Rambling--Another Kid-Raising Philosophy

I was visiting with some old high school chums a while back. We were discussing our kids, life, and how we were definitely not getting any younger. Someone brought up the "G" word. Is anybody from our class a grandparent? I grew up in a small town in Arkansas and we were a pro-lific young class. It was inevitable that at our age someone was going to be a grandparent. We knew of one for sure. We also knew of several that had grandchildren by stepkids that they had helped raise.

I shared with them an email that I received some 5 years ago with pictures attached of our classmates new grandbaby. I sat in front of the computer and cried for 30 minutes because it couldn't be possible that we were old enough for GRANDKIDS!!!!! Then, several days after that mind-boggling revelation I received an email from another classmate informing me that she was expecting her third child. Happy! Happy! Joy! Joy! We are not too old!!!

During our visit, one of our classmates joined in the grandparent conversation. This girl was (in high school) a very quiet girl who never said a whole lot and when she did it wasn't loud or outrageous. She was, back in the day, in a group of girls that got married the week before we graduated from high school. Her husband was in the military, she moved to Greenland right after graduation and started having babies. Now, it's not like she had a gaggle but she had 2 pretty close together.

On this day, she added some ingredients to the conversation that left the rest of us trying to find something to neutralize the topic and get back to the 'good ol' days' talk we were sharing. She started out by saying, "I put my girls on birth control when they became teenagers." Dang! That was bold to come right out and say in public for everybody to hear...don't ya' think?

A few faltered away and began talking to other people. She didn't stop, she was on a roll. I can understand that to an extent. But, also when people are intrigued by what I am saying, if only for a moment, I tend to talk louder. I am the center of attention and that doesn't happen often so I must make the most of it. Such was the case with my friend.

"I told my girls since they were little bitty," she continued, "that I didn't intend on being a grandmother at 35 and I didn't care if I had to chop up birth control pills and put it in their oatmeal and orange juice. I was NOT going to be a grandmother at 35." Again, Dang! Not just 'Dang!', but can you imagine the horror of being told at 5 or 6 that your breakfast had been spiked with some sort of drug. I know it is the most important meal of the day; but, Flintstone chewable birth control seems a bit much.

At this point, she pretty much lost her audience. But, did this cause her rantings to cease? Not at all. In fact, she chose to focus her ramblings loudly to the one person in the group who was cursed with the gift of making great eye contact even though they were somewhere in the tropics in their happy place! That would be me! She kept on going! I couldn't tell you exactly what she was saying because I was on the beach (in my head) basking in the sun.

This had to stop. The Caribbean beat that was soothing me was turning into Mayan war drums and it was busting up my happiness. I said to her, "You know how I took care of that? I insured that I would not be a grandmother at 35 by having my children at the ages of 29 and 37. Kinda hard to be a granny when you don't have kids yet!"

We brought a few people back into the conversation and got off of this topic. It's amazing how 20 something years will change a person. Just a mention of that type of thing in high school would have embarrassed the fire out of this girl. Now, she was embarrassing everyone around her .