221215 mumma is adjusting

Dec. 14

The hydro field where Rock and I walk: this morning, dark and windy.

I love Toronto's winter weather! It is so bleak. When one has a dog, one is out for a walk every day, and learns to dress for it: the secret of liking winter! Rocky is not a big fan of rain or snow. He will actually stay in the house while I go out to the garden, rather than get his feet wet.

Today's rain/snow at four pm.

Rocky says, "I am not going out there!"

*****

I am busy all day and fall into bed, asleep before the second sudoku is solved. Rocky needs walks and time with me, and K and I need food: shopping and preparation. The french use "la nourriture" for "food". It is close to our "nourish" and "nutrition", and sounds healthier and more full of care, than "food". And there is the other domestic work that needs doing. Then there are the two grandchildren! They want to spend time with me! I feel unworthy of their affection. Why is that? It is because I am not perfect, but a grandmother should be perfect, should she not? I have a couple of old friends whose facebook posts about their grandchildren remind me what "best gramma practices" I should be practicing. They listen, marvel and enjoy. I am only just learning gramma etiquette, it seems. I am not used to letting go and letting the parents be the parents and just be the gramma. I was their extra parent for a while so it is what I was used to. But perhaps some grandmas can go home after a day with their grandkids!

In addition to these demands, K and I at last have to deal with things that we had stuffed in closets and stacked in our room, to do when we had time; some that were put away decades ago! The time for them is almost past! Some projects perhaps were meant for our retirement, except that we are not really retired yet, nor settled in our retirement home, with spare "retirement" time. Photos, there are hundreds, that should have been sorted and perhaps digitalized years ago, some that have not even been seen since they were taken. There are memoirs and tapes from previous generations to be read and listened to, and then we still must sort our own. I wonder why we do it, and if it matters? Some of it we must do now, because we are so squeezed for space, with six of us. Some should have been done years ago, papers that need not have been kept so long, so unordered.

We have kept enough bits and pieces to keep us busy until we are one hundred and thirty! I have doll house miniatures to fill two or three doll houses, enough mosaic stock to make a hundred projects! We have artwork and maps that we purchased on travels, still not mounted on the walls. I have a china collection (nineteenth century Staffordshire) which is still in boxes since we painted the front room, then had grandkids, and made way for toy boxes again. When did we suppose we were going to "retire"? We just never thought about it. It remained a far future dream as if we were still twenty-seven through all those decades when jobs, children, and parents were the solar system of our lives. Did it sneak up on our parents' generation? Is it sneaking up on you?

I am getting into the swing of things, thankfully, and my moods are more stable. I am beginning to separate out the roles we are playing, and to fit myself into the household. [Roles we are playing.] I am, this week, paying attention to the interactions of this smaller family and I am seeing much that is good. There are good routines and guidelines in place. I think that we all were a little freaked out at the beginning. This arrival is different from previous ones, when we were only staying a week or two. It is not just temporary lodging, but a more permanent residency, and the grandchildren are older, their psychological footprint not bigger (a child's psychological presence is large!), but more complicated.

*****

I have been doing fanciful gingerbread projects at Christmas since Rain was eight or nine. I can only account for eighteen years, but since my last one was in 2018, that is just about right. In 2019, I was caring for my mother-in-law, who was frail. I remember that I had little energy to be excited about Christmas and let several traditions slip. I did insist on a real tree and my decorations of forty Christmas-tree years. Then it was covid for two years. Here we are in 2022; we are still in the pandemic, and I am in-between Mumma on Blind Dog Hill and Mumma in Etobicoke, and my head is still spinning. So I have let go much of the Christmas that was mine (that I, myself, did every year) and am leaving it up to Tamar. It is good for her to be making her own Christmas traditions with her children. But one tradition that I really wanted to do was my Christmas-time gingerbread creation. I began by making a gingerbread house or two, then a log cabin, but soon branched out to fairy tales and other adventures.

This was 2018: The Dawn Treader, from C.S. Lewis's children's book in the Narnia series. Seaweed sails, gold-painted teeth and railings, a rolo for a crow's nest.

My Noah's Ark, complete with armadillos. No cookie cutters, all my own design.

A treasure chest, with, of course, chocolate gold coins, candy necklaces, hard candy "gems", and Guylian chocolate shells in the sand.

The gingerbread dough - step one done. Well, perhaps step one was making paper patterns for the shapes - so, step two done. The dough was quite dark. The molasses is "health-food" brand and, though not specified, is probably blackstrap.

Sneak preview: I had to make little moulds to fill with melted white chocolate and prop the trees in it to set. They were propped with chopsticks laid between them until they were stable. The green lollipops I moistened and stuck together first. When they are fully set, they can be removed from the moulds, placed, and iced around. The icing would not support the trees while it set and they would fall over. Every project brings new challenges!