I am so blessed to have these letters and so thankful for them.  I suspect I benefited from my birth-order with all three letter-writing grandparents.  I was my Canadian grandparents’ first grandchild and my Orem grandma’s first granddaughter.  There are many rewards to being a younger child, but I’m guessing that the strength of relationship with grandparents probably isn’t one of them.

I had just one letter from my Canadian grandfather.  It was sent from La Paz, Bolivia, where he had traveled for business.  It didn’t say anything important, but it reminded me that he had known me and cared about me, and thought about me once when he was far from home.  In the same box where I found his letters, I also found the three trinkets I have that connect him to me: a little coin purse made from Kangaroo fur (!) and imported/purchased (?) from Australia, a little coin purse that looks Bolivian-ish, and a dried-up seahorse.  I remember the day he gave me the seahorse.  I had been pouting because we were visiting him in Canada and my family and I were going to go on some outing; he didn’t intend to accompany us, and I wasn’t to be allowed to stay with him.  Pouting is perhaps not the appropriate word; I was genuinely sad.  I believed that his intention to stay home showed that he did not care about his American grandchildren. It is hard to remember, but I believe that after witnessing my emotion he ended up coming with us on the outing, and giving me the seahorse as a token of affection.  I love that seahorse.

I also had letters from my Canadian grandmother.  She wrote them very early, when I was less than a year old.  She hadn’t met me, but spoke of her excitement over my photographs.  She told me about how her own mother had just been told that her cancer was terminal and of her wish that I could meet her before she passed on (I don’t think I did).  I was amazed at how her letters radiated love for a little person that she had never seen or spoken to.  Perhaps I just read this into it because I wanted it to be there, but I was amazed at her ability to direct her thoughts and attention to me.  These letters didn’t feel like they were aimed at my mother, filtered through the cute gimmick of being sent to her baby daughter, they felt like they were actually written to me.  At one point she mentioned her hope that my mother would save and share them with me when I was older.  It’s been almost forty years, but I did read them, and I’m so thankful she took the time to write.

Most of the grandparent letters, notes and cards were from my Orem grandma.  She lived the latest into my life and was a natural-born encourager.  I found several notes of celebration over spelling-bees and other childhood accomplishments, but even more words of praise and encouragement.  In the same box as the notes, I found a little white box that had nothing in it.  A Christmas label was taped to the top.  It was addressed to me in her trademark red ballpoint-inked cursive with love from her.  I’ve apparently saved that empty box for two or three decades, but once again I found that I couldn’t bear to throw it out.  After all, the box was not actually empty, but full: it seemed to overflow with her love and caring for me.  I am lucky because I have plenty of memories of my Orem grandma outside her notes and cards.   The notes are cards are neat though because they exactly reflect the woman I remember.

I am greatly blessed to have had grandparents who loved me and who told me so.  I am so thankful that they wrote me letters.  It reminds me of the importance of giving lasting physical reminders to my children–letters, trinkets, whatever–but something that they can keep–so that they can always remember how much I love them.  I want to remind my children’s grandparents the same thing.  It is hard to say which letter or tiny  trinket might turn up in a child’s box of forgotten treasures 30 years from now, but don’t you hope one of yours does?

The only problem with having my mom visit is that it reminds me of what a poor housekeeper I am (Despite some at times half-hearted, at times a lot more than half-hearted, efforts to be otherwise!). Somehow the neat and tidy gene that both my parents seem to have has skipped me. I inherited their desire for neat and tidy but not the make-it-happen part.

Anyway, one of the truly helpful things she did while she was here was to organize our games closet which had fallen into a state of entropy so complete that some of us doubted it could ever be restored. Et voila!

The Pfamily Game Closet: What a difference a grandma makes!

I was so inspired by the transformation that on Monday I tackled my own clothing closet and completely cleaned it out. Take that, entropy!

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This post is about entropy and grandma appreciation. Come back tomorrow for a discussion of which games are good/fun and why. I’d love to hear what’s in your games closet!

Amelia’s regional bee was Saturday morning. It was one of the largest spelling bees I’ve ever seen.

There were 57 contestants and a huge audience of parents, siblings, and supporters. Amelia was very nervous, but I was excited. She had taken a test of the ~250 challenge words early that morning and missed only 5. I had tested her on the ~950 (not necessarily so basic) “basic” words in the past few days and she had spelled 97% of them correctly, quickly mastering the ones that she missed. We knew that once the judges abandoned the study book and started asking words from the unpublished list, all bets were off, but I thought she had a good chance of placing well.

Her first word was “jovial,” and she passed that first hurdle without trouble. The second round was different. Her word was “obsequious.” This was still a study book word–I had asked her that word the very morning of the bee and she had spelled it correctly. But somehow, under the lights and in front of the crowd, things felt different, and she started off with a u. Ohhhh.

She returned to us blinking back tears. She was brave, but there was no denying that it was a tough moment, with other moments of struggle sprinkled throughout the day. Amelia and I have prepared for the bee off and on with varying intensity since September. The last six weeks or so were particularly intense. There were a few days when she blew off my suggestion of practice to just go outside and be a kid or read a book, but there were plenty of other mornings when she set her alarm for 6 and asked if I could come and work with her. True, she has a natural gift for acquiring vocabulary, but more salient is her determination, her doggedness and her drive. All this meant that Saturday was a little sad, despite her obvious achievement of making it to the regional bee in the first place, and attending it fully prepared in the second.

Sometimes when facing a sadness like this, there just isn’t much to say. You feel like the world is ending, but you know it isn’t. You need to shake it off, but you’re not ready. So after a busy day in which she ate lunch out with her grandparents, attended a birthday party, and begged out of the family Costco run, we found a few quiet moments alone in the early evening. We put our arms around each other and held on. We didn’t say anything — we didn’t need to.

Amelia is disappointed of course, but I am disappointed too. At first I feared that this was an unworthy emotion: The Pushy Parent rears her ugly head! But then I came to realize that the reason I am disappointed is that it’s over. I love studying with Amelia. I love to talk about the words. I love the shared experience of working together towards a tough but attainable goal. I loved our quiet time alone in the mornings; I will miss it. Really, I just love Amelia.

I am thankful that I am not the only person with “issues.” : ) I find it comforting to realize that my family of origin family members struggle with many of the same flaws that I do. It is comforting, because I realize that it is not just me, eccentric and alone, but somehow some of these things are just hardwired in. Now this isn’t to say that I have reason not to attempt change. Change would make me a calmer, happier person. So, I want change. But it is to realize that just as some are born as alcoholics, others are born as meddling OC control freaks (well, born, or maybe raised that way so that when they are 35, they struggle to see other ways). If I work, I can recover. ButI still I like knowing that it’s not just some weird evil awful eccentricity about me. I come by it quite naturally. Also, I find it helpful to spend time with similarly struggling family members, because it’s as though they hold up a mirror to myself and I can see better what it is I need to fix.

I hope all of this makes sense. I’m not trying to disparage family members, I’m trying to say that they make me feel that I’m not alone, and help me recognize how I still need to change.

I want to say more about how I’m thankful for Pdad and I’m thankful for being able to reason through things–we’ve been going over the voucher issue for hours–as things stand, our votes will cancel. It’s frustrating, but it’s nice too. It’s seldom the case that you get to follow out such an extended argument. I’ve enjoyed it. But I do wish I could sway him. I don’t like people I love believing things I think are wrong! I still don’t believe we’ve gotten down to the agree-to-disagree bottom of it. I still have more reasons, not just some inexplicable preference for my position.

Well, Kate is stirring, and it’s 3 a.m., so I have to go.

I am thankful that they taught me to be interested in political issues and to be an active citizen.