So in addition to being on the road for the past months, I have had my daughter, her husband and her two boys, now ages twoish and 5 months, living with me. They have moved back home after a stint in Los Angeles where their boys were born.  I think they found, as we all did who experienced it, that child number two is an exponential increase in activity/responsibility (i. e. work!)  and the man to man defense becomes a full court press leaving you screaming for more adults on your team.

Moving in with YaYa and Pops, as my husband and I are affectionately called, until they can find their own home has been a joy and a challenge for all of us.  Living in a multi-generational home is pretty standard in most cultures but in the United States, not so much. Here when you make the transition from “You’re so young, I can’t believe you are grandparents” to “move your walker, I can’t see the TV,” we elderly ones are ferried off to old folks homes with the polite, obligatory visit on Sundays. Seldom do you end up in a child’s spare room.

So my situation is a good one.  They are the squatters and I can decide when my hotel has no vacancy which I anticipated would occur at about a week to ten days of our cohabitation.

But I had not anticipated one aspect of my new living situation.  Falling madly, unabashedly, completely in love with my grandsons.  Like young love, all your boundaries, rules, previous relationships are overshadowed and pushed to the side when you open your front door and a small voice calls “YaYa!!!!” and you are immediately enveloped by knee high hugs and kisses and an adoring, unbearable sweet grin facing up in wild anticipation of your next move.

I was not an especially stellar infant/ toddler mom.  I am not an early morning person.  I don’t like sitting on the floor to do any thing much less count matchbox cars.  Sesame Street I found to be a life saver but sort of stupid.  I mean really. Why didn’t Big Bird have a name?  Everyone else did? They didn’t call Snuffy “Large Elephant.”

No, I basically had toddlers to enjoy teenagers.  I adore kids just when everyone else wants to give them away.

So this transition to really, really loving a day spent with a two year old has been a brave new world for me.  I broke all my original rules for child rearing in the first two days. I sneak my grandson cookies, we play silly games like “where is Mr. McGillicutty?” while driving in the car.  I don’t even know who Mr. McGillicutty is or where he came from in the recesses of my feeble brain but we look for him all the time. (Just googled it.  Should have known it was an I Love Lucy phrase.) I drive carpool for nursery school.  I buy pizzas by the carton to support it.

Anyway, the most recent crack in my usually impermeable veneer, was the introduction of the sport of hockey to my grandson, Charlie. We live in the cold midwest where hockey is religion but when my own son cried though his first skating lesson I shed tears of joy that I would never have a 5AM ice time practice or a 7AM game in Timbucktu.

Not so with precious Charlie.  The moment he showed interest in scooting a plastic lemon slice across the kitchen floor with a spatula, I was calling the ice rink to see how early he could start lessons.  Hearing sadly they began at age 3, I settled for asking about their next Pee Wee practice (the gifted 11/12 year-olds headed for the NHL).  The next day at 5:30 PM sharp we were there for the big event.  We arrived just in time for the Zamboni man, sweeping the rink to a crystalline shine to which my California born surfer child, who had never seen ice exclaimed, “Wow, YaYa!”

And it was all uphill from there.  The players arrived in their full padded glory–skates, helmets, mouthguards–wisking the magic black pucks back and forth into the nets.

Charlie stood transfixed with his tiny pink nose pressed against the glass, his fingers tapping gently against the barrier. His smile, ear to ear.

Now we have a new game we play in the hall each morning, broom hockey.  The puck is whatever he finds to use and the rules are whatever he chooses. My brooms are turning to hay and white paint chips are falling off all my baseboards. I’m sometimes still in my goalie PJ’s at noon.

Come on, he had me at “Wow, YaYa!”

It has been brought to my attention by my youngest child (lower left) that the expression I use of hers is not in fact “anywoodles” as in anyway but “anyhoodles” as in anyhow.  I was sort of fond of woodles and had gotten comfortable with it.  Dropped it in conversation here and there.  It was working for me.

But, life is change and some say change is good (I go back and forth on that one) so on this Mother’s Day 2012, I will laugh at my mistakes, big and small, (see orange person above guffawing) and move on.

With anyhoodles in my hip pocket, who knows?  The sky may be the limit.

I received an email from a reader that I decided to share with you since tomorrow is Mother’s Day and, aside from Hallmark, I think you can always say it best with flowers.  The reader explained very sweetly that he had two moms, “they are lesbians.”  I appreciated his candor and also it was helpful in case I might have assumed he had a mom and a step-mom. Anyhoodles (see post 2/26/2012), he had researched the care of cut flowers on a website that made them sound more high maintenance than a small herd of  hippos so I felt obliged to assuage his doubt and confusion and explain there is simply little better than a gift of flowers. Especially from a son. I wrote:

Dear Joe (name changed to protect the innocent),

I received videos of two commencement addresses by email this morning. I am sure I will receive more and I have to admit, I always look forward to them this time of year. All those fresh faces in the crowd, the speaker full of sage advice, usually witty vignettes about their own college years and most certainly earnest reflection.

One was Steve Jobs’s 2005 address at Stanford and the other CNN’s medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta’s recent address to the Class of 2012 at his alma mater, The University of Michigan. Both used numbered ideas, imaginary point bullets if you will, that outlined their version of how to handle, look at or best utilize one’s future.  Each urged their crowd of twenty one-ish,  fidgety, probably hung over college senior listeners to hope, dream, succeed, fail and embrace whatever lies ahead.

I was actually touched and inspired by both speaker’s thoughts.  Extremely different personae.  Practically polar success stories.  One traditional.  One anything but.  One born of college sweethearts who lived the American dream.  The other given up for adoption by a college relationship, taken in by a second choice adoptive family and nonetheless, also lived the American dream.

I listened to their reflections, their guidelines.  Both were extremely impressive but neither strayed too far from typical graduation speech text.  Find your dream and live it.  Live it new each day.  Love your family; remember your friends. Know that each day is a gift and could be your last, Steve Jobs’s  reflections on this obviously more haunting being recirculated posthumously.

I hear and read these speeches so differently now as a fifty plus year old someone than I did as a twenty something someone. I feel like the parents always nod in ardent agreement with these speakers as their children nod off. I know these kids are hearing bits and pieces as they check their cell phones and chat behind cupped palms.   They might even catch the thesis of the address but can they really employ or truly understand the advice at their stage of life?

They are so young.

So I am thinking these addresses as fabulous, well-delivered and well-intentioned as they are, are often more poignant for the parents than they are the students. For some of us, they stir up memories of roads not taken and long forgotten dreams that these students haven’t lived long enough to feel or understand. That said, maybe it is not such a bad thing.

Kids can hear these speeches and be inspired to take the twenty or so years they have lived and build a successful, fulfilling future that should include many decades.  And the parents can be reminded that they may only have twenty or so years left and, if they are fortunate, a few decades to finally do what really matters in their lives and make that difference that seemed so easy as an idealistic college graduate.

In spite of my somewhat conflicted sentiments, I hear/read commencement addresses and I feel recharged.

These particular commencement reflections got me out of my bathrobe before noon, inspired me to write this post after a month-long, road trip hiatus and will at least for the rest of the day make me more conscious of  how I am spending this particular 24 hours.

Check them out.  You may even get a week, a month, a year’s worth of kick-in-the-ass. I was just glad I took the few minutes each to watch and listen…And seriously, could Sanjay be any better looking?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJxmLSjoPYg

http://www.youtube.com/embed/D1R-jKKp3NA

I may have mentioned this before but it warrants repeating that my son in law has partnered with a high school friend to launch a clothing line, Salmon Cove.  Check it out at:  http://www.salmoncove.com

Since I have worked in  retail on and off during my life and most recently have simply worked at walking in stores and walking out with shopping bags, I am known in the family as somewhat, OK I am, a clothing aficionado.

a·fi·ci·o·na·do/əˌfiSH(ē)əˈnädō/ A person who is very knowledgeable and enthusiastic about an activity, subject or pastime.

If diamonds are a girl’s best friend and a dog is a man’s, no wonder men think women are so high maintenance. You can pick up a great puppy for free at a local shelter but I can’t say I’ve seen Cartier handing out their baubles at no charge.

I stood at the corner, waiting for the light to change, a cold march wind whipping around me, blowing under my coat. I pulled my collar up around my cheeks and ears and willed the red hand to change to the white walking stick figure on the post in the median.  It was noon, walkers darting around and between each other on their way to or from lunch or a meeting.I was conscious of the growing crowd gathering around me at my corner and tucked my shoulder bag closer to my waist.  This is the big city with pick pockets and all.

I felt a tug at my elbow and looked down to see a man in a tattered wheelchair, wearing a flannel shirt, frayed at the collar, and a sweater too thin for the brisk spring weather.

“Can you spare a dollar?” he asked loudly as he pulled his moth-eaten hat down far enough to cover his ears.

“Homeless AND a wheelchair,” I thought.  “What were the odds.”

“Just a dollar, for coffee,” he said. “I’m cold.”

By now I was conscious of the eyes around me turning to look in my direction. I had just come from church so guilt and “the least of my brethren” stuff was all fresh in my mind. So I reached for the buckle of my bag and pulled out my wallet.

“I only have a twenty,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

“Not to worry, mam, I’ve got change,” he said, sticking out a gloved fist to prove it.

Now this was slick, I thought, a beggar with change.

“Why don’t you give me the twenty and I’ll give you say sixteen or eighteen back, ” he added with a smoothness that was beginning to get on my nerves.

By now the welcome walking man was beckoning from mid-street but to my dismay, half the crowd stayed transfixed on the the curb beside me, all focus on me and the homeless man in the wheelchair.

Daunted by the pressure of the Obamaland eyes,  I handed the man the twenty and waited for my “change.”

Grinning with surprisingly gleaming white choppers, he handed me a wad of sticky hot bills, stuffed the twenty under his hat and used both hands to turn the chair in the opposite direction, practically doing a wheely as he disappeared into the closest alley.

Drama over, crowd dispersed, I shoved the money ball in my pocket and crossed the street to my garage, sure that “T-A-K-E-N” blinked in neon across my forehead.

I pushed the button for the floor named Cubs and listened to “Take me out to the ballgame” as the elevator, and my blood pressure, rose to the third floor.

I got to my car, slid under the wheel and reached in my pocket to pull out my “change.” I slowly unfolded four one dollar bills.

Not even enough to get me out of the garage.

He’s the kind of guy that gives homeless people a bad name.

Thinking about my childhood grade school, got me thinking about home and family.  When she wasn’t my first grade teacher, my Aunt Jeannette was a lovable, warm, and very funny human being. All the Kyles (my mom’s side) were funny.  Not, let me tell you a joke funny, but witty and quick in a subtle conversational way that you could miss if you weren’t paying attention. In the early 1930’s, Aunt Jeannette attended Columbia University in New York City to prepare to be a teacher.  She had read the Bible at least twice cover to cover, word for word, before she died at 96. She loved nature, especially birds.

I called her once about a bird song that was haunting me. As soon as I started to whistle the tune (yes, I can whistle a tune;that’s from my dad’s side) she knew exactly what bird it was. She was a gem and I miss her. But before I go all Tom Brokaw on you and tell about the husband she lost to a fluke jeep accident in WWII or the one she raised four adopted children with, let’s get to the point at hand, Skillet Cornbread.

Seeing Aunt Jeannette here in my Aunt Ruth’s kitchen, made me think about Kyle women and cooking. One of their best recipes I am sharing only because I am feeling especially generous today and the nostalgia is clouding my brain. Normally, I keep these family secrets to myself so the whole world can’t start making cornbread as well as we do.

Aunt Jeannette, and all her sisters, basically followed the recipe my Grandma Kyle used. Before you even attempt this cake-like, sumptuous bread, you must have a 9 inch cast iron skillet.  You can get an inexpensive one at Target or most hardware stores. In West Virginia, they sell them at the grocery store. I use a fancier Le Creuset one with brown enamel coating that I received as a wedding gift and like it very much, but any cast iron will do.

Ingredients:

1 cup white corn meal

1/4 cup flour

1 heaping tsp. baking powder (that in Grandma Kyle terms is spilling off the edges)

1 rounded tsp. salt (in her terms, high but not spilling off the edges)

2 Tbsp. sugar

1/4 tsp. baking soda

1 1/4 c. buttermilk

1 large egg

2 Tbsp. Crisco (yes Crisco, not butter flavored but plain old used to be Paula Deen’s favorite Crisco)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Mix corn meal, flour, baking powder, sugar and salt  in a medium mixing bowl. In another smaller bowl, mix baking soda and buttermilk together and let sit for a minute or two. Beat egg with a fork until combined but not frothy and stir into buttermilk.  Pour wet mixture into dry and mix with fork until smooth and not lumpy.

Heat on top of the stove until hot but not smoking, 2 Tbsp. Crisco in a 9 inch iron skillet. Pour cornbread batter into skillet and remove immediately from heat.  Batter should sizzle around the edges. Using an oven mitt, (I have made the painful mistake of omitting this little detail) place skillet in hot oven and bake for 20 minutes or until bread pulls away from the edges of the skillet and top is golden brown.  (Again, use mitt to remove from oven.)

Allow to cool for five minutes.  Gently loosen edges of bread with a knife.  Cover the top of the skillet with a dinner plate and (if the cooking gods are with you) slowly, gingerly flip the skillet onto the plate and the cornbread will slide out upside down and in a perfect mounded circle of golden brown.  If you feel it’s stuck to the skillet anywhere, use the gentle prodding with the knife trick again.

Cut into pie shaped triangles and butter (real butter) while warm. Serve immediately as anything–appetizer, dinner bread, with soup or drench it in honey and serve as dessert.

Or eat it for breakfast as cereal with milk like my Uncle Bill used to do.