For the last few years I've been living in the fantasy world that my responsibilities as a Mom were pretty much over.
Both children survived their teen years. Most importantly, my husband and I survived their teen years. Both children graduated from good colleges and neither came back home to live!
Our son found his passion in film and moved to the West Coast . Our daughter's career in advertising took her to Boston, DC, Chicago and finally Philadelphia. In 2005 she married a fabulous man who my husband begrudging admits to liking a lot. We talk almost every day. Sounds like Father Knows Best, but don't get me wrong.... I'm no Margaret Anderson or even Eleanor Brady.
I've always worked in some field or another... writing...graphic arts...marketing...interior design....acting. I'm typical of the Baby Boomer generation, loving life and expecting to do it all with ease. Of course that isn't realistic and we boomer women learned that you can't have it all. Sometimes my career took second place, sometimes my marriage got rocky, sometimes I missed school plays or play dates. We survived, the children became great adults and thanks to hard work, stubbornness and lots of luck, my husband and I have an even better marriage now than we did then.
As you can read in my travel sections, I've been on the road and except for making sure my Labrador retriever was taken care of ..... without a care in the world. It's a wonderful feeling not to always be worried that something will happen to your children and you can't be reached. My children were now perfectly capable of taking care of themselves.
But in the blink of a travel minute, many of my generation are finding ourselves on the precipice of yet a new direction. I'm one of the first of my friends to jump off the cliff.
Steve and I had just returned from a three week Australia/ New Zealand adventure and were visiting our daughter and son-in-law. Standing in their kitchen I chatted on about all the wonderful sights, and friends we had visited. Our daughter seemed to be distracted but I kept on chatting until she finally interrupted.
"Mom and Dad, we have a present for you." She pulled out a very small gift bag and handed it across the counter.
"Thanks," I said.
Then I reached inside and pulled out a pair of baby booties. Since neither Steve nor I were anticipating a pregnancy it took us a long second for the meaning to register. I gulped, broke out in whoops and chortled like a mad dog. "You're pregnant?????"
I'm told that for the next five minutes all I could say was "Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God." I cried and hugged them both. Steve cried and hugged them both. Steve and I hugged each other. Our daughter and son-in-law looked understandable bemused. They'd known for three weeks.
When I heard this I gave my daughter the first and last critique she would get during her pregnancy. "You knew and didn't tell me???"
It was indeed a crossroad. My grown daughter was having my grandchild and I was no longer the one in control.
I've never been a traditional Mom...baking cookies and all, but somewhere deep in my soul I felt this too would be part of becoming a grandmother. My daughter fondly remembers her grandmother and the time they spent together in the kitchen and as a result my daughter is a terrific cook.
One big problem with becoming a Glam-Gram chef however was our out of date kitchen. A redo had been in the planning since we first decided to have our daughter's wedding at home. Luckily we catered in and avoided the construction hassle.
Then there were the endless talk of downsizing. We looked, we planned, but nothing came on the market that appealed to either one of us, so we stayed in our overly big home meant for a family with kids.
After the wonderful news that we would once again have little feet running through the house, I let my husband talk me into redoing the kitchen. Here it is. The baby is due in June.
Good for mud pies.
And this is our temporary kitchen.
What was I thinking?