Tag Archives: family

Goodbye Grandma

Posted on 17 January 2012 by Teresa| 1 Comment

20120122-083312.jpgThere are few people who have affected my life as much as this lovely woman. I met Dijuan Coates in 1985, the year I met the teenage boy who would become my husband. He would visit her, his grandmother, amid travels and then he and I would hang out, tromping through the hazelnut orchard that surrounded her house at the outskirts of Newberg. He gave me a rose from her backyard once. Then his younger brother came along to eat off the bloom. It was in that yard that years later she showed Brian and I photos of her life, of Grandpa Coates, of her boys when they were young.

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Over the years, his grandma became my grandma. We divorced and have barely spoken, but Grandma Coates has been there for me and my kids the whole time, never wavering. She was kind and gentle, loving and compassionate. We rarely spoke about the divorce or her grandson. Instead she spent her time reminding me how much she loved me and the kids. How grateful that she was that I hadn’t ignored her post-divorce. What she never understood is how much I appreciated her not abandoning us.

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While we were in Vietnam back in 2007, she’d had surgery and her eyes were bad. I wanted to visit, but clearly distance was an issue. I emailed my mom to see if she’d visit in my stead and she did. I will always be grateful to both women for that visit. My mom spent a couple hours catching up with her, sharing stories of our travels with Grandma, sending our love.

In Summer 2010 we were able to take a road trip to California and visited Grandma at her new home in Gilroy. We got to share an evening with her, Uncle Dennis and Aunt Jackie. having dinner as a family. I brought her photos and the kids got to see her, tell her how much we loved her still. I’d hoped to go again this past summer, but with the unemployment the cost of a trip made it impossible.

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I knew Grandma for 27 years. She showed me how to love family, even when it isn’t easy. She lives on in my heart and the memories of my children who were lucky enough to know their great great-grandmother.

Grandma passed away on Monday, after a thankfully brief health crisis filled with a stroke, massive heart attack and a destructive skin infection. A memorial will be held soon.

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Difficult days.

Posted on 14 September 2011 by Teresa| 1 Comment

There are times when I have loved being a single mother. There hasn’t been anyone to argue with about what I think is best for the kids. No one to tell me what to do or where to go. I don’t have to okay anything with anyone; their father gave up that right years ago. It is just me making decisions.

And that means it is me taking the blame, too.

Ask anyone what it is like to have a teenage daughter and they will rant on about the disrespect, the rude behavior, the attitude. I’ve talked to plenty of mothers over the last year or two–”Is this normal?” “Is she supposed to hate me so much?” “Am I really as stupid as she says I am?” Every mother nods, smiles and reassures that it’s just teenage girls; they are a force to be reckoned with.

Logically, I know that. I realize her frontal lobe isn’t developed, that teenagers generally do think the world revolves around them. I know that she is just saying it to upset me. And day after day, it does. It wears on me and I wish I had someone to hold me up when she shoots me down who could come in with a deep, masculine voice full of authority to tell her it’s no way to treat her mother.

I have friends, dear friends, who support me and remind me that it the daughter isn’t the authority and even when she makes cruel assertions, they are just the spouting of an 8th grade girl. They remind me to take deep breaths and let it roll off my back like a duck in water.

So I try. I inhale through my nose and fill my lungs, exhale slowly, purposefully through my mouth. And again. But there are days when those breaths dissolve into sobs and I ache for someone to step in, help us manage these treacherous waters. Those are the days the anger boils over at events long past, at relationships since faded and I wish more than anything that this young teenaged girl had two people to guide her. Two people who loved her and each other, to be the object of her wrath — instead of only me, alone.

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And then there were two.

Posted on 7 August 2011 by Teresa| 5 Comments

My family trio became a duo last week when my son moved out of his bedroom and into my sister’s house–1009 miles away.

I’d been expecting him to go, he was going to bring her kids home after their summer vacation with family. He would accompany them on the flight, stay for a few weeks and come back home. But life never quite happens like I expect and wham,bam Stuart suddenly had a job at my sister’s dental office.

If he wanted it.

He has spent much of the summer looking for a job with no luck beyond the small landscaping gig he’s had for years now, but suddenly there was a nearly-full-time position just waiting for him. In southern California.

He accepted, said his goodbyes to family and friends, then boarded a plane with his ten- and five-year-old cousins bound for LAX.

His room sat empty for two days, waiting. Maybe he’d change his mind. Maybe the job wouldn’t actually exist. Maybe we could still be a trio.

A week later, he’s getting settled in his new room and his sister has taken over his old room. Her computer is on his desk. Her sheets are on his bed. Her toys and books are on his shelves. And maybe in another week or two it won’t seem like they are his desk, his bed, his shelves, his room. Maybe it will feel like they are really hers.

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Perhaps in a few weeks we will have morphed into a dynamic duo, instead of feeling like a tripod with missing leg. I feel this imperative to bond tightly now or we will simply fall apart. So I’m spending more time with her, talking more, being together more.

Together, just the two of us.

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The Best Day Ever.

Posted on 30 July 2011 by Teresa| Comments Off

This is my five-year-old nephew’s favorite line this week.

Cousins hamming it up at Washington Park

The first time Alex said it was last Friday as we left the Oregon Zoo. We’d spent four and a half hours roaming though the zoo, ogling the fruit bats as they devoured broccoli and bananas, meditated on the giraffe’s less-than-graceful gait, rumbled along the train tracks to and from Washington Park, and visited every wildcat, monkey, bird and insect cage we could. With all the cousins living far apart, it’s rare that they all get together. But my youngest sister had left her two here with family and we took full advantage of it, enjoying the zoo, the train, the park and a picnic lunch.

Alex wasn’t far off the mark–I might not argue for it being the best day, but it was, at the least, a very good day.

The next day we propped the tent on the back porch and watched old Spiderman cartoons on Netflix and had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. When he snuggled up to me long past dark, he told me again: “Today was the best day ever.”

“Better than the zoo?”

“That was the best day, too.”

It didn’t really matter what we did to him, as long as we were all together, it was a great day, a best day.

The simplicity is childlike and, I’m prone to think, slightly childish. How can every day be the best day? I know it can’t really be the best, but maybe there’s something I can take from his sweet declaration. These months of unemployment and lack of income have taken its toll on me and on my readiness to experience any real joy in the day to day drudgery. I am more prone to say it was the worst day ever, on those days when I get notice that my petition my was denied, that someone else got the position, that unemployment insurance doesn’t cover people like me.

The struggle continues but I’m going to try to remember what Alex said. I put his picture on my computer desktop, a big grin bending his face, his eyes into a happiness that is almost palpable. I put it there to remind me that it isn’t so much about what I have or don’t have or what exactly I’m doing, but it matters that I have family and love.

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