The Worst Part of Growing Old

That title is strictly subjective. I'm sure if you asked 100 people over 50 what they hated most about growing old, you would get 100 different answers including these:

• Losing hair
• Losing skin elasticity
• Age spots
• Poor eyesight
• Poor sleep quality
• Listening to your friends who are also getting old.
• And all the other boring stuff .

Just peruse through "Prevention" magazine or "Readers Digest" and look at the ads. Ew.

Today I am going to reveal to you, my faithful reader, what is the worst part of growing old for me.

Losing a parent.

We blame our parents for practically everything, at most every stage of life we travel through. Then they become old and unhealthy and have the same attitude as we did when we were 6 and that's how we have to treat them. No one is prepared for this. No matter how many well-meaning people try to tell you what it's like parenting your parents. We rarely step back and breath in the blessings and wisdom and naked, raw love that our parents show us. Until it's too late.

Last week my father died. 

It was rather sudden. He lived in a nursing home and suffered with advanced Parkinson's disease. His mind was intact, however. More so than some people my age. But God decided it was time to bring Floyd into his elite circle. So we are learning to let him go. 

Those of you who know me, know that I was a daddy's girl. Always was. I can remember one day having a horrible fight with my mother so I jumped on my bike and rode several miles across a 6 lane highway to my dad's office. I walked in and plopped down in his lap and just cried out my frustrations. I was 14...much too big for his lap. But he just listened and patted my back. I felt so much better then. We had an unspoken code between us. "You and Me Against The World" or something very melodramatic like that.

I have a baby granddaughter due this week. God seems to replace the old saints with new ones. Even though he won't get to hold her, he will get to see her every day now. Dad will like that. He loved my kids and their kids. I am so blessed beyond measure that Floyd Griffin was my father. I am not going to keep writing my feelings because this would get way too mushy and personal and you did not come here for that. What I will do is share with you what I learned from him. 

IMPORTANT THINGS I LEARNED FROM MY DAD.....

by Barbara Burks

How to hold hands.

I have been holding my dad's hand since my first memories of him. He was a hand-holder and a patter. Even when I was a teenager I was never embarrassed to be seen holding my father's soft hand. He had "engineer" hands. Because all he did was draw schematics, hold a solder gun, and read Popular Mechanics. My first-born is also a hand holder and a patter. Bless her.

How to shoot a gun.

I was about 6 years old when I received my first pistol shooting lesson. He used to take my brother and I to the county dump and set up targets for us with cans and bottles. If you want to make memories with your kids...take them to the dump and empty a few rounds into someone's old mattress. I believe that because of our exposure to both the fun AND dangers of all guns, I was never tempted to play with his vast collection when he wasn't around.

Patience.

Floyd Griffin was the most patient man on this earth. (He HAD to be to raise me.) He never lost his cool, was never rude to anyone, and never raised his voice. Let me be clear, I am not always like that...but he TAUGHT it to me, nonetheless.

What to look for in a husband.

First and foremost, my father never expected me to "look" for a husband, thank goodness. My husband, Buddy, does not quite share all of Floyd's qualities...his hands are not soft and he is not quiet. But having Floyd for a father made me seek a man who could make me feel protected, who can fix anything like my Dad (we rarely ever had to call a repairman and Buddy refuses to!) and who loves being with family. My parents were married for nearly 60 years and I pray I can show my children that same level of commitment.

Math.

Floyd made math almost fun. He got me through 12 years of it so that I would never have to take it again. This is probably where he developed his patience.

The value of education.

My dad was the first to graduate college in his family. He went to Georgia Tech on a GI Bill as a newlywed and held down several jobs, one being a janitor. He loved his profession (engineering) with a passion. That is probably one reason I was obnoxious about my kids going to college. I didn’t really care what their major was, as long as they completed school. Dad was very proud of all of them for getting their degrees. That could have been one reason I decided to go back to school to complete my college education at the age of 50. I now proudly wear his class ring as my own. 

  

Let your children be who they are.

My father never tried to change me. He would definitely discipline me if (when) I got out of line, but he was either proud of everything I did, or just tolerated it. He did not want me to be anybody else:

• When I was convinced I'd be a professional polka dancer and would polka in circles around his chair for hours, him never looking up or telling me to stop...
• When I created special concoctions to quench his thirst, such as 1/2 tea and 1/2 coke called "tea-cola" that I was positive he would love, he would drink it and say, "delicious." I tasted some just the other day in a moment of nostalgia. Not delicious...
• When a raccoon wandered into our yard and we made him catch it and put it in a cage for a few days so we could have a pet raccoon, feeding it Honeycomb cereal and chicken bones...
• When cartwheels were my preferred mode of transportation...

I sincerely hope I have allowed my children to be who they are because we who've been celebrated as children, will in turn celebrate our own.

To be content with what I have.

Floyd was a low maintenance kind of guy. Certainly he needed a lot of care in his old age...but besides that, was extremely easy to please. He taught me not to want what everyone else has just because they have it and I don't. He taught me the value of a dollar by teaching me about the stock market when I asked him what all those numbers on 4 pages of the newspaper were for. He had me choose a stock (Winn Dixie) and we watched it everyday. The exhausting and unsatisfying journey of climbing a social ladder never appealed to me because of the lessons I learned from the man who decided that $40 for a pair of slacks was ridiculous so he found a magazine ad for 3 pairs of pants for $19.99. He was so proud when he ordered them. They were designed for a man who was 5'9" instead of a man who was 6'3", and made of the cheapest polyester plaid fabric I've ever seen. But he proudly wore them with dignity until they mysteriously disappeared about 10 years later.

So, today...

I am a relatively patient woman that likes to hold hands, shoot pistols, clepped out of college math, chose a wonderful husband who gave me unique children I can celebrate, and am content with my surroundings and my family because of my dad, Floyd Silas Griffin, Jr. I would love to know what I taught him. I suspect he would say something sweet like, "that daughters are wonderful" but more likely he would say, "patience".

Floyd and Bobby. Just a couple of boys fishing.

 So long dad. Now it's you doing the cartwheels!

Ethel the Red

Every summer I spent a week with my grandparents, the Griffins, in their small shotgun house in South Georgia. I so looked forward to this week and always hoped it would turn into two! My grandparents' house had a front porch with a swing  and one small TV that got about 3 channels and it always seemed to be tuned in to Lawrence Welk or an evangelist at the highest volume setting. The kitchen was in the back of the house. These are the places I frequented when in Georgia. Dozens upon dozens of treasures were hidden away in this house. If I was lucky, I would find a contraption my dad built, or an old school paper or letter that he had written when he was my age. I vividly remember taking baths in their old white claw footed tub and drying off with their paper thin towels that were always frayed at the edges. There was no corner of that home that was off limits to me. Now there were a few places I chose not to visit...like the laundry room on the back porch. No laundry for me while I was on vacation. That does not mean that I didn't have chores to do while I was there. I "cleaned" the kitchen after my grandmother made her famous messes after each meal. I'm pretty sure she used flour in every dish she ever cooked. I did not like to clean up after dinner. Mostly, I think, because the kitchen (and house) was so old that nothing ever really LOOKED clean. But here's what I did like to do:

I liked to explore all over the neighborhood. Sometimes with my cousins or my brother, and sometimes by myself. My grandparents lived in a low socio-economic part of town...near an alley. Across the alley were older homes than even that of my grandparents.You know that young Barbara Griffin hitched up her jeans and ventured to that part of the street already, don't you? The main and only reason was because a woman who had a pomegranate tree in her yard lived across that alley and she would let us go back there and pick a few from time to time. I had never seen or heard of a pomegranate until my first trip across that alley. They are a little trouble getting into, but lo and behold, when you put that tiny sweet kernal into your mouth and bite down, it's akin to a liquid starburst!

Needless to say, my cute little tee shirts were always stained red when my parents came to pick me up and my mother was not happy about this. She wouldn't have been happy about me roaming all over the town with my cousins either...often barefooted. And if she ever found out that I had a crush on a silly boy that worked at the gas station up the road who was 17 years old when I was 13, she would have had a fit. He was such a dork, but he had longish hair and I liked that. We also loved to spy on people.We thought we were secret agents and lived as much like one as we could. ALWAYS spying on anyone who didn't know we were there. Hiding in a tree, under a house, behind the big brick fire pit - nothing stopped us while we were on a mission.

But some things I did to pass the time would not have caused my mom to age more quickly than usual.
My grandmother, Ethel Lucille, would take me to the farmer's market to pick out vegetables. I grew up with an appreciation for the farmer who made it possible for me to go to a market and eat free boiled peanuts while my grandmother poked and prodded tomatoes and peaches. Next door to the farmer's market was a hunting shop called Staffords. It was fancy for a hunting store and is still there today. I would take my savings money into this store and buy gifts for my parents and my grandparents each time I visited. Whatever I brought my grandmother, she acted like it was a prized possession. And it was usually something that she never would have had on any sort of wish list, trust me.
She would also take me to church with her. A lot. An awful lot. I did not want to go into a Sunday School class with kids I didn't know, so I went in my Grandmother's class. Those old ladies acted like I was supposed to be there so I didn't feel uncomfortable at all. I sat on the front row with my grandmother's Bible in my lap and pretended to follow along. Ethel worked in the kitchen on Wednesday nights. So after I helped set the tables for dinner and wandered around the church during Prayer meeting, Grandaddy would pick us up (Lucille did not drive) and we would go home with extra rolls. "Church biscuits" we called them. To this day, I love a good yeast roll.

Even when I got a little older and wore too much makeup and not enough fabric I would revert to her little adventurous granddaughter who went barefooted everywhere as soon as I arrived. When I was around 16, my grandmother asked me to go to the store and pick out a hair color for her. She had graying strawberry blond hair and liked to add a little red to wash the gray away. So...being the artist and fashionista that I was, I chose her hair color according to what I thought it should be. And I bought her a black house dress with large exotic flowers all over it. Ethel never wore black or anything with large flowers so my plan was to give her a make-over. You have to understand that my grandmother was not a young, hip, trendy older woman who cared about what people thought. She was always old, kind of crippled, lived simply, and was funny in a quiet way. I was about to change all that. She let me dye her hair which made her my very first customer. It turned out red alright. It was nearly glowing. Imagine a light orange, almost peach color next to a brassy copper. that's what her roots looked like when they grew out. And do you know what she told me? She said, "This color brings out the orange and red flowers in my new black house-dress. I'll have to wear it a lot!"
Is that the kind of things that grandmothers have to say?

She taught me what it feels like to be worthy of love. She taught me other things too. How to warm your buns in front of a kerosene heater, how to make cornbread, how to raise an amazing son to love his mother, how successful one can be and not have central air and heat or cable tv, and hopefully how to love your grandchildren so that they can always feel home in your house.
I always wanted to please my grandmother. I liked to make her laugh. and would try very hard to be responsible for a giggle. She died a long time ago and sometimes I would forget that she was gone.

In August, I get the opportunity to be a grandmother to a little girl myself. I already have the immeasurable pleasure of having a grandson and that has worked out pretty darn well for me. (and for him, I believe) But a granddaughter! That's a new thing altogether. I hope that what I learned from Ethel I can impart to my own little grand-girl. I want to take her to church with me, feed her and teach her to make cornbread, teach her that even though she's at my house she will have chores, that no matter what she feels about something, she can say it and not be judged, show her that she can dye my hair whatever color she feels it needs to be, and model what lasting love looks like between an old man and old woman. I want to teach her to draw and to read classic books and love the Bible. I want to take her to a market or a museum or a monster truck rally. I want her little shirt to be stained with fun when she leaves me. I want her to find things her dad made and kept in the little drawers and cubbies around our house. And most of all I want to tell her stories about her dad and mom. About her aunts and uncles. And she will tell her kids about me one day. I hope it's not the one about how she dyed my hair purple and bought me a jumpsuit to match.

The First One

the first one...


today i am recalling the events which led to my eldest child's birth.
some people might call it "Babies Having Babies".
while i was certainly the most mature 21 year old i'd ever met, in reality i was an infant myself. spiritually. i made the decision to quit college, marry young, and get a real job. what a life we were living! brand new house (mortgage - $329/mo.), brand new car (1979 thunderbird) and brand new boat (24' sea ray cabin cruiser that we kept in our driveway, which made it necessary to park on the street). to these defining possessions we were adding a child. perfect.


back in the day, early gender identification was a crap shoot so we decided not to have the official guess and be surprised with whoever god brought to us and just decorate in primary colors...which we all know is the major reason anyone REALLY wants to know...to solve the nursery design mystery.


because i came of age in the 70's, i chose no drugs for delivery. ( i also read breastfeeding books published by LaLeche League so that should tell you i was basically a dairy cow for all of my 20's.) poor baby jourdan. tugged into this harsh world with forceps, and then given a name that cannot be found on any magnets, mugs, or mini license plates. while i was weak, weak, weak with post-partum exhaustion, my mother-in-law slid a quick one in on me and asked me to spell my new baby's name with a "u" since it happened to be a family name on her father's side...of which we were totally unaware or else jourdan's name would have been "alexandria" or "edith" instead.


i was supposed to go back to work after 6 weeks and finish out my first year at my job so i could get a check for 2 weeks paid vacation. i opted not to for a couple of reasons:
1.) i could not tear myself away from this child, 
2.) when i told my boss (a proud member of N.O.W. and hater of babies) that i was pregnant, she asked, "well...are you going to HAVE it?" uhmmm....yeah, jerk. i'm not only going to have "it", i am going to be proud to be a mother who doesn't have a career that requires a business card and sensible shoes. so we sold the sea ray and became poor so that i could stay home with my perfect baby daughter with a "u".


at first, she slept in a hand made cradle next to my side of the bed. i tied one end of my robe belt around the rocking part of the cradle and held onto the other end so that i could lay in bed and rock her after she woke up for the 3rd time in the middle of the night. and jourdan loved to rock. i rocked her every day until i was too pregnant with her sister to lift her up out of the chair after she fell asleep. i'm sure that was traumatic for her. she was one of those you had to lay down with in order to get her to sleep.


if i knew then, what i know now, i would have laid down with her every night until she left home for texas at the age of 22. she has been "that" kid. the compliant one. the peaceful one. i should have had an inkling what her personality would be like when i was told my due date was dec. 24th and i stated, "i do not want to have this baby before christmas because i don't want to be in the hospital on christmas day." so she waited until the 27th, after i had packed up my christmas decorations, to come stay.


i could write an entire day about this first one. how we grew up together, how she became a friend, how proud we are of her, how strong she is, the way she cares for her younger siblings, her loyalty, her gifts, her importance to us. but today, i will just reflect that she is ours and i'll never understand why. except that god has used her to grow me up and to teach me unconditional love and make me grateful i know jesus better because of her.



















Happy Birthday, Jourdan.