8/23/2005

Once again, I look at the last publication date for a blog and wonder at my own lack of ambition.

When I started "blogging", I thought it would be easy for me to just sit down and spill my everyday thoughts into my keyboard - probably boring you folks stiff in the process. I could yak about the weather, the political scene, minor miracles, and all without really breaking a sweat.

Not.

Real Life (tm), as those of us who spend a lot of time online call it, had other plans.

One thing I hadn't counted on was a serious case of "Writer's Burn Out" caused by pushing myself to post at least 3000 words of original material per week - sometimes as much as 20,000 words. It might have been fan fiction or original fantasy, or even a blog entry, but the effort and dedication that needs to go into producing that much in that short a time is taxing. My muse - the little voice in my head that helps me know where I'm going next - decided to take a vacation and, when she returned, only steps out of the bathroom a few times a week to make small suggestions.

The next thing I hadn't really counted on - it had been a constant concern over the years I've been maintaining this site, but had never been foremost in my mind for a while - is the fact that my parents are getting quite elderly, feeble, and fragile health-wise. My dad is 84 and beginning to show signs of simple Senior Dementia - ill-tempered at times, short-term memory going haywire as often as not, difficulty following conversations going on around him - on top of his usual aches and pains that are having him begin to fall now while moving around. My Mom is 76 and a hemodialysis patient who has never REALLY snapped back after almost dying of kidney failure two years ago. Her latest trek to the hospital came at the instigation of a pumping bleeding ulcer that required four units of blood in a transfusion and, once more, nearly cost her her life.

I'm the transportation to the doctors, renal centers and sometimes shopping trips; and an extra hand when arthritis doesn't let someone lift something up or down from a high shelf. I try to be mindful and save my folks steps that would wear them out needlessly. And I'm realizing that I'm coming every day closer to the end of this task and finding that I have to pay attention to my responses - both to my parents' needs and my emotions - a whole lot more.

It's hard to watch those you love go down-hill and know that there isn't a damned thing you can do about it. This is the road that Life (with a capital "L" for a reason) has set for all of us to walk down sooner or later. I watched my own Mom walk down this road with HER mother about thirty-five years ago, and I never questioned that my time at doing the same would come - but like looking into the face of my brand-new first-born child and having a hard time conceptualizing the day when that child would be an adult and capable of living independently, I had never thought the day would actually arrive when I'd look at the face of my Mom and/or Dad and wonder just how many more days I still have with them.

Mind you, I know our family doesn't exactly function the way the normal "modern" family does. In "modern" families, the elderly are shipped off to institutions that are really nothing more than graduated warehouses of discarded humanity to live out their last days alone and forgotten - except for the inheritance they may provide after they're gone. In "modern" families, parents and children live together only as long as the child is a minor - with the child often being "kicked out" the moment s/he reaches the age of eighteen.

In our family, we have three generations living in one large house: my folks, my hubby and me, and my now-grown kids. My kids grew up around and knowing their grandparents VERY well - my only regret there is that my mother-in-law died very early on, and my kids didn't get the chance to know her half as well. My folks were an important influence in my kid's upbringing - and my kids kept my parents from becoming so stuck in their thinking that they couldn't see the good in this new generation at all.

I'm not sure how my kids are handling watching their grandparents slow down and become enfeebled - we don't exactly talk about it much. I know we all grouse and grumble at each other from time to time - my kids because the grandparents are so demanding of having their stuff done "NowNowNow,", my folks because the kids are typical in wanting to procrastinate until the last minute (they get that from me).

But you know, looking back at growing up in a similar situation and now seeing my kids grow up this way too, I think that this is a healthier way to go about living and raising a family. There is no mystery, no sectret, to getting old for my kids. Old folks in general have become human beings, just like the young folks; people who have feelings that deserve respect and rights to be recognized and opinions deserving to be given ear. The old have interesting stories to tell the young, and the young have equally interesting stories to tell the old - if both can learn to listen. There IS a "generation gap" - but it isn't half as big as one might think it, IF the situation is handled correctly.

And yes, those are VERY big "if's."

I don't mean to sit and brag here - I'm very proud of the fact that we are a three-generation household that manages not to want to kill each other on an on-going basis - but I wonder just how much of our current society's ills come because of the lack of dedication to the full meaning of the word "family". Economic pressures mean that in order to buy the newest, biggest, baddest, bestest, Mommies have to work all day long just like Daddies - which means kiddies grow up at babysitters or in day-care. Television is the way tired parents keep active youngsters out of their hair at the end of a long workday - but is a HORRIBLE role-model when it comes to teaching values and ethics. Watch the sit-coms lately. In them, all the kids are wise-assed and smart-mouthed - and what do we have in society today but a whole generation of kids for whom the wise-crack or sassing attitude is a way of life, not even caring how those cracks make the other person feel. They live their life in search of a laugh track - and do immeasurable harm to the interpersonal realm around them. Old folks are people seen only a few times a year - and the visits are generally viewed as obligatory by both parent and child.

And so, now, we have a society that talks "family values" without the vaguest idea exactly what that means. We have this assumption that it means two parents to raise the children rather than one - with some people demanding that the parents be one of each gender ONLY - but in reality, "family values" go a whole lot deeper than that. "Family Values" are the ones that keep an elderly parent living at home for as long as humanly possible - in touch with the younger generation. "Family Values" are the ones that decide that being able to buy/lease a new car every two years or afford that big new house is FAR less important than knowing where the kids are, who they are spending time with and what they're up to during the hours after school. "Family Values" are the ones that make a person want to BE THERE for the other family member, no matter what - and be mindful of manners and behavior.

You aren't going to get these values going to church - although religion does speak to the "honor thy father and mother", it doesn't have any REAL authority to back it up other than what a believer gives it. You aren't going to get those values through legislation - you cannot oblige people to act in manners contrary to their upbringings without creating an entirely new class of outcast, which our society definitely does NOT need. You aren't going to get these values in the school system - although teaching the ideal family formula has been a part of the education system for decades. Schools, as the result of the growing violence in students, now adopt "Zero-Tolerance Policies" that are about as ANTI-"Family Values" as it is possible to get - and kids raised in that arbitrary, heartless manner are understandably arbitrary and heartless toward others in return.

We get what we pay for. "Family Values" doesn't come cheap.

Sometimes it means that a blogger goes over half a year without saying a single word - and most of the time it means that money isn't the most important thing in life.

I wouldn't have it any other way. I hope you don't mind.