Brian and me as a family

I want to honor the loving support of grandparents raising grandchildren. Our family of grandmas raised grandkids for two generations. In the fifties and sixties, my dad’s mother lived  with us and took care of my brother and me, while my parents worked full time. Grandma Brown was old, maybe late seventies, and I got away with doing whatever I wanted, because she couldn’t chase me down. I never doubted for a second that my grandma loved me, and she’s the one who taught me what she loved, literature, opera and writing. Grandma Brown was there, foibles and all, with those powdered sugar stuffed dates she made for snacks.

My boys knew that my mother stood by them and truly loved them, too, all of her life.  When my life was at the most difficult stage, two dead marriages and divorces, I was a single mom with a five-month old, returning to California after living in the Northwest for over fifteen years. She invited me back to the Bay Area. With a tiny amount of retirement dough from eight years of teaching, enough for beans, rice and rent, I started over.

My mother knew I had a bad second marriage going, and she loved me enough to say so to my face, especially when I didn’t want to hear a word about it from her. She nailed it exactly, said my marriage was like “mixing ink and axel grease.” That second marriage was also doomed from the start, different values being a very big reason. I knew in my bones I was leaving that man, either at age thirty-two or forty-two. What was I thinking? Well, that’s too long a story for this blog. It’s in the memoir. It was my mom who offered me a one-time way out of what looked like no way, and I thank God every day that she offered. I never would have asked for help, pride being pride. She had a rental, back in my childhood neighborhood, and for reduced rent I could afford, so I didn’t feel like a total mooch, she let me live there. How lucky is that, to be given a chance to return to Marin County, with what it costs??? Continue reading “My mother’s support saved my sons” »