Memory Alley

I've been extremely delinquent in posting segments on this blog lately (by lately, I mean the last ten months or so). A strange malaise has taken me over, much like the cabbages that attached themselves to the Starship Enterprise crewmembers' necks during Star Trek's first iteration (the really old one that spawned the cultural phenomenon known as "the Shat").

Not that I've stopped the various trips down memory lane that my brain keeps taking me on--it's just that I've lost interest in recording these trips. No one, including me, is very interested. After all, I haven't lived an exciting life--no journeys to exotic locales, no Nobel prizes won for anything, no 15 minutes (or even seconds) of Warholesque fame.

I feel as though these last months have been spent struggling with my shadow self, a Jungian concept that is helpful in understanding the importance of becoming aware of what it is that holds us back, keeps us down, stops us from doing. We battle with our shadow-self, and hopefully we win so we can take up our lives again. Like Persephone returning from the underworld, we emerge from our shadow-worlds and look back, still shaky from the encounter, thinking, "Boy, what was THAT? Whew, am I glad that's over, I think..."

That's pretty much where I am right now--shaky, but hopeful. I seem to be ready for action again. And, of course, for purposes of this blog, action summons up its own trajectory--also one of memory. Increasingly, I think, as we boomers become grandparents, moving up on the life-ladder rungs once occupied by our parents, we look back with misty-eyed fondness on those years spent in child-rearing.

We look at those children now--adults, some with children of their own, careers, partners, autonomous lives--and we think, How did we get here? WE weren't going to be grandparents like our parents were. We are the boomers, after all, and are going to re-make grandparenting into something cool. We will take our grandkids white-water rafting. We will harrass whalers on a Greenpeace boat, or protest transnational corporations at a world summit somewhere (although this might not be a good idea--remember Toronto). We will be the ultimate hip grandparents (and try not to break any hips in the process).

Jack and I are now grandparents--we are Grampy and Grammy (although "grampie" usually comes out sounding more like "grumpie"--fairly appropos, to my thinking). We've taken on the job our parents did in their last significant roles of our lives. It's a role that feels strange, like a really great pair of shoes that aren't broken in yet. We're not quite sure what our job is, other than spoiling the wee ones and being their buddies (something you couldn't do with your own kids, but apparently is okay with the grands).

I am approaching the end of the original blog, which was to be the story of four boys during their early years, the years spent in Herbert, Saskatchewan. I've dealt with Primero, Segundo and Tercero's early days, and am honing in on Quarto's arrival. This blog has been anything but linear--it's dipsy-doodled around contemporary musings on gender, recreational activities, cooking bacon for crowds, shifting socio-cultural constructs, renovation nightmares as well as various boy-and-hair-raising adventures. But then, after all, I am female, and therefore I write in Écriture féminine, that cyclical, non-linear manner so beloved of French feminists such as Julia Kristeva and Helen Cixous. (Finally, I get to actually use my Literary Criticism class). And, as I believe I pointed out way last year, that's how memory works. It dipsy-doodles around, refuses to walk on a leash, pops up at inopportune times, and also deserts us (like Homer Simpson's brain--"D'oh, I'm out of here") when we need it most--needing to remember where we left our glasses, car-keys, the car, etc.

Perhaps the last several months of shadow-boxing was really a preparation for shifting gears, away from the memories of being a parent to small children, and into the realities of grandparenting small children. It's a different role for a very different world. We are now realizing how foolish those parental curses were ("May you have a child just like you..."), especially if they've come true. After all, do we want to deal with this shit yet again, albeit one generation removed?

No, we wish for smooth sailing for those grandkids, and for living long enough to imprint something of ourselves on their memories. It's uncharted territory for us, this grandparenting. And while our own parents were pretty swell grandparents in their own rite, we know we will have to do things our way, whatever that may be.

Thank God Barb and Eldon are still around, and live just up the road (a little further than across the street, as in Herbert, but pretty close, nonetheless). They've been doing this for years now, and have been pretty cool grandparents. We can, as usual, learn a lot from them.

And so, the next couple of blog posts will wrap up the child-rearing journey. I have no desire to delve into the teenage years--they're still pretty raw in our memories, and had challenges that are repercussing (is that a word?) yet. No, I will draw the curtain of silence over those years and move into the present, into grandparenting. It has the shiny promise of being new and uncharted, of a future that is still to be shaped, of experiences yet to be lived. After all, why did I battle that old shadow, anyway, if not for the right to emerge into the world, where life is to be lived, full speed ahead and damn the torpedos (life always sends torpedos, it seems).

So I end this post on a brink, a cusp, a liminal space. I will finish the old, and work my way into the new.

Stay tuned.