Sunday is for Gratitude

Our minds are so oriented toward striving to better our lives and complaining about what we don’t have. On the Lord’s Day, I try to refocus, to think about the good things in my life and how grateful I am for them.

I live in a wonderful apartment high on a mountain top, with double doors that overlook the forest. On rainy days, I open the doors and let the sound and the smell of the rain penetrate. Since I am retired, on my days off from babysitting I have no place to go and no schedule.

My grandchildren are my life now. Having other people to serve is the key to happiness. Being left alone to care only for one’s self makes people miserable. And, the kids are a delight. They are so young. My oldest granddaughter is 4 and the twins are 2.

Caring for the kids all day, now that they are older and more active, is exhausting! In a good way. They run me ragged. In fact, they run everywhere, out of sheer exuberance. They also want grandpa to chase and catch them… the ancient game of “gotcha!”

Spending my Sabbath away from Facebook and social media pays big dividends. It cuts short the arguments and vendettas. I don’t need internet enemies, any more than I need enemies in the non-virtual world. I even set aside my aggravation with my ex-girlfriend and sent her a birthday card.

I tend to my physical health and play classical piano on Sundays. This enhances the mindset of quiet meditation I’m trying to create.

Yesterday was a particularly beautiful day in upstate New York. I took a 15 mile bicycle ride through a wooded path, away even from the sounds of traffic.

Now, I am ready to face the demands of my week.

Drifting Away…

A rainy day on top the mountain. Retirement day off. No grandkid duty. (At least none that I know of yet.)

I’m drifting away on a sea of forgotten Sour Diesel. The reference, of course, is to this Hendrix tune.

Maybe I need to do a techno/artistic to-do list. Got to get the Vive headset back up and running. Need to get my new iPad Mini 4 on line. Church practice. Classical piano practice. Memorize that Bach Two Part Invention. Sketch my own pic of a boy drifting away at sea.

No woman in sight and don’t think I’m going back to the old one. I’m enjoying being alone and making do without love. At least, I am free of the complaints, scoldings and bitching! I can do as I please.

Simultaneously, I’m trying to approve my appearance. Wear some fairly new shoes when I go out to lunch at Bread Alone. Blue jeans instead of grandpa sweats. Maybe even a shirt. At Tractor Supply yesterday, I saw some pretty decent sport shirts for the summer. Time to present myself a little better when I’m out in public.

I have mostly shed the Facebook obsession. Maybe once a week, I’ll get into a dust-up with somebody over some controversy. I won’t allow my life to be absorbed in controversy. I am at peace and happy. I’m grateful for what I have. Identity politics is a poison that eats away at my peace of mind. Don’t need it. Nor do I have a plan to save the world. That is above my pay grade.

A two year period of serious time in the nursery still ahead of me. After that, the twins will be entering pre-K and will be in school half days. Everybody will be potty trained. Grandpa will then be in position to do something again… maybe a part time job.

So, I am adrift in a happy family life, mostly cut off from the bustle of daily business life that once consumed me in New York City.

I’m thinking of taking a trip to the city during my summer vacation from babysitting. Don’t know if I’ll drive or take the train. I want to take pics of the various places I lived in the city. Will frame for display in the foyer of my grandpa in-law apartment.

Homemade Cookies R Human Right

Did it! Bought the big ass KitchenAid mixer to make cookies. 250 bucks! Kids need cookies. The aroma of cookies baking in the house when you’re growing up is a basic human right.

It’s a big heavy mother. I might need some kind of stand for it. Major production machine.

We talking about factory level cookie making. Three toddlers. Three adults. Big summer in the backyard coming up. Lots of snacks needed. I’m figuring 4 to 6 dozen per week.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies

Oatmeal Cookies

I’m looking forward to a legendary summer of grandpa duty. Playing “Let’s Pretend!” Being outside!

What is the perfect method for baking chocolate chip cookies? How do you get them just right?  Still moist and soft in the middle. Bottoms not over cooked.

Fortunately, we live in the age of the internet and the answers to these questions can be Googled.

We’ve built quite a home for the kids up here on the mountain. Big fenced in back yard for play. No other houses within site or sound now that the foliage is filling in for the summer. In some ways more private than my old house out near Cooper Lake. I could see a couple of neighbors.

I’m leaving my big double door that looks out into the forest open now. The screen is a little flimsy so I have to be careful with it.

Just got to buy some bulk bags of ingredients now. Think I’ll start out with the standard Nestles Toll House cookie recipe and go from there.

Let’s Pretend!

That’s what my soon to be four year old granddaughter says when I babysit her. I’ve mostly lost my ability to play Let’s Pretend! A necessary adaptation of adulthood and having to earn a living. Those years when I was hard pressed to feed a family forced me to focus on conquering the “real” world.

I doodle now to try to free my mind to do creative work. Trying to refocus my mind to the visual instead of to the analytical mind. I have no idea what this doodle is about or what it means, nor do I need to know.

Let’s Pretend usually means playing dress up to my granddaughter. She dons her Queen Elsa dress that is now in tatters from overuse and I’m supposed to be Prince Hans. The Queen, pictured below is the heroine of the movie “Frozen.”

I’m not so good at this game, so granddaughter directs me. She tells me how to move and what to say. Unfortunately, I don’t get to wear a costume.

I’m free to play Let’s Pretend again in my old age. And, it’s not so easy. My mind struggles to let go, to be whatever I want to be and to let my imagination run free.

One of the most liberating exercises is getting down on the floor to do my yoga with all three toddler grandkids. They use me as a jungle gym while I run through my poses. They laugh at the absurdity of my contortions and try to imitate me.

For the shear hell of it, I’ve been concluding my yoga routine with a couple of somersaults. Scared the hell out of me the first time I tried it. The trick, of course, is to commit totally once you decide to try. If you waver, you won’t flip straight over. You’ll twist to one side or the other, potentially injuring your neck.

I think that I need a Let’s Pretend costume. What sort of costume would that be?

Pitter Patter of Little Feat

Every morning, while I’m going through my rounds on the internet, I hear the pitter patter of little feat above my head. My four year old granddaughter and my twin two year old grandkids (boy and girl) begin their daily regimen of running in circles.

This rhythmic cascade delights me. It didn’t delight my girl friend. Her distaste for this was one of the reasons I ended our relationship. She objected to the lack of sound insulation in the ceiling of my new apartment. I wanted to hear the kids playing. I can filter out the sound of voices from above by turning on a classical music station on the radio.

Sometimes, I like hearing my grandkids’ unfiltered voices, too. From time to time, one of them will scream “Grandpa!” There is no rhyme or reason for this. Toddlers practicing speaking will often simply go through a litany of the titles of the people closest to them. “Mommy! Daddy! Grandpa!” is an oft heard refrain.

I lived alone for 12 years after my wife, Myrna’s, death. My house was situated in the middle of nowhere, albeit a beautiful nowhere, in the Catskill Mountains not far from a lake. For two years after I retired, I lived in wondrous isolation from people I didn’t want to know or see. I became something of a hermit.

The birth of the twin grandkids put an end to that. My daughter and son-in-law needed all the help they could find, and I needed to find a purpose in life. So, I sold my Hobbit house in the middle of nowhere, and bought a house with my daughter and son-in-law. I completely renovated the in-law apartment. Sitting alone and focusing on one’s own needs is a dead end. Now, I am needed and in the midst of turmoil and chaos.

I’m not going to draw any general lessons for humanity from this experience. I am but a story teller. That is enough.

I am happy now. The decade plus of grieving for Myrna has ended. (That might have had something to do with the failure of my relationship with my ex-girlfriend, too.) I’ve put away all the pictures of Myrna, all the pictures of us embracing.

And, I’ve accepted that my love life is probably all in the past. That’s not a tragedy. I got it all. My body is fading and the fire of passion is burning out as I approach the age of 70. This is a different time and place in my life.

Time for the pitter patter of little feat. Time to serve the next generation.