Well played Grandma, well played.

Mum posted a reminder on facebook today that not only is this weekend the festival of Imbolc and St. Brigit's day but that it is also the source of her mother's middle name. My maternal grandmother was born in 1914 on January 31st. Custom in Ireland at that time was to name your child with the closest religious feast day (perversely, the roman catholic church was the original culture jammer). So on January 31st, 1914 an infant girl named Marie Brigid O'Sullivan launched into this world for a much too short life. She died of skin cancer in her 50s after a lifetime of tanning (which is still a strange fascination of women in Ireland, despite all evidence that this practice leads to skin cancer). My grandmother was also the victim of torture known as symphysiotomy. The long term effects on her health due to this horrific procedure we might never know but she got sicker and sicker after each of 6 live births and had to remain hospitalized for a very long time after her last child was born in 1957 (her pelvis had to be rebroken since it hadn't healed correctly after the procedure).

I have written about my maternal grandmother before. She was a fantastic storyteller (or in Irish, seanchai). How do I know this? Well one of my earliest memories involve her telling me the story of the food growing in her backyard.  She was dying and Mum went back with me and my infant sister to spend a few months with her. We were the only grandchildren she ever got to meet. I am the eldest of 18 grandchildren (and a still growing posse of great grandchildren and two great great grandchildren) on my maternal side so there is a huge gap in our lives due to this loss. I remember her pointing to the fruit trees and her telling me that they were planted in that location in order to maximize the sun they would get. Grandma literally planted the seed of my food justice activism because I remember being fascinated with how much thought went into something like the fruit I enjoyed eating.

Despite her early death one particular story of hers continued on in my life and has had a lasting legacy. I had an early talent for mathematics and was often told the story of how my grandfather was also gifted in math and had scored in the top 10% of the national Irish exams in math. Alas, as the only son he had to forgo studies in the subject in order to support his mother and sisters after his dad died just as he was finishing secondary school. As a child, Mum was given strong encouragement by both her parents for learning to do arithmetic in her head so she wouldn't be stuck serving tables. Grandma often told her the story about her dad as an explanation for the talent she was displaying. This encouragement helped her to excel in maths and is was what enabled her to have a successful career as a corporate accountant. And this encouragement also helped me excel in maths and I felt so proud obtaining the mathematics degree in 1990 that my dear grandfather was unable to obtain.

So imagine our surprise when in 1996, after my grandfather passed away, we were all back in my mum's childhood home in Ireland clearing out some bedroom cupboards and we came upon Grandpa's Leaving Certificate. His standing in Maths? Ordinary level/pass.

So today dear Grandma, I am having a good chuckle in your memory as I unpack into a new house and hang up my two framed degrees (one math, one engineering) obtained via a story you told to your daughter and that she passed along to me. In the parlance of today's world:  well played grandma, well played.

Shattered Family Ties

Daughter is home today after 22 days with Mother. September 1st is move in day at her university.  I have exactly one month left of her at home.

I continue to sift, sort, trash, recycle and gift the possessions in my house.

Yesterday I opened a package that Mother has yet to bring back with her to Newfoundland.  It was the below picture, in a frame.

I held the picture for a good few minutes.  This woman has been dead for nearly twenty years.  She is my aunt by marriage.  She married Mother's 3rd brother and they were the only extended family that we had in Canada and we spent a little bit of time with them throughout my childhood.  Sister and I were flower girls in their wedding.  They came to the big life events of good catholic households:  first communion, confirmation, wedding, etc.  This particular uncle was legendary in the family since he started smoking by eight years of age and started charging interest to his older siblings for loans at about the same time.  He is now a senior banker and has resided mostly in South and Latin American countries since shortly after his wife passed on, suddenly.  He quit smoking years ago and used to run marathons with XHusband.  I believe he still runs.

I thought about how I'd love to have known this woman, my aunt, throughout my adult life.  She passed away before I was comfortably esconced in adulthood - I was merely 25 years of age and living in a town about 2 hours from where she lived.  My memories of her are of a woman that had a fabulous sense of humour and a wry take on life.  I believe I would have enjoyed her immensely if I had been given the chance to live closer to her as I raised Daughter.

And then it hit me.  The loss of this woman was preceded by the loss of another woman that I was not given a chance to get to know, even in childhood.  The loss of my maternal grandmother.  I was shattered.  I was gripping the frame and choking back tears.  The loss of these two women left an enormous gap in my family structure and the subsequent decades of dysfunction - which show no sign of abatement - seemed to mirror their deaths.

My aunt, just before she died, suddenly, in 1992.

It struck me how the glue that holds families together seems to exist in the maternal bonds.

Mother was a young adult in a different country when her mother passed away.  A country that was extremely expensive to get to or from relative to the inexpensive costs of travel today.  My maternal grandfather did his best to keep the family relationships alive and together (with a healthy dose of solid dysfunction added) but after his death in 1996 the shreds of familial connections started to fray. At this point in my life I feel very little connection to the sixteen younger (living) maternal cousins and various and sundry second cousins that are still springing forth due to the fact that I am the eldest and the youngest cousins are still toddlers (I have two uncles that reproduced as seniors).  There are a couple of exceptions to this but living in a far away country makes it difficult to maintain any sort of intimacy.

Daughter, at seventeen, willingly chose to spend 22 days with Mother.  Would I have done the same at her age?  I was not given the choice since both grandmothers were dead at that point in my life. I do know though, that most of my entire life I have felt like a buoy that is not anchored.  Yesterday was the first inkling I had that the anchor I missed having was real and not just a product of years of reading self help books that described dysfunction in detail but rarely beyond the immediate family.  My maternal grandmother was an anchor that kept my maternal family afloat and her tragic loss before her family had grown left a gap that still reverbrates. And the loss of my aunt did the same - shattering the one meager extended family relationship I had on the new turf her, my uncle, and my parents chose as home.

And today, having found and named the lost anchor I feel I have actually sealed the cracks in my foundation. Mother is writing a memoir about her mother.  I eagerly await getting to know my lost anchor and feel enormous gratitude that Mother's anchoring presence is still in my life.

An only

In my lifetime I have seen the disappearance of the large family in the socio-economic landscape of North America.  We all know of them.  The families with 4 - 10+ children.  An old neighbour of mine, 10 years my senior, is the eldest of 14 children.  Both my parents came from small Irish 1940s-50s families...four children in dad's, six in mum's.  The largest families I know today have four children and they are anomalies.  Most families only have one or two children...sometimes three (gender 'triplets', as often as not).

In most modern North American families the parents decide when or if there will be other children.  The miracle of birth control has allowed this decision making to be easily enforced and the availability of safe access to abortion makes any errors in judgment or failures of birth control remedied effectively (if desired).

However in some families there are choices made, either by nature or nurture, that disrupt this parental decision making pattern.  I was raised in such a family and it is only quite recently that I have accepted this.  I had one sibling, a sister, for nearly forty years and then, she disowned us.

Seeing the starkness of that last paragraph brings a lump to my throat.  You know that saying, "You can choose your friends but not your family."  Well, my sister wised up to this about five years ago and got the hell out of her own personal Dodge which included the entirety of her blood relations - and all connections to Canada.  So although she did not choose her family, she claimed personal freedom by firing the lot of us and moving overseas.

I played some part in this and tried to own the whole thing, for many years. I only recently realized that as usual, I was overcompensating.  Trying to take blame on where blame was not due.  In fact, there is no blame to be had anywhere in all of this.  It is comforting to finally realize this.  In my small 1970s immigrant irish catholic family we were victims.  Each and every one of us. Victims mostly to a society that has changed with an alarming and ferocious speed since the dawn of the industrial era.

I admit to being overwhelmed by sadness at times about this loss.  I also admit to being angry that I am left to deal with aging parents on my own.  I find I have a grudging admiration for the tenacity it takes to follow through on this.  A tenacity that I feel, for myself, is best directed at other things.  Like staying off the smokes and exercising daily. 

Throughout the course of my life I have often been overwhelmed by feelings of being trapped.  As a single parent this was manifested quite magnificently.  Wisdom is now allowing me to see that the only thing that ever traps me completely is my own attitude and by blanketing myself with the feeling of being trapped I am unable to see anything to move forward towards.  Being trapped is a very safe way of being.  A comfort zone, if you will.

In order for me to loosen and start to remove the blanket that traps me I know I don't need to fire my family.  But I do need to acknowledge that I really am now an only child. And there is no-one and nothing to blame for it.  It just is.

Click pic to find source:  an excellent blog post about the
advantages of being and raising an only child.