Being POPS to Nora

Sometimes this blog/journal is literally "about Pops"--in other words, the role of a grandfather. Now, Nora Grace is here and I have a third opportunity to be Pops. So what does this look like?

What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance: unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life. And, most importantly, cookies. --Rudy Giuliani

I really like the prayer for her daughter that Tina Fey wrote in her book, "Bossypants." I would like to include it here, but I don't have permission, and About POPS is a little on the conservative side of "PG" to include it. But you should check it out HERE. 

I will always pray for our grand-girls. And I will want the best for them; even if that spoils them a bit.

For you Nora, as for your big sisters, Karlee and Harper, I hope you will always know that your are loved, that you will know you are free to be curious and creative, so don't be afraid to color outside the lines; or better yet, draw your own. And while on the subject of the Arts, whether music, dance, drawing, painting, poetry, story-telling, or wood-carving, we will be there to encourage you always, because while school will take care of the math, science and sports; the Arts are pretty much up to you, but worth every minute.

Oh, and there will be boys. The three of you are blessed with your mother's beauty, so it's inevitable. So far, I've not seen a boy that deserves you, but we've got a lot of time for them to develop. Sometimes you have to find a good one and take him on as a project. Your mom and grandmother would probably say be cautious of drummers and preacher's kids. They do take extra patience and love, but they are worth it--some of the time. And, they mean well.

Karlee, 5-years old climbing at 30 feet.

Nora, I have no doubt you will have the bold, daring of your big sisters, so I will buy you your first helmet. Speaking of safety, I promise to always buckle you in to your car seat when traveling. Forgive me for the bad words I'll murmur under my breath when I can't get the dang thing buckled and unbuckled.

Be patient with your biggest sister. Those of us who are the first-born children tend to be wiser and could make your life better if you would only listen to us. So, at times, you'll think you have two mothers, but remember, Karlee just wants the best for you and she knows what that is.

Be patient with your next biggest sister. Harper is abdicating her seat as the baby of the family for you. She has served admirably and it's not an easy role to give up. But she is so much fun, and so full of energy and wide-eyed wonder, she will be a tireless friend for you.

You have two amazing parents. Give them a good 6 hours of sleep a night as soon as you can, and they will give you all of themselves.

Welcome to the Family, Nora!

Old people are distinguished by grandchildren; children take pride in their parents. --Proverbs 17:6 (The Message)

Circus Monkeys

Nie moj cyrk, Nie moje malpy.

I don't speak Polish, but I'm a sucker for a good Polish proverb. I ran this one through the Google® Translator and got this: "Not my circus, not my monkey."

So, I'm guessing the take-away in this proverb is: sometimes it's just not my problem. Or maybe the wisdom here is to quit trying to fix everything for everybody; accept your boundaries and limitations.

You have to be careful here though. You could easily become like one of those ugly, narcissistic characters in the Good Samaritan story, or one of those who think "denial is just a river in Egypt."

I bet I could print up a bunch of t-shirts with the "Not My Circus, Not My Monkey" proverb and sell them like hotcakes. I'll admit it--sometimes, too many times, I might as well be wearing one, because that's my attitude sometimes; too many times.

You've seen it, right? It looks kind of like this:

"It's their mess, let them clean it up."
"She made her bed, she can lie in it."
"I've got to look out for Number One."

I heard a guy say this one time and I wanted to reply, "You'd better look out for Number Two too, because if you step in it you're going to spell like, well, $#1T whether your dog's the one who dropped it or not.

Billy Joel wrote a song back in the 80s (yes, it was a low decade for music) where the lyrics were a litany of the famous, the infamous, and a sample of mankind's collective messes and milestones through the years. The chorus (and title) of the song is the equivalent of "not my circus, not my monkey".

It goes like this:

We Didn't Start The Fire

Harry Truman, Doris Day, Red China, Johnnie Ray,
South Pacific, Walter Winchell, Joe DiMaggio,
Joe McCarthy, Richard Nixon, Studebaker, Television,
North Korea, South Korea, Marilyn Monroe,

Chorus:
We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning

Rosenbergs, H-Bomb, Sugar Ray, Panmunjom,
Brando, The King And I, and The Catcher In The Rye,
Eisenhower, Vaccine, England's got a new queen,
Marciano, Liberace, Santayana goodbye,

Joseph Stalin, Malenkov, Nasser and Prokofiev,
Rockefeller, Campanella, Communist Bloc,
Roy Cohn, Juan Peron, Toscanini, Dacron,
Dien Bien Phu Falls, Rock Around the Clock,
Einstein, James Dean, Brooklyn's got a winning team,
Davy Crockett, Peter Pan, Elvis Presley, Disneyland,
Bardot, Budapest, Alabama, Khrushchev,
Princess Grace, Peyton Place, Trouble in the Suez,

Little Rock, Pasternak, Mickey Mantle, Kerouac,
Sputnik, Chou En-Lai, Bridge On The River Kwai,
Lebanon, Charles de Gaulle, California baseball,
Starkweather, Homicide, Children of Thalidomide,

Buddy Holly, Ben-Hur, Space Monkey, Mafia,
Hula Hoops, Castro, Edsel is a no-go,
U-2, Syngman Rhee, payola and Kennedy,
Chubby Checker, Psycho, Belgians in the Congo,

Hemingway, Eichmann, Stranger in a Strange Land,
Dylan, Berlin, Bay of Pigs invasion,
Lawrence of Arabia, British Beatlemania,
Ole Miss, John Glenn, Liston beats Patterson,

Pope Paul, Malcolm X, British Politician Sex,
J.F.K. blown away, what else do I have to say,

Birth control, Ho Chi Minh, Richard Nixon back again,
Moonshot, Woodstock, Watergate, punk rock,
Begin, Reagan, Palestine, Terror on the airline,
Ayatollah's in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan,
Wheel of Fortune, Sally Ride, heavy metal, suicide,
Foreign debts, homeless Vets, AIDS, Crack, Bernie Goetz,
Hypodermics on the shores, China's under martial law,
Rock and Roller Cola wars, I can't take it anymore.

We didn't start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world's been turning
We didn't start the fire
But when we are gone
It will still burn on and on and on and on
And on and on and on and on...

Maybe this is our Circus and these are our Monkeys

What's Next?

A few posts back I ventured into the topic of hobbies for us "men of a certain age" to take up once we retire. I received feedback from several of my peers: 

"Are you actually thinking of retiring?"
"I'll never retire."
"Who can afford to retire?"
"Retirement's for wimps."
"Don't retire--start a second career."

All of these thoughts run through my mind as I get closer to that magically arbitrary age. That last one though, the one about a "next" career, what would that look like? I started thinking of things I've seen old guys do, and how that might work out for me as a second career. Here are a few that come to mind:

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Wal-Mart® Greeter

Well, lets see, I don't like Wal-Mart® and I don't like greeting.

I'm a tested and confirmed introvert, and way too cynical and judgmental to stand and watch Wal-Mart® shoppers come and go all day.

Even if I did love greeting, the blue vest is a deal killer for me. I do like coffee though, and I have nothing against green aprons, so Starbucks® could work.

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Pundit

You know those old, former-whatevers that they line up four and five wide across the TV screen on the news channels, all talking at the same time, which is fine because no one cares what they're saying anyway.

This could work. I have a lot of opinions no one wants to hear; about stuff that doesn't really matter at the end of the day.

Am I qualified? I have held office. I was the Sergeant-At-Arms of our high school Spanish club. I work with this girl who's dad was in the CIA and protected a former president. I marched in Nixon's inaugural parade--not as a protester, but as a drummer in the band. (I did, however, wear a "Humphrey-Muskie" button under my uniform.)

“My friends tell me that I have a tendency to point out problems without offering solutions, but they never tell me what I should do about it.” ― Daniel Gilbert, "Stumbling on Happiness"

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Haberdasher

I really enjoy strolling through flea markets, estate sales, vintage shops, etc. Great stories are always told there. You know, the ones that start, "Remember when..." I love it when someone picks up an old catcher's mitt and talks about summer games on the vacant lot down the street, back before mosquitoes carried the West Nile virus, before the sun caused cancer and before perverts were everywhere, snatching up little kids.

So, I think I could really enjoy having a traveling shop of vintage stuff, like the haberdashers of old. If you're not familiar with the origin of the term, I found this on the WWW:

Its meaning down the centuries has been as diverse as its origin. When it appeared, in the thirteenth century, it meant a trader in a range of goods. According to early chroniclers, these included: “glasses, daggers, swerdes [swords]”, “mousetrappes, bird cages, shooing hornes, lanthornes, and Jews trumpes [Jew’s harps]”, and “bookes, pictures, beades, crucifixes” etc.

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Blogger

What would be really cool; if I could figure out a way to monetize this blog deal, like that Pioneer Woman has. Best I can tell, the secret to her success includes: sharing recipes, selling recipe books, and writing children's books about a dog-character named "Charlie The Ranch Dog."

Grumpy The Retired Dog.

Let's try it. If you'll send me $7.95 I'll send you the recipe for my award-winning chili AND my crowd-pleasing shrimp boil. But wait! There's more! I will put your name on the list to receive a First Edition of my children's book about "Grumpy The Retired Dog" who spends his days lounging, eating, scratching himself and silently passing gas that is bound to be destroying the ozone.

This book is not yet written but I'm thinking I'll call the first episode "New Tricks--It's not that I can't learn them, it's just that I have all the tricks I need already."

Anticipation

You know the Carly Simon song, "Anticipation"? It starts off:

We can never know about the days to come
But we think about them anyway

We, our family, are in the throes of life's most ancient and wonderful states of anticipation. If fact it is known as "Expecting!" It is so universal that when someone says "They're Expecting." You know what they're expecting without any additional information.

I'm sure right now, if she's reading this, our beautiful and very pregnant daughter-in-law is thinking, "What do you mean WE Ke-mo sah-bee!?" She is obviously doing all the heavy lifting, and other stuff I can't even imagine--having never been an expectant mother.

My Anticipation is easier. I just get to sit and imagine being even Pop-sier (Pops x3).

Back in the day, our cloud of Anticipation was darker. Heck we didn't even know what color to paint the nursery, or which wallpaper to hang: the one with rainbow colored pegasus/unicorns, or the little cowboys.

This is not Nora's actual picture. I "borrowed" it for illustration purposes only.

But we know, because of our complete trust in the doctor's reading of an image on a monitor, that this little baby we're expecting any day now, is a girl. She already has a name: Nora Grace. She has two loving parents, and two big sisters who are about to have their world's rocked.

There are some titles that people seek, you know, like: President, Senator, Miss America. Some are bestowed meritoriously: Homecoming queen, Most Likely to Whatever. Some people bring on themselves: Class Clown, Town Drunk, etc.

Then there are those titles that come by virtue of providence, like: POPS. I've been called a lot of things, but the grandest are Son, Husband, Dad, and POPS.

Today has started as most other days, but today, like yesterday, I am preoccupied--with ANTICIPATION.

Nora Grace, this is your POPS. We're ready when you are.