Zen and the art of grand mothering

I had the kids in my house for a week last month: my daughter and her three girls. I'm a grown woman who was once responsible for my own three children. It should be okay. I can manage this. Like riding a bike, surely. 

Executive Summary: I never want to go back to being a mum of young children - unless I get to be young again while retaining all I’ve learned in the meantime.

First of all, other kids aren't MY kids (even Grand kids) so they're harder to get a grip on for everything. Turns out they only listen to me when I yell and am scary, they hate my cooking, they're messy as hell (even when compared to me), they don't know how to amuse themselves at my house because all their stuff is at their house.

But other than that, having the girls come to stay for a week has been fabulously time consuming.

You know, I *actually* thought I'd have time to work on one of my projects while the girls were here. That project takes a wee bit of space, some thinking, and a little concentration and I couldn't even get to first base on it. Nearly every moment of my time has been occupied as support crew so my project lies exactly where it was before the sprogs arrived.

Being the more organised human I am these days when compared to the young mum I was with my own three children, I can see where I could have really helped myself back then (and see this is all about housework? nothing about nurturing or spending quality time with children..probably the problem right there):

  • doing a load of washing every day
  • running the dishwasher when it was *nearly* full (that's twice per day with kids here)
  • picking up the lounge twice per day (once during the day, once when they've gone to bed)
  • putting laundry away as soon as it's done
  • mopping the kitchen floor before bedtime (told you my days have been full)
  • remembering that not all noise is created equal (happy noise can be tolerated with mindfulness and breathing)

Having the girls for a week has also reminded me what bloody *saints* my own grand parents were - especially my maternal ones.

Back in MY day...

Oh yeh it was totes obvs my Grandfather adored us. He spent so much time with me and my siblings. We had long hot sandy Christmas holidays, loads of dinners at his house, hells I even lived there for a time. But it's taken me years to realise how patient my Nana was.

To me she was always in Grandad's shadow, and like a shadow, she was always there. Her home was clean and tidy. Meals were always on the table when required, including high days and holidays. But what I realise now is her patience with me. She taught me to crochet, to knit, to sew, to bake. She would take me to her work at the Veterinary Clinic where I would overfed the kittens until their cages were soaked in milky cat pee (in one end out the other!).

Grumpy Grandma

My patience is telemarianly tiny. Plus I'm a snapper. I'm fine; I'm fine; I'm fine; I'm yelling and stomping and really angry that you're talking like a baby again Oh my God can't you just talk properly??

The girls were pleased to go back to their own house and toys and beds. "That week we stayed at Grumpy Grandma's..." a fading memory.

I would like to be a more patient Grandma, but at the click of my fingers, I'm not sure I actually want to put any work into it! I would like to be the kind of Grandma who isn't exhausted by the time the kids go home. I would like to have the kind of grand daughters who have some semblance of the rules of Grandma's house and follow at least a few of them because it's a charming agreement. I remember really loving some of the food Nana cooked and would like that kind of memory for my grand daughters but so far they only food they like from me is a McDonald's Cheese Burger Happy Meal (no pickle, no mustard).

Zen mothering

My dear friend Fox wrote a blog-post not so long ago about being a Zen Mother. I'd quite like to figure out how to Zen Grandmother. How to not stress out and how to become more generous and resilient. To understand that these little people are different from me; not just in personality but also in the world they live in. I'd like them to have respect for me which they'll never have if all I do is yell at them when they make a mistake, or touch my stuff, or get in my way, or talk like a baby, or continuously cartwheel in front of the television.

I'd like to be the kind of Grandmother who can see the bigger picture, is in it for the long haul, who has wisdom when it's needed and is mostly support crew the rest of the time. Because that's probably what kids these days need. To take a few hours off work sometimes to pick them up from gymnastics, to watch end-of-year concerts, to create boundaries that are consistent and easy to follow and reasonable so they know where to put there shoes and hang their coats and how to make their beds and all that jazz to benefit both of us.

So yes, Zen Grandmothering; I shall hang off the blog posts of foxmwoods.com to hear how she does it and re-purpose for older and wilder children and hope that one day, when they are growed, they'll still come and say hi and ask for some of my advice while they're eating Louise Slice while I mend their jeans.

Associated links

Picasso, perspective and the nude

I was in such foul mood, I was sure visiting the Auckland City Gallery was the last thing I should be doing. 

Don’t drive drunk; don’t shop hungry; don’t visit art galleries angry. 

How would a potentially crowded exhibition sooth, calm, and distract me from my severely negative emotions? I was positive it wouldn’t; couldn’t; and I’d be out of pocket to boot!

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
— Pablo Picasso

I was right about the Gallery being busy. It was the last day of the Body Laid Bare: Masterpieces from the Tate exhibition. I’d had months to see this exhibition but had left it to the last few hours like the dope I can be. But there you go; tack onto that a flash argument I'd had in the morning and boom, I could see myself loosing my shit in the middle of the Gallery if someone happened to piss me off. Yeh, I’m like that. Remember Britomart?

The reason I had dragged my bad mood across town was because I had heard that there were free life drawing sessions on the last day of the exhibition. That’s what I believed had a chance of really fixing what was wrong with my terrible mood. Getting lost in the challenges of drawing the human form would go a long way to mending what I’d broken in myself. 

Anyway, the queues were moving quickly so I paid my $23 and took slight pleasure in having my ticket wrapped about my wrist: joy in small things. Maybe it would be okay. I was wondering where they might be holding the life drawing. I had seen a photograph online with the event information and had it in my head that there might be a dozen or so people drawing in a secluded room so I looked for signs or directions. As the entrance opened up into the atrium, there they were and there were so many people drawing! 

I couldn’t see an easy place to view the model so I decided to view the exhibition first and come back and draw later. At the entrance of the exhibition, there was a roadblock as people clumped to read the placards on the wall. I pushed past them and into the gallery looking for a less congested place to start when I saw her. She was larger than the others and lit so she was glowing as if she was the only painting in the room. I knew the artist immediately and was surprised (though I shouldn’t have been) that there was a Picasso as part of the exhibition.

Picasso’s Nude Woman in Red Chair was utterly captivating. Utterly. I didn’t even care that I was in anyone’s way or that I wasn’t moving to the next painting or that I stood to close to the work: I was transfixed, a roadblock all of my own. 

Painting is a blind man’s profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.
— Pablo Picasso

Her curves, the colours, the dabs, the confident strokes. How the hand was like a winged brush against her cheek; a profile inside the face sharing the same lips as if in a kiss; the curve of her hips, the orb of her breast. She was Picasso’s lover, Marie-Therese Walton and the passion he had for her was evident in every brush stroke. Just the most beautiful work of art that photographs in books do no justice.

An as.ton.ish.ing piece of art. A masterpiece.

It wasn’t the only masterpiece there but after spending time with Picasso’s nude, Rodin, Dega, Matisse had nothing for me. I went back to her again and again.