Three Things My Pop-Pop Taught Me

1973 - First Grandchild (Me!)

2015 - 91st Birthday Party

Albert Henry Shanabrook

August 16, 1924 – October 20, 2016

Three things my Pop-Pop taught me:

1. Live up to your potential. He always wanted (and fully expected) the best out of his kids and grand kids. He urged us not to waste our God-given talents and to use all our abilities to make a good life for ourselves, just as he did. He worked hard as an engineer and made a wonderful life for his wife and three kids and traveled all over the world. 
2. How to read a map. When I was a kid, he would take me in his little silver Honda hatchback (which I loved because I could see out the windows better than any other car), hand me a map and point to where we were and where we were going. Then he’d say, “Okay, tell me how to get there.” It was always local places, not far, but I sure did learn how to figure out directions!
3. To love, appreciate and want to play music. Every time I hear Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, I think of Pop-Pop. He would play the record for me all the time and tell me what all the instruments were (each instrument represented a character in the story). It was my first experience getting chills while listening to good music. He also got me started playing the clarinet, which I continued through college. Honestly, if it weren’t for playing an instrument, I never would have met Erik – and now look at the musical talent our daughters have. It all began with Pop-Pop!

I was so incredibly lucky to have known all four of my grandparents for such a large part of my life. To think that I didn’t lose any of them until I was in my 20s and now to have lost the last two of them in my 40s – what a lucky girl I am!

Five Minute Friday - Surprise

Linking up with Five Minute Friday today, writing for five minutes, unedited on a one-word prompt...

This week's prompt is:

Surprise...

I shouldn’t be surprised that I had a child who is just like me…after all, my mother (and probably my father, though I can’t bring to mind a memory of hearing him say that to me, while my mother’s voice rings loud and clear in my head) wished it on me many years ago.

We are both strong-willed (stubborn, if you prefer the more negative sounding adjective), driven and have perfectionist tendencies (okay, maybe more like streaks than tendencies if I have to be honest, at least about myself). What is most surprising to me, however, and hardest to deal with as far as my attempts to figure out how to connect with her and make our relationship less combative, is that we are strong-willed, driven and perfectionist with regard to very different areas of our lives.

I have to remind myself that the things that are important to me at this time in my life, as the full-time work-outside-the-home mother of three are not even on the radar of my accomplished, talented and brilliant high school junior trying to figure out what her future holds.

This is the surprise of parenting – even though I’ve been where she is, it’s so far in my rear-view mirror that watching her go through it is like experiencing it all over again, but with jaded eyes and to-do lists running amok in my mind. Here’s hoping we can surprise each other with a little more grace, compassion and empathy offered back and forth during this transition that is happening at warp speed to our whole family.

Lost...and Found

More than 50 years ago, my great-great Uncle Charlie built a beautiful set of wooden doll bunk beds as a gift for my aunt. They stacked perfectly, one on top of the other, sturdy yet delicate at the same time, little spindles on each side, to be able to peek at the baby dolls sleeping inside.

My grandmother made linens for the bed – vinyl mattresses and pillows with fitted sheets and pillowcases, all tied together by matching quilts, little white rosebuds gracing the clean white background.

Once my aunt outgrew them, I imagine they must have been lovingly stored in a safe place, because all of my earliest memories of playing in my room include those very same doll beds. I tucked my babies in under the hand-made bedding and watched as they were moved up to my parents attic when I thought I was too old to play with dolls any longer.

They made their way out of that attic and into my living room many years later, as I watched my firstborn daughter and her younger sister play with them. Then, when we were preparing to stage our little starter house to sell and move to a larger house, we moved them again. Our “bonus baby”, born quite a few years after her big sisters, was still too little to play with them (and would have, in fact, tried to climb IN them, I’m sure).

Fast forward to Christmas 2015. I thought they would make the perfect gift for our four year old and headed to the basement, filled to the brim with all of the boxes and old furniture that had been in our storage unit while we sold our old house. They were nowhere to be found. I had my parents look in their attic, thinking I may have asked them to store them so they wouldn’t get banged up during two moves, once to the storage unit and then again to the new house. I was disappointed when we discovered they weren’t there either. And I was nearly devastated when they weren’t in the only other place I could imagine I would have sent them – to my brother’s house for his girls to enjoy.

Many times over the past few months, when I would think of them, I would get a sick feeling in my stomach, aching to know where they could be, knowing I would never have given them to anyone outside of the family. As our little girl’s fifth birthday approached, I so wished we could give them to her. I even went as far as researching new doll beds, but never actually bought one because they paled in comparison to the ones passed down through my family.

Last Saturday, my husband left to help his mom put some things into her attic. He had been home for several hours when he said he needed help getting something out of the van. I followed him out to the driveway, he opened the back of the van and I saw the doll beds. I burst into tears and looked at him in confusion. We had apparently stored them in his mother’s attic before we moved, but neither one of us remembered it.

I am so thrilled to be able to give this precious toy to our little girl for her fifth birthday. She won’t understand it now, but I hope that someday she appreciates the history and love behind these beds that hold more than baby dolls. They hold the memories of three generations of girls - hours of happiness, playtime and opportunities to develop a nurturing spirit. Here’s hoping the next generation will have a chance to be similarly blessed – as long as we remember which attic they are stored in next time!