Shifting family circles

Hal and I picked up our grandson at 2:00 yesterday morning and drove him to the airport. We hugged him and sent him off to Morocco where he will spend the next two years. We were all a little sad, but I could see both sorrow and excitement dancing in his eyes.

This comes at the end of a two-year exploratory period that’s seemed like a roller coaster ride. Having graduated from the university several years ago with an engineering degree and a desire to serve God and people in some needy place overseas, questions presented themselves. Where? Doing what? With which organization? For how long? The search took him down some interesting trails, all while he was holding jobs in the engineering field that put his salary at a level beyond what we’d ever earned. But he’s not in it for the money.

So now he’s off. I’m happy for him, but I’ll not deny the sense of loss I feel.

And this is not the first time I’ve felt this way.

Twenty-seven years ago, I discovered how important grandchildren were. It was like a new world opening up with these little critters playing an extremely important role. Of course, we were thrilled back when our own kids were born. But we were also terrified, not at all certain how we were supposed to carry out this parenthood thing. So much responsibility. As the years passed, we grew up alongside our kids. We learned by going where we had to go.

But with grandkids, it’s different. We’re already grown-ups (supposedly). And we’re not the ones responsible to bring up these marvelous creatures. We get to love them, play with them, spoil them, and on it goes.

Except when it doesn’t. Life, of course, is more complicated than that and all families are unique.  As Tolstoy famously said, “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” Even relatively happy families have their rough spots (or years). Not everyone gets along with their grown kids and grandkids.

But I’m reflecting on me, my grandkids, and loss.

Hal and I lived abroad when our seven grandkids were small. Four of them lived in Africa! We made a commitment to spend time with the African grandkids at least once every two years, and as often as we could with the three in Oregon. When we were together it often felt that we grandparents were the center of their world. They fought over who got to sit by us, pestered us to read the same books over and over, and gobbled up our attention as if they had been starving. It was exhilarating. And exhausting. We were the exhausted ones. Not them.

All that changed, of course, with the onset of adolescence. We probably never really were the center of the world for them, and we definitely were not when they hit the teen years. Peer relationships took over, as is normal and right. But I’ll admit, I missed all the focused devotion. It actually hurt my feelings when I’d visit and hear, “Hi, Grandma! Bye, Grandma! I’m going to spend the night at my friend’s.” I felt loss, the loss of my “special grandma” role.

Families keep changing. Kids grow up, get married, and allegiances re-form. Nuclear families spit like the atom and some particles get lost in space. At extended family gatherings Hal and I sometimes feel like relatives rather than family.

This for me is one of the scariest paths in this old growth forest called aging. I’ve struggled off and on all my life with the sense of being on the periphery. Now it sometimes feels like I’m losing the connections that tell me who I am and to whom I belong.

Just another opportunity to grow up, I guess. Maturity is a weird goal. When it seems like I’m getting close, something happens (or some grandkid hurts my feelings) and the goal posts stretch off into the distance again. But the Spirit keeps reeling me in, reminding me that Christ is the center, and that I belong to him.

(I realize that I’m switching my metaphor from football to fishing. But—oh, well. At my age, I get to do that.)

About those grown-up grandkids, I’ve noticed something weird and wonderful. The relationships keep changing, but now that we’ve begun to relate as adult to adult, it’s a new level of friendship, a greater sweetness, and a whole lot more fun. I can’t wait until they have babies and I get to do it all over again. Maybe by that time I will finally know what I’m doing.

So—Aren’s off to Morocco. I’m going with him in my prayers. I can’t wait to see what God will do in and through his life. I’m so glad I get to be one of his grandparents.

Not My Problem

 Garrison Keillor almost always makes me laugh. I love the way he tells the funniest stories with his deadpan, bored face. I can’t do that. If I come up with something funny, I start laughing way before the punchline. That’s not how it’s supposed to be done. I’d never make the grade as a standup comedian.

Keillor recently came up with a new book, Serenity at 70, Gaiety at 80: Why you should keep on getting older (2021). Needless to say, it’s funny.

In the Preface, he introduces the idea of “It’s Not My Problem.” Each morning he wakes up when he wakes up and ambles down to the kitchen, no longer “on a tight schedule or under close supervision…. I look at the front page of the paper and think, ‘Not My Problem.’” He considers the conflict between those who insist on vaccinations and those who vehemently resist, and smiles. Not My Problem. Freighters detained on the docks, straining the supply of goods to the populace. NMP. Climate change, immigrants sneaking across the border, protest marches, problems at his former place of employment, squabbles among his adult offspring. To all of the above (including a few additions to his list), Keillor says, “Goody goody gumdrops, though it is NMP.”

I suspect (hope) that most of this is tongue-in-cheek, for the sake of a laugh. Or for us to figure out that his real stance is hiding behind the clever words.

For us retired people, maybe “Not My Problem” is the right idea. When we were young and ambitious, wanting to change the world (or get rich), multi-tasking was the way to do it, stress and pinched nerves often a by-product. Everything was Our Problem. But that has passed away, presumably. This is the time to rest, write our memoirs, and go on cruises.

Maybe.

With my own adult children or grandchildren, there’s no way I’m able to say “Not My Problem.” When one of them suffers, I wake up in the middle of the night and try to pray away my anguish. It’s often best to stand back, pretend it’s NMP, and let them work it out themselves as independent adults. Except if they come to me for advice, which is happening less and less.

On a global scale, many of my friends say they no longer watch the news on TV. It’s all too negative, violent, and biased. There’s no way to know the truth what with all the infamous “fake news.” Hal and I disagree and nightly watch a news program we feel is relatively objective, “relatively” being the key term here. We take seriously our responsibility to be informed and pray over the world. But, truth be told, we wonder if there’s anything we can actually do about the different crises. Anything that would make a difference.

I know. Prayer is the most important thing I can do, and I think I believe that. But still I battle this restlessness, a sense of need to do something more to relieve the situation.

Take the ongoing war in the Ukraine. The images of bombed out towns, Ukrainian refugees trying to find shelter, Russian citizens protesting in the streets and being arrested, all of it is horrific. I feel so protected here in this comfortable retirement community, isolated from the world.

Take Russia’s threat of a nuclear response. With an unpredictable and immoral person like Putin in control, no one can take this threat lightly. No one, wherever they live and whatever their age, should say “Not My Problem.” It could become a problem with serious consequences for the world.

Again the question, what can we do? Hal and I are exploring the options, asking God for wisdom. One important action is honest discussion of this and other points of crisis, discussion right here in our community. It would be helpful to explore the what-to-do question together.

St. Paul admonishes Christians to “not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Philippians 4:6). That’s often hard for me to do, but I consider it the way of wisdom. I also think that this does not indorse a “Not My Problem” stance, even among the retired. It does not obliterate our responsibility as children of the Kingdom of God to cooperate in God’s mission to be peacemakers and stewards over creation. It does not erase our need to keep asking, “What can we do?”

I need more insight and discernment. Maybe you do, too. When is “Not My Problem” the correct way to think as we rest into these latter years? And when do we stretch ourselves, ask for strength, and join forces with others to bless and heal our world?

  

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Regrets--mosquitos or monsters?

The advancing years are times when our regrets come out from their cage and begin pecking on the walls of our brain. They can be tiny mosquitos or monster birds (or something in between), depending on their dominance in our thoughts.

My friend Mr. Webster defines “to regret” as “to be very sorry for….” The gret part comes from Old Norse and means “to weep.” The re prefix makes it a repeated state of mind. Drawn-out over time. We can regret something we did in the past or, perhaps more common, something we didn’t do. Persistent unresolved regrets can begin to march through our brains, letting the past trample the present. In classic understatement, that’s not good.

Being the different people we are, Hal’s regrets tend to take on monstrous proportions, while I bat away at mosquitos. Last week we were reflecting on our son David’s latest hiking adventure with his son (our grandson) and remembering all the great father/son things Hal did with David: week-long hikes on the Inca Trail, weekend excursions out on the Bolivian altiplano to visit small country churches, and all the shared activities that took place when Hal became assistant scout master. It was good.

But the one regret that continues to tease his brain—that he didn’t do the same thing for our daughter, Kristin. That regret can even give him a sense of failure as a father when I’m not able to talk him out of it. Actually, it did make Kristin feel bad, although we didn’t know that at the time. But, even more actual, she has forgiven him, helped, I hope, by the memory of all the fun stuff we did together while Hal and David were tramping about.

We had other failures as parents, of course. That comes with the territory. None of us does parenthood perfectly. But by God’s grace, sometimes the kids turn out well anyway. That certainly has happened in our case, and Hal and I keep reminding ourselves of that. And trying to let go of the regrets.

My friend Marcile told me the story of the time when her son was graduating from college and moving to another state for graduate studies. It was a turning point in his life, a leaving-home rite of passage. Marcile’s husband was expressing to their son his regrets at all the things he hadn’t done, including taking the time to pass on his mechanical skills so that Stan could fix his own car.

Stan responded, “Dad! You taught me how to be a friend! I have friends who can fix my car.”

Our regrets can blind us to our truer accomplishments—like passing on values to our children. Thank God for adult children who can set us straight.

I have regrets. Some of these mosquitos are peskier than others. Here’s a sample. I regret—

--that I didn’t keep up my Hebrew language studies or practicing my guitar. My Hebrew has joined the Lost Tribes of Israel, and my guitar skills are best kept private.

--that I never took the opportunity to visit Iguazu Falls, even though we lived just one country away.

--that I never learned how to cook Bolivian food.

--that I never asked my grandparents to tell me the stories of their lives. I was too busy growing up and establishing my own identity. Now they’re gone.

--More seriously, I think of people that, for one reason or another, I deliberately kept at a distance and probably hurt. A failure to love.

One of my tasks in these years is figuring out how to face and resolve my regrets. In some cases, I can actually do something to turn the regret around. I’ve found old journals and letters that are filling in some of the gaps of what I know about my grandparents; I’m writing these down to pass on to my kids. I’m currently taking guitar lessons. I could take a Hebrew class, but I probably won’t. My Bolivian friends have invited me over for some fine Bolivian meals, and I can live with that.

Iguazu Falls, and many other relatively small regrets, are just fading away. That’s what they should do.

In some areas, I’ve needed to ask for, and accept, forgiveness. And then let God’s grace carry the regret away on a Spirit wind. I’m in the process of learning how to do all of this. It doesn’t come automatically.

I love what poet Jarod Anderson wrote:

Our task is to become our truest selves and to smile
at the knowledge we will not succeed.

The key word here is smile. Relax. Let it go. Accept who and where we are now.

And I love the wisdom of Dag Hammarskjold in his journal, Markings, when he prays,

For all that has been, thanks.
For all that will be, yes.

That’s the kind of wisdom I want to grow into. 

Definitely probably

 I was walking out to my car when I crossed paths with a resident and a young man in earnest conversation. It looked like a grandma and her grandson. I caught just a whisp of their conversation as the young man said, “I definitely probably will go there.”

I had to chuckle, wondering if the guy realized he had just canceled out any certainty of going “there” (a graduate school?). Can anything happen definitely probably?

Well, maybe. Maybe he meant that this particular university was definitely an option and that he’d probably choose it. Maybe that’s what he meant. But probably not.

That’s just the way people talk, without much thought to the meanings of words or to the logic of their combinations.

On the other hand, there’s something appealing about “definitely probably.” Opposites often marry, with interesting results. The staunch firmness of “definitely” plus the wishy-washy sense of “probably” add up to an ambivalence that is characteristic of life.

I’m frequently always ambivalent. Sometimes I’m certain of something, but not sure it applies to me. Something can be absolutely true, but a bit iffy at the same time.

Example: when I was young, I understood that all people eventually grow old. I loved my grandparents. I noticed old people in the city park sitting on benches and wondered what they did when they were not in the park. As for me, old age would probably happen, but I couldn’t picture it or even really believe it applied to me.

Well. Happy birthday to me. As I write this, I have just turned 77 years old. Definitely.

But even now, I have a list of definite probables. Here’s a sample:

--I definitely probably will, sort of, keep getting older.

--I rather imagine my body will rebel in ways I can’t now imagine.

--It’s a possibility that a park bench will become more and more attractive.

--It’s definitely probable that I might become a widow someday.

--Death, of course, is the ultimate definite probability.

And yet….

Choose life, the Scriptures tell us (Deuteronomy 30:19-20). Whatever age you are, Choose life!

I have a choice to get out of bed every morning and either groan or say, Yes! I thank you, God, for most this amazing day! (Thank you, ee cummings.) I can choose to eat an orange, exercise to Vivaldi’s Four Seasons (or just one of them), hug Hal, write a poem, hug a tree, or sing (as long as no one else is around).

On bad days, I don’t do any of this. But even then, that’s a choice I make.

Today I’m 77 and I choose life. I may even remind my kids that it’s my birthday. And I will thank God that Hal remembers. (I reminded him last week.) I will thank God for the definites and trust him for the probables.

It’s looking like a good day.