Going on 80

I am currently shopping for a cane. But not just any cane. No, no! I’m looking for something more along the lines of, let’s say, a multi-purpose investment. And I think I may have found it. My dream cane. Besides my own front teeth or one or two hearing aids, this is all I want for Christmas!

The reason for my recent product search is that I have recently been terrorizing innocent passers-by by suddenly clutching them in a death grip. They don’t seem to appreciate the fact that I’m doing it for their own good. This is to avoid the necessity of their need to render assistance to the old lady who has just tripped and is now flat on her face on the sidewalk in front of them. With her underpants exposed.

Of course, society has to accept some of the blame for this. Is it MY fault that 89 year old, slightly mentally impaired women are permitted to run around outdoors without a leash?

Thus it was, that I decided to commence my cane shopping experience. I quickly ruled out most of the ones being proudly shown on Amazon, because they didn’t seem all that useful. In fact, I could see that using one of them could be a real hazard. How could I navigate smoothly with a cane in one hand, and in the other – my purse, umbrella, lunch box, my Kindle, a satchel for my hand sanitizer, face masks, medications, pepper spray, and my fully loaded squirt gun? Something would have to GO (besides me, I mean, since I need to rather frequently.)

What I really wanted to find was a walking stick like my Irish forebears used to use called a shillelagh (pronounced “shil-LAY-lee.”) It was not only very helpful to Paddy wobbling home from the pub, but it served as a terrific “fighting stick” when a brawl broke out. Sounds perfect. But where, I wondered, could I find such a splendid instrument in this modern world?

That was how I happened to stumble once again. This time on an ad for a “Tactical Staff”. The following description is taken verbatim from the seller’s website. I promise I’m not making up a word of this.

“Thugs and criminals are in for a rude awakening when they get close enough to see that what looked like an ordinary walking stick from a distance is actually a strong machined aluminum defensive system.“

Sounds right down my alley. And besides its formidable defensive capabilities, I’ll be getting so much more. According to the website, this – word for word – is the list of these features:

“Primarily designed as a survival tool, the Tactical Staff contains the following built in tools:

1. …. A harpoon point
2. …. A knife and saw
3. …. A firestarter
4. …. A fish scaler
5. …. A hammer
6. …. A glass breaker
7. …. Built-in internal compartments for carrying valuables

“The Tactical Walking Stick is the ultimate camping and survival tool. Part trekking pole, part saw, part fishing spear, part knife, part hammer, part fire starter, and all badass. This isn’t some cheap piece of plastic. The parts screw together tightly, and the whole thing has a kind of heft that makes it feel great in the hand.“

“It works great as a simple walking stick or trekking pole with the tools safely concealed inside. Run into a little trouble on the trail? This thing is heavy and sturdy enough to administer a sound ass-whooping, should the situation call for it.“

https://tacticalwalkingstick.com/products/tactical-walking-stick-for-survival-and-self-defense

Does that sound perfect or what? How can I possibly live without such a remarkable cane? Just what I was looking for. It can even serve as a bottle opener. And they’re having a 50% off limited time offer! Even at the full price of $110, it sounds like a bargain for a badass Granny like me. I especially like that part about being able to administer a little ass-whooping. I hope I’ll be able to lift it. It weighs 3 pounds, rather heavy for a cane, but probably just about right for my new carry-all, multi-purpose fighting stick. HOOYAH!

With the little persons at home during the pandemic, I am filled with wonder at the efforts of our schools to continue to indoctrinate the little urchins in the joys of Readin’, Writin’ ‘n Rithmetic, even if only from a hapless virtual distance.

I can’t imagine how today’s teachers are managing it, and I think we should all get together and holler “Go for it! You can DO it! We promise to vote for the next school levy if only you won’t give up! Two-four-six-eight, guess who we appreciate!” And like that.

I wholeheartedly support the schools’ efforts to succeed, no matter the pitfalls or lack of enough battered iPads – to prepare the children for life in their future world, especially in the category of Sex Education. I believe that Sex Education is very important. Especially since I never had any.

As everybody knows, in the 1930s and ‘40s when I was growing up, Sex Education was not included in the academic curriculum, partly because, like Robotics or Cyberporn, or Zoom, it hadn’t been invented yet. There was absolutely no need for it anyway, because as all of mankind knew, especially good Catholics, the teaching of the art of conception would have been entirely the responsibility of each child’s assigned Guardian Angel.

It was a fiction, of course. My own Guardian Angel has never uttered a single word about sex. I think he was entirely too bashful. He still is. I know I can count on him for keeping me from falling out of trees or over a cliff, but administering Sex Education doesn’t seem to be on his job description.

Or you may have thought that Sex Education wasn’t needed in the schools, because, of course, our parents were responsible for it. The trouble was that they didn’t know anything about it, either. And neither did their parents. It was a hopeless ancestral situation. Frankly, I have no idea how any of us were ever born. Or maybe they knew how to “do it”, they just didn’t know how to share the wealth by explaining it to the kiddies. Or else, maybe they figured that since nobody explained it to them, it must be a transition which would be forwarded to the next generation via some kind of osmosis.

Because of that parental failure, or because our Guardian Angels couldn’t or wouldn’t step up to the plate, it seems to be commonly assumed that Sex Education was something that was acquired in the back seat of cars or out behind the outhouse. I would like to be able to speak from experience on that, but it’s really none of your business. Well, anyway, the meager information I and most of my girl friends managed to acquire about sex, was usually communicated kid-to-kid on the playground. And much of it was incorrect.

Because of all this misinformation, you may be entertaining the delusion that the schools were stepping in with biology classes which would surely at least explain about the busy humanitarian efforts of sex-crazed birds and bees.

If you attended parochial schools, however, you would be keenly aware that that wasn’t exactly how the game was played. The environment was just a tiny bit more cloistered than that.

I attended St. Patrick’s School in Cedar Rapids, Iowa from kindergarten through 10th grade. In all that time, except for Father Peters patrolling the basketball stands with his big flashlight to be sure there was no hanky-panky going on, the subject of sex never arose. Not exactly. But some weird kind of tension started showing up in the classroom when I was in 6th grade.

In the olden days, the children were different than they are today. Well, the boys weren’t. They were just as they are today: grubby, shirttails hanging out, snickering, hooting and hollering, smelly, bubble-gum chewing and as rascally as they are today, – completely below average in every way! Attention Deficit Disorder hadn’t been invented yet, but they all had it.

But you wouldn’t recognize the girls! The little girls of my long begone era were mostly prim, proper, always presentable, striving for good grades, devoted to Sister, and perfect in every way. Me, especially. As for me and most of my friends, you could probably say that we were completely insufferable.

At St. Patrick’s, there seemed to be an unmitigated rule, that the girls were to be seated in rows next to the windows. The boys’ rows would be placed on the other side of the room – the one with the door – as close to the principal’s office as possible.

This made sense. All the nuns had good reason to know that the boys couldn’t be seated next to the windows. This was in anticipation of all the items which would be hurled out, like paper airplanes, spitballs, gum, homework assignments, and the occasional little numbskull who thought he was Superman.

In the Mason Dixon line that separated the girls’ rows from the boys’ rows, there existed a kind of no man’s land, at least as far as the girls were concerned. The boys seemed oblivious of this invisible line of sexual tension. I don’t think they even noticed that on the other side of the classroom there was a horde of perfectly prim and proper paragons of virtue who regarded the creatures on the other side of the classroom with malevolent contempt. And whenever our beloved Sister couldn’t take their persecution any longer, we silently cheered her on when she’d blow up and hurl blackboard erasers at the offending miscreants.

At least, this was the scene as it was at the beginning of our 6th grade school year.

Pretty soon, odd things started happening. Like pimples (zits hadn’t been invented yet). Some of the kids started getting a little taller. (Not my friend Louise and me, though. The big event didn’t happen to either of us until 9th grade, and by then it was too late to catch up. We continued to be the class runts). And one day, a shocking rumor was whispered that one of the girls was wearing a brassiere (bras hadn’t been invented yet, either). But strangest of all that year, was that the invisible wall we had always protected and enjoyed was starting to crumble.

At first, Louise and I were just a little bewildered. Besides getting taller than us, some of our formerly militant compatriots were starting to smile – S-M-I-L-E – at the antics of the pitiful lifeforms on the other side of the classroom. Sometimes, instead of a proper sneer, the girls would actually giggle and simper at the scoundrels. Yes, it was pretty revolting, and it got worse as the year wore on.

It would have been nice if someone could have explained that what we were witnessing was the perfectly normal earthquake called puberty.

My last two years of high school were spent at Mount Mercy Academy – a school for girls. By that time, I had gradually come to accept, that while my understanding of sex might be a bit spotty, the good Sisters knew even less. Or they weren’t telling.

The closest we ever came to Sex Education was in Biology during the semester we learned about dissecting innocent dead animals. By that time, of course, I and my fellow students all thought we were pretty sophisticated in our understanding that the male anatomy included a little wee-wee, and ours didn’t. There was intense surprise among us when we discovered that none of the frogs had one. So there went that theory!

Well, maybe there was one subject which might be related to Sex Education. It was taught fervently by the Sisters at both of the schools I attended. The information that was revealed to us was that a certain well-known baby had been born via Immaculate Conception, an interesting but confusing concept which was never technically explained to us. All we knew was that the infant’s mom was a virgin before, during, and after his birth. The only problem with this gem of knowledge was that – just as with all the valuable sex information we had acquired through our informal methods – it was INCORRECT.

I don’t blame the good Sisters though. No way! What were they supposed to believe? In the Apostle’s Creed, for instance, it says right there that Jesus, “…was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and was born to the Virgin Mary.”

I found out the truth when I was about 65 years old, and I’m still shocked. In actual fact, the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception doesn’t involve the birth of the Baby Jesus. It didn’t even pertain to Him exactly. It was what happened in His grandmother’s womb when she was pregnant with his mother, Mary. The doctrine teaches that Mary was conceived the usual earthy way but without the stain of original sin on her soul. That’s what the Immaculate Conception is. Now raise your hand if you didn’t know that. That way, I’ll know for sure that you did, yes, attend parochial school in the 1930s and 40s. Because that was the way it was taught! I swear.

The confusion still remains, though. If the dogma wasn’t referring to Mary’s perpetual virginity – like we were taught – is it just an optional choice to believe or not believe it? All right, boys and girls, I think we need to get to the bottom of this conundrum.

Thusly, relying on those prim and proper and perfect academic skills I was able to hone as a grade-schooler at the knees of the good Sisters, I have devised a simple multiple choice test for you. Even if you’re not a Catholic, the taking of this test is obligatory and will count toward your final grade. You may enter your answers in the Comments section below. No cheating is allowed.

Full disclosure: I took the test myself but it’s hard to know what kind of a grade I’ll get. I marked choice A. But I briefly also considered D. Blessed Mother has always been my favorite Lady and always seems to be at my side – especially at those times when my guardian angel has been asleep at the switch. As far as I’m concerned, however Mary managed her contribution to that spectacular gift to the world, is A-okay with me.

(And to tell the truth, it would actually be a comfort to know that maybe that good, kind, stoic St. Joseph wasn’t there just to be eye candy.)

And so, what do YOU think???

Once again, I have to apologize for the name of this blob: Going on 80. Now that I’m 89, some folks think it should be called Going on 90, but I can’t figure out how to change it on WordPress, and, besides, that wouldn’t be correct either. I’m pretty sure it really should be called Going on 146, but my doctor told me not to tell anyone about it. And to take the pink pill in the morning and the blue one at night.

Most people aren’t going to live forever but I always thought I was. Until recently.

It happened one dark and stormy night. Okay, scratch that part. It happened one pleasant, smoke-filled evening in Seattle about a month ago when I casually visited Urgent Care at my friendly Kaiser Permanente clinic with a minor complaint. I thought I needed a prescription for some water pills.

The next thing I knew, I was captured, strapped on a gurney, rolled into an ambulance and transported under cover of – by then – a dark and stormy night – to the hospital. As if that wasn’t terrorizing enough, I had to worry about the tatty underpants I had on, and why hadn’t I done something about my hair.

What was to happen was a life-changing event and I hold them accountable. I think the hospital proceeded to commit malpractice on me and they’re not going to get away with it. Thanks to Perry Mason re-runs, I know what I have to do. What any patriotic red-blooded American would do: file a class action lawsuit.

While you were sound asleep in bed, or if in, say, Hiawatha, Iowa, out battening down the plywood on the windows in preparation for the Level 9 hurricane which was about to flatten your house, I was at the hospital enjoying some similar activity. And similarly frozen with fear.

I was in a unit called Telemetry. I think it may be where they do testing for GEDs or SAT scores when they’re not busy. A lot of machines and computers and unidentified masked individuals are involved.

I like to imagine being in the hospital some time, and when an X-Ray gets ordered, I could picture myself gracefully laid out on the gurney as George Clooney is frantically propelling it down the hallway yelling, “Get outta the way! This woman needs a CBC, a chest x-ray and a full pelvic exam!”

But, alas, that isn’t what happens at my hospital. “Au contraire!” (A French expression meaning “Hell, no, kiddo.”)

No, indeed. At my hospital, you don’t need to go to Radiology. Radiology will come to YOU. As will the Laboratory, the EKG Department, the Ultra Sound Department, Pharmacy, Dietary, Housekeeping, and the Coroner’s Office wanting to know if you’ve signed the green form yet, and who are your next of kin.

All the machines that were being rolled in and out took up so much room that at one point it appeared the nurse was going to have to roll my bed out into the hall, where at least it probably would have been a little quieter. It was rather difficult to get any sleep that night what with all the beeping and dripping and clicking and sucking sounds to remind me that I was, yes, near death. The attendants might have been able to reassure me that I wasn’t, but I couldn’t hear them over the audio special effects.

I know what you’re thinking. So far, everything was going fine. I was in the hospital. For two days of testing. And I was safe. NOT. At the time, little did I know what was in store.

By the next morning, though, I have to admit that I started really enjoying myself. (I’d rather you don’t mention this part to the lawyers). In fact, I loved it. I’ve never been so pampered. Like a plump Persian cat who’s being gently treated for fleas. And do you know what’s the next best thing to having Breakfast in Bed? It’s having Lunch in Bed. And then having Dinner in Bed. And you don’t even have to do the dishes.

I’ve always heard that hospital food is supposed to taste like dog-doo, but I discovered otherwise. Waking up the first morning, one of the nurses pointed out a long rectangular card at my bedside and told me I’d “Better eat something”. (She didn’t mean the card.) The title on the card had the really unappetizing title of “Low Sodium Diet for Cardiac Patients.” I opened it, expecting the worst, and discovered a whole new culinary experience.

If you’ve ever stayed at my house, you know what to expect for breakfast. Either Fruit Loops or leftover pizza. You certainly couldn’t expect to find, for instance, the kind of oatmeal that takes 20 minutes just thinking about making and not including the additional twenty minutes it takes to cook. The oatmeal alone would have been worth the early death I was still anticipating, but there was much more available.

Every meal offered was like that. I was expecting the dinner menu to include stuff like chipped beef on toast or Hamburger Surprise, but it wasn’t. I can’t remember the descriptions for all the dinner offerings but they were like “Veal cutlet brushed with fresh Enumclaw-grown basil and nestled in clarified butter from the pituitary glands of a pregnant musk ox” (well, not exactly like that – but close), and I ate every delicious bite of it. I wished I could try every single dish on that menu. And I could have because YOU COULD HAVE AS MUCH AS YOU WANT. AT PRACTICALLY ANY TIME OF THE DAY. All you had to do was pick up the phone and tell the voice on it what you want.

And there’s this. Due to my superior investigative skills and sensitive palate, I was able to discern this as the truth and nothing but the truth: The. Coffee. They. Serve. Is. Starbucks. I think so, anyway. At my house, Starbucks coffee is only served for Easter Morning brunch, or on those rare occasions when I’m entertaining Martha Stewart or the archbishop. And it may help explain why at one point during my time in the hospital, I heard some staff person in the hall grumbling, “Why does the tray for the old woman in 402 have four cups of hot coffee on it?”

At this point, I was still enjoying myself immensely. I was even starting to appreciate visits from all those masked Invaders from the Planet Cardiology. And I had other visitors as well, including the pleasant lady from Accounts Receivable who was concerned to know if I owned a car that could be lived in, because she didn’t feel that the sale of my house would be quite enough to pay the bill. (Not to worry, though. As it later turned out, Kaiser Permanente and the United States government stepped up to the plate and paid for everything except for about forty-five cents which I had to fork over out of my own pocket.)

Due to the pandemic, except for daughter Lisa who had to be properly certified as the Official Designated Visitor, I couldn’t have visitors from the real world, but among the ones from the twilight zone in which I found myself, the visits I enjoyed the most were those of not one but two individual but equally engaging chaplains, and by the time they each left, I was starting to feel a whole lot better about my impending death.

It was finally at the end of the second day, when the bomb detonated. It was triggered by the Cardiology Doc (that’s the hip term they use for the medical professionals at my hospital.

“Well, Mrs. Ford,” he announced. “I have some good news and some bad news.”

“Give it to me, Doc,” I said, stoutly. “I can take it”.

“Well, the good news is that you’re not going to die yet”, he explained. “The bad news is that you have Acute chronic diastolic congestive heart failure”. I was so shocked I might of got it wrong. He may have said, “The GOOD news is that you’ve got Acute chronic diastolic congestive heart failure. The BAD news is that you’re not going to die immediately, but you can stop paying your AARP dues for too many years in advance”. (Now, I ask you, what does that young whippersnapper know? As any knowledgeable AARP member can tell you, it’s almost mandatory to pay your dues well in advance, because as we are all fully advised, if you were so careless as to let your subscription expire, so will you.)

Even at the time, that diagnosis didn’t sound too good. It wasn’t till later that it finally sunk in. And then it became all too clear. They were practicing malpractice on me. When I was admitted to the hospital “Acute chronic diastolic congestive heart failure” was something I DIDN’T have and I never even heard of. All I had was a little problem with swollen legs and I couldn’t get my shoes on. All I wanted was a water pill.

Look at it this way. How would you feel if when you checked in, you had a case of infected ringworm, or ingrown nose hairs, or a pimple on your nose. And two days later, you were sent home infected with a full-blown terminal case of flesh-eating leprosy. Would you ever forgive the institution responsible for such ineptitude? They’re supposed to make the owwie get better! They’re supposed to Do.No.Harm. It says it right there in the cafeteria. They get awards for it.

It might be interesting to note that one of my daughters works as a chaplain for a related institution. She works in a department called “Nick-You” (sometimes seen misspelled as “N-ICU). I was always afraid to ask what they do there, but now I know. Contrary to my previous suspicions, it isn’t where Accounts Receivable are processed, or where you go to get the flu shots. It can only be the seat of the Department of Deranged Diagnoses which are unfair, uncalled for, excessive, completely unacceptable, and engineered to conjure up a condition which I clearly DIDN’T have when I arrived there.

So that, in brief, is why I intend to sue my hospital, and they deserve it. I hope you concur. And I’m going to get every penny of my forty five cents back.

This concludes my testimony. I rest my case.

One of the facts of life is that the second-born child will always be outranked by his/her/their elder sibling –  the first-born. Especially when it comes to birthday parties.

In the 1930s when I was growing up, birthday parties were something only the rich kids had, and even those were few and far between. I only attended one party during my childhood.  It was that of one of my schoolmates – Dorothy – and all the little girls in my kindergarten at St. Patrick’s were invited.  I remember it well.  

Dorothy’s mother was really nice to us, even when one of the girls wet her pants. (It wasn’t me!)  We wore these little cone hats and we played musical chairs.  There was a birthday cake and ice cream and lemonade, but to me, the feature of the event was a platter of itty bitty ham-salad-sandwiches-with-the-crusts-cut-off. 

I’ll never forget that platter. Scrumptious! I was awed. Sandwiches were only supposed to come with peanut butter.  To this day, whenever I give a party, I always serve ham-salad-sandwiches-with-the-crusts-cut-off, and sometimes I even make them with real ham instead of chopped bologna.

Because I never had or went to any other parties growing up, it isn’t surprising that none of my seven children had any either.  It didn’t help that we lived in the part of Seattle called Rabbit Hill where children proliferated.  There were 99 of them living on both sides of our street and all their mothers had way too much good sense than to recklessly plan a birthday party.

When I became a grandmother, I was in for a big surprise.  It turns out that in the modern world, such occasions as children’s birthdays are not just practiced. They are a Necessity of Life. It should be observed that to a mother who’s really with the program, a child’s birthday party is one of the inalienable human rights.  It’s only in the administration of the party where the plot thickens a bit.  What I have noticed is that the birthday party of the family’s first-born child is a kind of extravaganza.  The one for the second-born is a bit more reduced in size and scope. And let’s not even discuss the ones for the third-borns.

When my grandson Bryce had his 4th birthday, the party was a memorable event.  It featured Knights and Ladies, towers, sword fights, fire-eating dragons, and a guest list which might strike fear in the hearts of many mothers less heroic than my daughter Gretchen.

The same year – about 10 months later, Bryce’s little brother had his 2nd birthday.  His name is Ford, and this is how it went at HIS party.  Click HERE to watch the video.

In case you’d like to send Ford a sympathy card or money, his email is fordcovey@gmail.com.

Hello. Remember me?  I’m still here, more or less.

I know it’s been 10 years since I last posted a message. In those days I was going on 80 years old. Are you as confused as I am about the name of this blog?  What kind of a deranged person would name her blog “Going on 80” — like it was something permanent?

So that’s why I’ve decided to update my brand.  I’m considering changing the name of this blog to be “Not Going on 80”… Clever?  I think so, too, especially since today is my 89th birthday and I probably won’t be able to go backwards. Unless you have a better idea, that’s likely what I’ll go for.

So here’s the plan: on Goingon80, I posted a message every day from the day I turned 79 till when I hit the big Eight-O. But now that I’ve reawakened the blog, I’m only going to post to it once a week (on Sundays), not due to my infirmities – no indeed – but because, listen, I’ve got other fish to fry.  (More about that later.)

I hope you’ve been well. As for me, I’m fine, except for currently losing my balance, my hearing, my memory, and my hair. Fortunately however, to balance out these inconveniences, I’ve been visited with a fantastic revelation! At long last, I’ve been able to figure out what I really want to be when I grow up. ALIVE.  Tada!

So please stay tuned, and let me hear how you’re doing. And try to take care of your teeth.  I’ve still got some of mine. Three more are in there lately thanks to the efforts of my dentist son-in-law Eric and my periodontist.  When my son-in-law Brad heard I was scheduled for the work, I later learned he went around telling anyone who would listen that his mother-in-law was getting implants. Three of them. People still look at me funny.

Oh, and one more thing: 10 years ago when my grandson Bryce launched this blog for me, it was intended as a little family project. Back in the old days, my paternal grandparents had eleven children. They and all their progeny lived within 5 miles or so of each other and everybody KNEW each other. It was nice.

Thus it was that I developed the misbegotten practice of posting stories about some of you because I wanted you all to get better acquainted. Seemed like a good idea. Only tiny little problem, however, was that I didn’t ask you first if it was okay, and I managed to leak your full name all over the internet. Aargh! I have to fix this.

My plan is to either delete any post that featured you or your full name, or at least delete your last name. Which should I do? Please leave a comment here, or else email me at fordvid@gmail.com.

And stay out of trouble!

Good morning.  It’s me again.  Because my going-on-80 blob didn’t start celebrating birthdays till late October of last year, I’m trying to catch up.

Today’s birthday is featuring my daughter Lisa Marie Ford – the third oldest of our seven children, the oldest of our five daughters, and a survivor if there ever was one.

This is how Lisa made her debut into the world.

My husband Gene was matriculating for his master’s degree at the University of Iowa, and working any jobs he could get to support us and our two little persons, Mark, 4, and Matthew about 20 months old.

We lived in a barracks-style unit in the University of Iowa’s married student housing section.  The hut was all metal, and heated in winter with an oil stove in the living room.  In the summer, the hut’s temperature reached the melting point, especially for very pregnant, perspiring mothers-to-be like me.

The section we lived in was populated by the families of several medical residents and medical students.  At the coffee klatches we shared every morning, the other wives gossiped endlessly about the famed brutality of one of the OB medical residents – let’s call him “Doctor C”.  Somebody had actually composed a grisly song in several verses describing his exploits and the number of pelvises he had enjoyed fracturing.  

I wasn’t long into my third pregnancy as the horrors of the legend of the resident doctor continued to expand.  I was enormously relieved that the OB resident assigned to me was noted for his kindness, and he was nothing remotely like the monster “Dr. C.”.

The sweltering Iowa summer simmered relentlessly on and I waddled through the miserable heat and “morning” sickness as best I could.  I clung desperately to my expected due date – my birthday, September 6th – and my hoped-for release from misery.

It was about September 4th when I went in for my routine weekly checkup.  After the pelvic exam, the doctor said cheerfully, “Well, looks like you’re just about ripe.  I’d say you’ll be delivering right on time.”

“Oh, good”, I said. “Could it be as soon as tonight?”

“Well, I wish it could be”, he said.  “That way I could be the one to deliver the baby.  If it’s tomorrow or later though, I won’t be here.  I’m going on vacation for two weeks. All my cases have been assigned to Doctor C.”

I was aghast. “I’ve been assigned to Doctor C”? I asked in numb disbelief.

It was my unexpected worst nightmare.

“Sure”, said the doctor, “But I’ll see you for your first post-delivery checkup in October.”

“No, Doctor”, I said slowly. “I can wait. I think you’ll be seeing me before that.” 

And so it was that I had to begin my campaign to convince my unborn child that s/he wasn’t “ready” to be born yet. “Listen, kid.  We gotta work together on this.  You can’t be born yet.  You gotta wait till the 19th.  You can DO it. Otherwise, trust me, there will be serious Consequences.”

Every day I tried to be as quiet as it’s possible to be with two toddlers to entertain in the sweltering heat. If there was ever a time to use will power – mine AND the unborn baby’s – this was it.

Finally, labor began Monday evening, September 19, 1955.  Due to the bizarre nature of Iowa weather, our September heat wave culminated in an ice storm, of all things. Gene – working on a carpentry job in Cedar Rapids, had to inch his way back to Iowa City. 

By pre-arrangement, one of our neighbors came over to sit with our sleeping boys, and Gene drove me to the University of Iowa Hospital.

When my doctor – just returned from his vacation that day – entered the labor room, it was his turn for dumb disbelief.

“I can’t believe you haven’t delivered this baby yet”, he said.

“We’ve been waiting”, I said. “All good things come to them who wait.”

And it did. The next morning.  A Girl.  Beautiful.  And unlike the birth of her bald baby brothers, she had some hair.  I thought she was unbelievably pretty – especially because instead of being very red, she looked kind of tan. Oh, oh. Not good.  Jaundice.

No sooner did they put her in my arms, but they snatched her away and except for glimpses in the Infant ICU, I didn’t see her for a few days.  Turns out, Lisa was the first of our “RH babies”, adversely affected by my RH negative anti-bodies. And the longer time she spent in the womb was bad for her blood. Every hour brought encouraging lab results though, as she was kept under observation.  All by herself, with no need for transfusions, the baby’s own chemistry and strength rallied and restored her.  Even after I was discharged, Lisa was kept in the nursery for several days for study and observation of her miraculous recovery.

That’s just how she is.  Lisa is always going to be a survivor.  She can DO it.  

My son Matthew was reminding me of how our kids were divided into two armed camps when they were growing up – the two older boys, and the five younger girls.  As the oldest of the girls, Lisa could never understand how she had to be grouped with them instead of with the boys.

Today, though, it’s pretty obvious that she treasures them all and that she and her sisters are best friends for life.  And as she deals with the challenges she’s faced, she continues to teach us all a lot about the survival of the fittest! 

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Happy birthday, Lisa.  Go for it!  You can DO it! 

 

 

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This is another post from grandson Bryce. It’s been nice to have my grandma back the last bit instead of being consumed by the blog. Now grama, Matt and I are able to catch up and watch (grama has the special ability to watch through closed eyelids much of the time) shows and movies that were missed over the last year.

I have had a lot of editing to do recently as wedding season winds down, so I have been bringing my laptop to the house to edit while listening to whatever is on the TV.

2 nights ago, grama informed me at 3AM, that she should probably get some sleep, and that in a few days she would be able to stay up late. I think I have the only grama that does not count 3AM as late. I even count that as late. How old am I getting? She is eighty? Pshhh… she’s got way too young of an attitude, I think she says she’s eighty so she can get the senior discount when we go to the movies.

OK, now I have to go edit some more…

Today is my great niece Elizabeth (Fitzpatrick) Bush’s birthday but I got mixed up and blobbed about it yesterday on Blob 367.  Now that I’m 80, they say it’s okay to be confused (in my case,however, confusion was a congenital defect.)

Yesterday was really my niece Elizabeth (Gorman) Brown’s birthday, so I’m going to blob about it today. Here goes.

 Have no doubt about it.  Operating out of Yuma and Surprise, Arizona is Superwoman herself.

Yesterday – September 13th – was the 42nd birthday in earth years of my niece Elizabeth Margaret (Gorman) Brown.  I’m pretty sure she’s an extra-terrestrial.    No earthling could match her herculean performance in life. 

Elizabeth started out on earth as the youngest of three children of my brother Leo and my sister-in-law Peggy (Althouse) Gorman. Her siblings are my nephew Michael Gorman and my niece Leanne (Gorman) Dudas.

It didn’t take long for the family to find out they had a powerhouse on their hands. The only thing that kid ever failed to do was to figure out how to fail.

As soon as she graduated from high school and college, Elizabeth undertook the financing of her further schooling and career by successfully buying and selling real estate. In her spare time during this stage of her career, she learned to fluently read and write in Russian.

Elizabeth’s first real job after college was one nobody believes.  Thanks to her fluency in Russian, Elizabeth claims she was “selling kerosene” to the citizens of some troubled country like Turkmenistan.  A likely story.  Nobody believed it for a minute. The only role Elizabeth possibly could have been playing in that hotbed of anarchy and chaos was that of a CIA agent.  She will deny this, of course.

While she was there, consorting with officials in the American embassy, she met and later married a handsome U.S. military defense attache in Armenia named Bob Brown.  His previous work was in counter-intelligence. He was probably a CIA agent too.

Once they got married and settled down in Arizona, these are just some of the activities I know Beth has been involved in:

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1. She and Bob bought a large graceful home in Surprise, Arizona, and they are developing it into a really gorgeous property.

2.  While she was pregnant with their first child, Virginia, Beth went to school and earned a CPA in accounting.

3.  While still nursing Virginia, she launched herself into law school and seemingly in no time at all, earned her law degree.

4.  By the time she became pregnant with their second child – their son William – she got hired as a prosecuting attorney in Phoenix.

6.  In their “idle time” during this period, Beth and Bob created and operated a creative nursery school on their property for Virginia and five or six other pre-schoolers.

7.  It was during this time that Beth became pregnant with their third child Zachary. To avoid any dull moment which might have dared to occur, the family packed up and moved to temporary housing in Yuma, Arizona where Beth could work as for the Attorney General as an attorney for Child Protective Services.

Beth’s mother, Peggy Gorman, told me, “She spends a lot of time in court and has to travel periodically to La Paz county also. As an example, today she has some hearings in La Paz this morning and then has to rush back, nurse baby Zack— and then has hearings in Yuma this afternoon.” 

I’ll try to find out if between tasks, Beth has to find time to run into a phone booth in order to change into or out of of her Superwoman outfit.  

Beth’s husband Bob is retired from military life, but meanwhile he has his hands full, too, tending to Virginia, now in second grade, Bill who’s in preschool, and Baby Zack who apparently spends a good part of his day smiling at any and all of the commotion.  Bob is probably wondering what retirement is really like.  Fortunately, Peggy tells me that Virginia is a big help with her new baby brother.

The five Browns are an intriguing and interesting family.  I hope you get to meet and spend time with them some day.  Be prepared for a lot of productive activity in their household.

In the meantime, Elizabeth, I hope you had a wonderful birthday yesterday. And I hope you all get to move back to your beautiful home soon. Fortunately, there aren’t so many tall buildings in Surprise, Arizona that need to be leaped  over with a single bound.

Are you still there?  I hope, I hope.

Octo-woman is still basking in the glow of her big Eight-O birthday.  Thanks to folks like you, it was a monumental day (even though I spent much of it at doctor visits with son Matthew).  The schedule’s been been so haphazard since then that I haven’t had time to sit down and describe it to you.  

There were so many comments, cards, and letters that I haven’t opened yet  — I’m saving them till next weekend.  Thank you for all of them, and for the phone calls, flowers, balloons, plants, presents, pies, cakes, pastries, candy, games and kind words you sent my way.  I’m considering the feasibility of having an 80th birthday every year.  Would you consider that? Or does it seem greedy?

But today is not my birthday.  This is the 27th birthday of my great niece Elizabeth Firtzpatrick Bush. 

Elizabeth is the daughter of my nephew Tim Fitzpatrick and his first wife Debbie. She has two older sisters, Katie and Abby.

Elizabeth is married to Chester – CJ – Bush.  They have two little persons whom you may have met before on this blog.  They are  AJ (Adam Jacob), and Olivia Katherine. They all live – guess where – in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Today, Elizabeth works as a medical examiner for Auxiant. Auxiant’s website describes its mission as being a “Third Party Administrator (TPA) of self-funded benefit plans.” They must take the stress out of dealing with health care benefits.

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It’s hard for me to picture her in any kind of a corporate position.  I’m always going to remember her as she was as a toddler.  All babies are adorable . . . but once in a while, you run across one who definitely has some smarts. And she had an irresistible and infectious sense of humor.  

The Fitzpatricks clown around a lot, and nobody loved the antics more than Elizabeth.  All her dad had to do was come into the room and cross his eyes, or if her Uncle Dennis was goofing around, or if any other silliness was afoot, Elizabeth would dissolve in giggles. Every household should have such a treasure.

Here’s some video clips of her when she was two-and-a-half years old.  She’s with her Aunt Dee-Dee (Fitzpatrick) Fortune, her sisters Katie and Abby, and her cousin Meghan Melchior. (The VHS video and audio is 25 years old so be tolerant). 

Happy Birthday, Elizabeth!  Keep dancing!

So here it is at last.  The last blob to mark my big day when I’m not going-on-80 any more.  I’ve graduated at last.  With 80 birthdays behind me, I am finally going to have to sit down and figure out what I want to be when I grow up.

As I’m writing this, it’s still Labor Day.  I don’t know about you, but when Labor Day rolls around every year, it isn’t the great American workforce I’m thinking of.  It’s all those many labor rooms I had occasion to visit and linger in.

Unless you enjoy pain, the labor room is a place you might want to avoid. Octo-woman can help.  Thanks to her ten pregnancies, she eventually was able to design and utilize many heretofore unknown birth control strategies.

Because you have been such a faithful and generous reader of this blob all year, Octo-woman wants to thank you by sharing some of these important secrets. 

The first method of birth control we shall discuss today is rhythm.  Octo-woman does not recommend it.  Rhythm – also known as Vatican Roulette –  is a sinister method of birth control, which, if pursued carefully, with the studied use of charts, graphs and calendars, can invariably guarantee that you will be pregnant within 30 days.

Take my husband Gene and me, for instance. On the day we were married, we set off on our trip to Miami, Florida where we planned to work and continue our schooling.  Along the way, Gene – ever the avid traveller, always seeking out interesting tourist sites along the way – wanted to stop and see St. Augustine, the oldest city in America.  When we got there, he stopped and was looking at the travel guide. “Look, Patty.” he said.  “There’s a quaint old shrine here that was established in 1565. Want to drive over and see it?”

“I guess so”, I said.  “What’s it called”?

“The name’s in Spanish”, he said.  “It looks like ‘La Madre De La Leche.”

Then came my fateful reply. “Sure, I’m game”.

And so, like a couple of demented turtle doves, we visited and prayed in the shrine dedicated to the mother of the nursing milk.  This is a shrine where for a few centuries now, married people have come to pray for fertility.  Yes, that’s correct – fertility.  In olden days, fertility was considered something to be desired. 

Well, anyway, we can never say we didn’t ask for what followed.  What followed was Mark Peter, Matthew Damian, Lisa Marie, Susan Marie, Gretchen Marie, Teresa Marie, and Judith Marie. And each was accompanied by a marching procession of Bills.

It didn’t take Gene and me long to figure out that we had a little fertility problem and we decided to do something about it.  We decided to limit the size of our family by practicing rhythm.  We kept practicing it, but we never got it perfect. To show you how successful this form of birth control can be, after we started practicing it, I only had six more pregnancies.

By that time, we were living in a part of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood which was known as Rabbit Hill.  They didn’t call it Rabbit Hill because the Easter Bunny lived there.  If you were to look around and observe all those Catholics in all those big old houses, with all those big families, you might assume that nobody was practicing birth control.  But you’d be wrong. EVERYBODY was practicing birth control.  They just weren’t using any methods that worked.

Few people outside of Capitol Hill ever gave us credit for it, though. As an example of how we were censured by the outside world, one summer we took the whole family on a train trip from Seattle to Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  At various times, I would escort several of the little persons into the Ladies Room. One afternoon, a young woman was sitting at the mirror combing her hair, and when she saw all those heads coming into view she slowly turned around. 

“May I ask”, she inquired disdainfully, “how you happened to acquire all those children?”

Sizing up the girl’s age, I cleverly understood she wasn’t really asking me to summarize the earthy habits of the birds and the bees.  I didn’t have time to anyway, because Judy was unwinding a whole roll of toilet paper.  

“My, goodness”, I replied.  “I am much more interested in figuring out how we have avoided having eight.”

And I was.  I mean, by then I was rather fond of the seven we had already brought into the world.  As a neighbor of mine once put it, we weren’t exactly down on our knees making novenas for more new babies.  But let’s face it, once they get here, they have a big way of worming their way into your affections.

In the meantime, though, during the ten years I was pregnant, I became increasingly alert to alternative methods of birth control. 

Here, for the first time, they will be revealed.   If birth control has ever been a problem for you, or if you’re a Catholic of the old school, never fear: Octo-woman is here. 

There will be no charge for this service.  It is extended to you graciously by Octo-woman, herself, who is, as ever, keeping the world safe for democracy.  

Here are her tips in list form so it will be handy to tape them onto the refrigerator.

Octo-woman’s BIRTH CONTROL STRATEGIES

1.  Try never to go to St. Augustine, Florida, but if you have to, be very careful. Stay away from that ancient shrine to the lady of the nursing milk.  Unless you are prepared for what follows, do not go there. You have been warned. 

2.  Another way to limit the size of your family is to set up housekeeping at a considerable distance from your husband.  In the Vatican, perhaps.

3.  Convince your husband that you are a man.  At the same time, convince yourself, that your husband is an invisible man. It should work.

4.  Finally, if all else fails, you might try one other method which was once  described this way:  This lady went to the doctor — we’ll call him Dr. O’Shaunessey.

“Doctor”, says the lady, “My husband and I keep practicing rhythm but I keep getting pregnant.”

So Dr. O’Shaunessey says, “Sure’n you do!”  “Well,” he says, “I guess you’ll just have to try usin’ buttermilk.”

Confused, the lady says, “Well, Doctor, I never heard of using buttermilk.  Do I take it before . . . . or after?”

And he replies, “INSTEAD of.”

Well, that’s it. It might be a good idea to memorize these tips so you’ll always be prepared. And, yes, you’re quite welcome.  I always enjoy being of service to the world that needs me so badly.

Okay now.  The real reason I wanted to sign off on this going-on-80 blob with this topic is because the day we visited that Shrine to the Lady was the best thing that ever happened to us. And that’s the truth.  

Here below – in all its disheveled glory – is the last photo ever taken all together of the Ford Horde. I’m always going to wonder how we got so lucky. And since then, we’ve added two sons-in-law – Sean and Joe. This is the treasury Gene and I were given, and we never got over being grateful for it.Before I sign off today, thank you for reading and contributing to the blobs all year.  It wouldn’t have been any fun without you.

And thank you, grandson Bryce, for launching and using extortion to make me write in it every day. 

If you’re a “subscriber” to the blob, you’ll get emails letting you know if/when I crank out a few more from time to time.  Among other topics, I didn’t start doing the birthdays and anniversaries till the end of October and I missed a few more as well, so I’ve got some catch-up to do.  And I want to “flesh out” some of the earlier ones, yada, yada, yada.

I might also work on a family tree project, and, if so, and I may be begging you for help.  Most of all though I have to face tackling all those dozens of family video tapes I’ve accumulated and failed to edit. (Yes, Virginia, there IS a Santa Claus but he has no intention of editing all those videos, givehimabreak.)

So here I go, unbowed, undaunted, and unorganized into my eighth decade.  One thing you can count on is that as the years go on, I will certainly continue to apply Octo-woman’s birth control strategies, because I definitely and categorically do not wish to wind up in another labor room. 

One can’t be too careful, you know.