehend how we could be so emotionally intertwined with a dog, much less sympathsize. But most people understand.

Fourteen years of devotion and unconditional love will leave a gaping wound in its absence.

Regrets and Memories

I was thinking about my grandmother.

If there had to be a downside to my age at the time of this wedding, it would be that none of my grandparents are still alive.

At one time, I was incredibly close to my maternal grandmother. And I wish like hell that she could have been here for my wedding. That part of my family lives far, far away from me, in Maine. When I was little, I, along with my baby brother and my mom, would fly People's Choice Airlines to Maine for the whole summer (People's Choice being the cheapest airline at the time, and there's a very good reason why they're no longer in business...). While my poor father toiled away in Florida, the three of us stayed with my mother's parents, who lived in the middle of nowhere - there's a lot of that in Maine. Did I mention that my mother doesn't drive? Needless to say, I spent vast amounts of time with my mom and my grandmother, going wherever my grandmother wanted to go.

Those were formative years. I learned a lot from her. She wasn't some old fuddy-dud; she still worked as a legal secretary, wore an ear cuff (remember those?) with a silver feather dangling from it. She loved dolls - she gave me two of my mother's childhood dolls, that I try to discreetly display, much to the consternation of my fiance - and she loved Roger Whittaker and Tennessee Ernie Ford.

She would try to sneak grapes into desserts just to torture my lovely, patient grandfather, who for some reason, really hated grapes. She loved the tinny sound of her Japanese car's horn, and would honk at cows just for the hell of it.

I don't know why - I'm sure money was involved - but we stopped going to Maine altogether around the time I was in grade school. And we didn't go back for over ten years. Of course, my grandmother still wrote me and I her, but we lost of lot of time. I lost of lot of time with her - oh, to be so young and foolish; to not realize that the clock doesn't tick forever for those older than you.

When I got my first "professional" job and had a little money, the first thing I did was fly me and my mom up to Maine for my grandparents' 50th anniversary. I think it was shocking to both of us - how grown up I was to my grandmother and how much older she looked to me. A lot had changed. She had stopped dying her hair, she had gotten religious and was teaching Sunday school (!!!). She had spent years raising one of my uncle's two boys during turbulent times.

It was such a blessing that we went on that trip, because a few months later, she had a stroke. And it demolished her. There was a body that still needed to be fed and bathed, but it was not my grandmother. I cannot tell you the relief I felt when she passed away, free from that prison at last. At the funeral, I was a stranger. No one knew who this woman was. "Oh, that's the granddaughter from Florida?" My cousins, two wonderful young men that she had help raise, were the "children" everyone comforted.

People got up and spoke, lovingly and respectfully; I just sobbed. And they were selfish tears. All that time. Gone. All those years I could have had with her, learned from her - missed. I was mad at all these people for not knowing how important I was to her at one time. I was (irrationally) jealous of my cousins for having those years. (Never mind that they would probably have rather had their parents together and happy instead.)

I know I sound like your mother, or some old auntie, but I can't help myself from writing it: if you still have your grandparents, or other older relatives, be glad. Be thankful that they love you and are there. We have no idea how important these moments are to them, seeing their grandchildren become adults, marry, have children or publish a book, start a business. I wish my grandparents could share this time with me.

A rather self-indulgent post, I know. But I expressed similar sentiments in a wedding forum, and the reactions were positive, and incredibly touching - so many women had stories of grandparents loved, never known, lost. Reading over this, I have to say, it's bittersweet; at least I had time with these wonderful, loving people. I can't imagine the hole that might exist for those who never knew their grandparents, or had cold, unloving grandparents.