Awkward Self-Examination

Part I — My crazy-cheap grandma

My grandmother–bless her heart–is the cheapest woman in the world. She’s one of those grew-up-during-the-great-depression types. You know the kind, right? The kind with a jar of string labeled “String too short to use” and a drawer full of used, washed, flattened aluminum foil. That’s my grandma. Even among her generation, she’s crazy-cheap. I know this because I’ve compared war-stories with lots of other people. This is a woman who monitors the use of toilet paper in her house (one square per use) and who uses the same water to boil vegetables day after day. She was buying in bulk long before it was cool. Her basement used to be full of boxes of cereal labeled things like “Post Toasties — July ’94.”

My grandmother is 95 and I feel so blessed that she’s lived this long. However (there’s always a however, isn’t there?), throughout my life, her crazy-cheapness has been a source of amusement and embarrassment and chagrin. While I love her, I’m not gonna lie. On more than one occasion, I wished I had a normal grandmother. Someone who would just bake me cookies instead of lecturing me about the value of the stamp. (Not even joking on that one.)

Part II — Yeah, I know I’m crazy

So here’s the awkward part. I’m a little crazy. Not in a cute writer way either, but in an annoying OCD way. My particular branch of crazy is related to the environment. I’m super aware of ecological issues. We recycle. We hang our clothes out to dry. We compost. We have an organic garden. We have chickens. We … you get the point. Yes, all of that stuff is fun and most of it is easier than you’d think. And I enjoy it.

But I’m also aware that my total devotion to all things green borders on the obsessive. Sometimes it’s on the normal side of the border. Sometimes it’s on the obsessive side. Some moms worry about germs. I worry about our carbon footprint. I know I’m a little OCD about it. I try to keep it under wraps, but I am aware that my ecology isn’t a sign of my emotional stability. I know I can tip over. I try to keep the crazy under wraps. And somehow being OCD about green stuff, allows to let other things go. It gives a focus to the crazy. It makes me feel like I’m in control. I can’t stop global climate change, but I can hang my jeans out to dry. For me, it works.

Part III — My awkward Self-examination

This weekend as I was composting chicken poop — yes, I know. Obsessive, right? — I had a light bulb moment. Yes, I’m crazy-green. But I’m also crazy green. Maybe my Grandmother is the same way. Maybe she’s not just crazy-cheap. Maybe she’s also crazy cheap. Maybe her obsession with saving every penny is her way of managing

Me with my grandparents when baby girl was little.

OCD.

In case you think I’m sounding judgmental here, I don’t mean to. Just the opposite, in fact. This realization has made me feel more … sympathetic, maybe. In the past, her cheapness has (sometimes) bugged the crap out me. Sometimes, it’s made it hard to even be with her. “Ugh. I need to mail XY&Z to Grandma, but I know she’s going to harass me later if I mail it Fedex. I just won’t mail it.” Which then leads to: “Ugh, I meant to mail her XY&Z. I don’t want to call her because she’ll harass me about that.”

Thanks to my new understanding, I can approach it differently. Now I can think, “Okay, doing it her way may be a pain in the ass, but I understand now. It’s not just cheapness. It’s something else. Something I can relate to.”

Now, will my new understanding lead to greater peace, contentment and acceptance in my relationship with my Grandmother? I don’t know. Maybe. I hope so, because I love her and enjoy her company when she’s not getting on my last ever-lovin’ nerve. How great would it be if my own form of crazy leads to a deeper relationship with my grandmother?

So how about you? Do you have a touch of OCD? Do you have family members who drive you crazy? How do you handle it?

Lucy and Ethel ride again

Normally I blog about my kids, but today I want to start what I suspect will probably be a series of blogs about me and my mom. I suspect there are lots of great moms out there, I’ve met many of them, but I dare say you won’t find one better than my mom. She’s great for many reasons, but one of the main ones is because she’s just plain fun to be around. We tease a lot that our antics, which have often involved my sister as well, are very much like Lucy and Ethel from I Love Lucy.

Someday I’ll tell y’all about my mom vs. the bus when we were traveling in London. And someday I’ll tell y’all about her very bad idea involving Ben-Gay. But today I want to tell you about her most recent chuckle-inducing behavior. Now in the last couple of months I was having some medical issues that required weekly visits to the specialist. My mom came with me to those visits because The Professor was teaching summer school.

On one such day we’d left the appointment with some bad news and I was tired and upset and hungry because I hadn’t been able to eat breakfast that day. So we stopped at the first place we saw, which happened to be a McDonalds. We went through the drive-thru and as I was driving around she informed she had to go to the bathroom, so I parked and waited. I was halfway into my Egg McMuffin when I saw her walk to the driver side of the car and then she proceeded to get into the car parked next to us. I was trying to honk and bang on the window to get her attention, but luckily the poor girl sitting in that car (whom she scared half to death) assured her that she was in the wrong vehicle.

Eight days later we were out running errands and we left the store and I was walking to the car and was talking to her, turned around and couldn’t find her. I looked around and called out because I was concerned she might have fallen, but nope, she got in someone else’s car again. And before you think she’s suffering from dementia, she’s not, she’s sharp as a tack. I think it’s mostly that she’s terrible with car descriptions. Both of the vehicles she got in were small SUV’s like mine, but neither were a Honda and neither were blue. And she’s actually done this before…

Several years ago (before I was even married) we had stopped at the small grocery store on the way home and I was driving her car. She had gone into the store and I waited outside. Out of nowhere an intense rainstorm started and by the time she came out it was pouring and when I say pouring, I mean like crazy, fat drops drenching the ground. In any case she came out of the store and proceeded to go to another vehicle even though I was honking trying to get her attention though admittedly I was laughing hysterically too as she actually pounded on the window of the other car. She finally found me, but she looked like a severely wet and irritated cat by the time she got in with me.

So there you go, my mom’s latest funnies. There are more, I assure you. So how about you? Have you ever gotten in the wrong car before? Or what’s the funniest thing that’s happened to you lately?

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I’m Robyn DeHart, AKA Basket-Case Mama, but not because I’m crazy (though really, what mom isn’t?) but because I have a slight obsession with baskets, well containers really. I’m a bit of an organization nut and I love to containerize stuff. And yes, I’m authorized to use words like that because I am also a writer. But back to the kids, so I’m mom to two ridiculously beautiful little girls and I can say that without bragging because I didn’t actually make them. Last year my husband, The Professor, and I adopted said little lovelies from the foster-care system here in Texas and now we’re a big happy forever family. Busybee is three and so full of joy it just oozes from her. Babybee is a walking-talking toddler who has a heck of a temper but is so cute, it almost keeps her out of trouble. Though neither of my girls are newborns, I’m fairly new to motherhood compared to the other peanut butter moms, but we’ve settled in as a family as if we’ve always been together. When I’m not trying to keep up with my two bundles of energy, you can usually find me on my laptop on Pinterest, no, that’s not right, um…you can find me writing, yes, that’s it, writing my latest historical romance. www.robyndehart.com

Old enough–finally

As I write this, I am in St. Joseph, Mo, my parents home town, visiting my grandmother. Grandma Gray, as I’ve always known her, is now 94. Though she lives in an assisted living center, she requires very little assistance. She still gets around pretty well, exercises daily, and is as sharp as tack. One of the greatest gifts in my life as been that she has lived long enough for me to know her as an adult as well as a child. I brought my two young children with me for this short trip. My daughter, who is almost seven, loved every moment of her time with Grandma Gray. My son, who is four, certainly had fun–generally–but seemed to actually bounce off the walls a time or two. All in all, it’s been a good visit and I’m so thankful I came.

My Grandpa Marc, my Grandma Gray and I when my daughter was just an infant.

That hasn’t always been the case for my visits with my grandmother. Don’t get me wrong. I love her dearly. I always have. And she is a genuinely nice and caring person–to strangers. Among family, she can sometimes be harsh and judgmental. She has smothered me with disapproval and criticism. Throughout my twenties, even though I was college-educated, gainfully employed, married and managing my own finances and household, she treated me like a child. Nothing I did was good enough. And I’m the kind of person who continually strives to be not just good enough, but perfect. I’m the kind of person who feels criticism deeply. I can’t tell you the number of times she would give me some task to do while I was visiting. She’d have me put up wall paper trim or rehang the curtains or frame some photos. Jobs that weren’t big, but that she couldn’t manage herself. Things I would gladly do for her–except that she’d stand over me, watching, criticizing and huffing with disapproval.

This attitude has never been limited to these menial tasks she gives me, I merely use them to illustrate a point. All my life she has disapproved of my weight (I’m not obese, but a good twenty pounds over weight). And don’t even get me started on my career … no wait, too late. I’m started. She didn’t like romance novels. Thought they were smut. She once told me my book made her sick to her stomach. (Honestly, I knew she wouldn’t approve of the premarital sex in them and begged her not to read my books. I even considered not telling her my pseudonym.) Once she asked how much I made per book. Idiot that I am, I told her. For years after she introduced me by saying, “This is my granddaughter, Emily. She writes smutty novels, but at least it pays well.” As if those two things weren’t enough, as a nice little cherry on top, she never trusted my opinion. My husband and I could give her identical advice and she’d ignore me completely and then jump on board the second he suggested the same damn thing.So you can see why–even though I love my grandmother and cherish her many good qualities–I haven’t been eager to visit.

But an interesting shift has happened in our relationship over the last few years and I think I have my children to thank. I think–regardless of my age–she never saw me as an equal until I had kids. Somehow, having kids, magically made me into a person worth listening to. Or maybe, now that I’m a mother, I finally have things to say that she’s interested in hearing. Either way, I’m glad for the shift in our relationship. (It helps that she’s changed her attitude about my books, but that’s a topic for another post.) I’m so thankful that she lived long enough for me to know her as an adult. For the past seven years, we’ve shared a unique camaraderie. We are both part of the great sisterhood of mothers. Okay, so maybe it’s not unique. I bet nearly half the people in the world are mothers. Maybe new is a better word. However I describe it, I’ve enjoyed it immensely Finally, she treats me like an adult. Today, she even took financial advise from me. It feel like I’m ushering in a new era.

Do you have any difficult relatives? How do you manage them? Has your relationship, like mine, changed over time?

Mothers-In-Law…They Exist. They Love Us. In Their Own Way.

Okay, I’m the luckiest. My mother-in-law is my favorite. My favorite anything. Just my favorite. Her name is Dorothy. Friends call her Dottie. I call her Mom because she’s simply that…my second mom–and so special to me.

Another person who can claim the title of mother-in-law to someone is Anne Lamott, the renowned author of OPERATING INSTRUCTIONS, a fabulous book about her early years as a mother to baby Sam. She’s now written (with the adult Sam) SOME ASSEMBLY REQUIRED: A JOURNAL OF MY SON’S FIRST SON, which is in part about her experiences being a grandmother and mother-in-law. Anyway, Anne shows up at the end of this post in a hilarious interview and comes across as a great mother-in-law, but I wouldn’t trade her for Dorothy. Not for a skinny minute would I even consider it! In fact, I will mud wrestle anyone who says they have a better mother-in-law than Dorothy Wentz Kramer.

At first, I was a little afraid of Dorothy (for the purposes of this post I’ll call her that, and it suits her: she’s as wholesome and sweet as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz). But Dorothy scared me at the beginning because the day I met her, my husband introduced me as–

His fiancee. With the little accent on the first E, of course, if I only knew how to make one.

That poor woman. I would kill my sons if they ever introduced their future wives to me as their fiancees before they were plain old girlfriends! And the worst of it was, I met Dorothy on the day she was giving A Party for the Boss, my father-in-law’s boss, and it was a fancy party for at least fifty people! Can you imagine how discombobulated she must have felt? I remember her standing in her kitchen and looking out at her dining room table, where each empty party dish had a slip of paper inside with phrases like clam dip, mini quiche, and mushroom pate (although the actual dishes were much more sophisticated than the ones I list here–she’s the queen entertainer!). I sensed her drawing herself up inwardly and deciding that she would forge ahead, no matter what! Which is no surprise–she was a Navy captain’s wife, and nothing disturbs the spouses of our senior military officers.

So anyway, there I was, the fiancee, and I showed up about five hours before the big party.

Dorothy was so gracious.

We’ve had 23 fabulous years together since that day. My second mom has stood by our little family through hardships and good times. At one point, I lived with Dorothy and my father-in-law Ted, with two little babies in tow and a husband absent at sea. Mom was the best. We drank International flavored coffee together and talked and watched movies, and she’d take me to her women’s club functions. She did everything she could to support me through the lonely times with my husband gone and the scary times when our children got sick–both had medical emergencies when we lived with Grandma and Grandpa Kramer.

Best of all, Dorothy never questioned my abilities as a mother. She gave me respect, and she helped me feel competent when I didn’t know what the heck I was doing!!!

I wish for all you moms out there a mother-in-law you can talk to and share good times with. No relationship is ever perfect. I’m sure I’ve let my mother-in-law down sometimes. I’m the worst picture taker in the world, for example, and I tend to forget birthdays, which is so self-centered of me. But I know she loves me, and I love her. We are true family.

Now, to celebrate MIL’s, watch this hilarious outtake from an interview with the genius writer Anne Lamott. She has a lot to say about being a mother-in-law…or maybe a lot not to say…you’ll see what I mean.

Cheers,

Kieran