You are currently browsing the category archive for the ‘99 Questions’ category.
4. What brings you the most joy right now? What about as a child?
I’m guessing most grandparents would answer the question with ‘having a normal bowel movement’. As we age joy narrows to simple things like not falling down or not wetting ourselves. If a grandchild should ask the question, chances are granddad and grandmama will say what brings them joy is ‘you’, which may or may not be true. Alas, Babylon! I have no grandchildren but I will do my best.
What brings me the most joy are hedonistic endeavors done without a time constraint. I like going to a resort or a hotel located in an area where I don’t feel obliged to go out at the crack of dawn to see the sights. Rather, I can do what I please, making it up as I go along. If that ends up as ‘nothing’, so be it. This indolence is accompanied by good food and drink – no rubbish types, consumed without the rush that are my present meals to get through it in order to get to something else. This setting comes with traveling companions, good company with whom to play cards and games or simply to talk away the hours. When one isn’t footling around there are books, lovely books, books that I am reading because I want to and not to advance my education or to look smart. When in doubt: get horizontal viz. take a nap if one wants to or go to bed early rather than feel obliged to go out and paint the town red until the dawn.
If I lived in a temperate zone, I think answer would include the joy of gardening – especially vegetables with heirloom tomatoes. I miss this.
My childhood joys were legion; they certainly didn’t lack for variety. Was there anything I didn’t find joyful? There was school, games, books for fun or learning. There were travels with my parents to see cities and the relations. Holidays and seasonal foods thrilled me. Back then I loved TV and comic books and thunderstorms. I found joy in just about everything – other than sports. They did nothing for me – although I loved family tailgate parties with the food and the various relations who came to them.
Life now is a series of losses and disappointments – my life anyway .The simple joys still do their magic. I extract joy in the mundane, such as the warmth, aroma, and taste of a freshly brewed cup or tea or in a particularly beautiful sunset. It is enough for now until they wither away with age. Then I will have the joy of their memory.
3. What was your life like before having children? In which ways did it change?
Many grown children find it difficult imagining their parents as anything but parents. Mom and Dad didn’t really exist until they arrived, right? This is nonsense but it is sensed as true. Many children are uncomfortable knowing what their parents were like before they come along. There is a sense of a close-call viz. if mom and pop hadn’t been at that dance or if mom had decided to go to X College and not Y where she met dad then we children wouldn’t have existed. Stories of mom and dad’s previous relationships also trigger a nervous sense if those had continued you wouldn’t exist.
My parents were married two years before I came along. There is a story Father embarrassed Mother to the max at his law firm’s dinner party where someone asked them how long they had been married and then asked how many children and mother said none so far and father interjected but we are trying hard. Oh the embarrassment.
Anyone who has had children knows ones life is completely different when the munchkins arrive. I imagine DINKS (double income/ no kids) put off having children knowing full well their lifestyles will come to a screeching halt. Maybe it was different back when folks had nanny and servants to thrust off junior upon while Mother and Father more or less kept doing their usual.
Question #3 maybe avoided lest you find out how fun life was until you showed up. Maybe tales of previous relationships are ‘too much information’ viz. mommy was quite the swinger and daddy the hound. In some societies as soon as you were old enough to date you got into an arranged marriage and quickly produced children so there was no life before children. Another aspect of letting sleeping dogs lie is realizing you were a mistake and if given the choice you wouldn’t have existed.
Of course this is all conjecture on my part. I cannot divide my life into BK (before kids) and AK (after). I sort of divide mine as pre-1992 and post-1992 when I turned thirty and finally finished school to be an adult. Life before 1992 was hellish what with long work hours and study. Life has been pretty good since. Maybe it is the other way around for thems with kids: BK were the good times and AK is not? What do I know about it really.
My parents seemed to have nice lives without scandal (or previous relationships) until I came along. They liked being parents although I had colic and drove both to distraction. It wasn’t bad enough that three more came along although Brother#2 was a beautiful baby I am reminded to this day.
2. Can we make your favorite meal together, or do you have a recipe you can share?
I hope everyone had in their youth something their parents cooked that evokes warm memories to make. These dishes need not be anything special. Indeed! Comfort foods from childhood are often simple things. The recipes I inherited from the matriarchs of the family aren’t especially fancy; they are hardly gourmet. When you are a child this is ‘how mother made it’ and that is what counts.*
Over the years of blogging I have written out several Spo-recipes; here are a few of them:
I did not grow up eating haute cuisine, rather I was fed Midwestern faire. Food was fuel more than an experience; fancy cooking and spices were not made nor wanted. It was a disappointment. I often tried to coax Mother to try new and exotic dishes but she never did. Now I cook just that – most of the time. From time to time I get out Auntie’s recipe for hamburger hot dish and I make it and eat it with relish and happy memories.
Tell me about a family dish you grew up with remembered with fondness.
*Someone told me a tale from his youth about a church picnic when several church ladies brought their own ambrosia salad, all with slight variations from their families’ recipes. This resulted in a less-than-Christian-charitable fracas over which one was best. It fell to the minister to decide. Apparently he didn’t know the tale of The Judgment of Paris and the dimwit choose one as most delicious. The church was never the same afterwards.
Last week I mentioned I missed doing the “100 things to slightly improve your life” list. I thought to find a new list to try my writing skills upon. Karen (the dear!) suggested I try one of those memory books given to grandparents. For thems unfamiliar with these items, grandpa or grandma is given a book of questions to write for the sake of posterity. What an excellent idea! I went online and I found heaps. I found one titled “99 Questions To Ask Your Grandparents While You Still Have Time”. Never mind the implication I am that old or don’t have much time left. The questions were good, not only to write personal replies but expand into Spo-reflections on the topic therein. So here we go – ninety-nine questions to last me about a hundred weeks. Karen: have your people contact mine for reasonable attorneys fees.
- Which of your childhood memories was most meaningful?
This is a common question a therapist or analyst asks their client in the initial encounter. It is a good open-ended inquiry to see if the patient brings up good or bad memories, something vivid that leaps in front of the line, or even no memories at all. One watches closely the affect while the tell their tale.*
I have the good luck to have had a happy childhood full of wonderful memories of family doings and trip and holidays. In my case they all want to gush out at once like a group of eager actors as an audition. What leapt ahead of the others for me were the summers I spent with my family on my grandfather’s cabin-cruiser. I recall it was 45 feet long but from my youthful perspective it felt like an ocean liner. It was located out of Grand Haven Michigan. Most of the trips were up and down the western side of Lake Michigan going in and out of the various ports. It felt like sailing the seven seas; Lake Michigan felt like the ocean and I wondered what was on the other side. China perhaps, or exotic lands like Hanalee.** Maybe the lands beyond the horizon were more like what is found in The Odyssey- cyclops and Sirens that sort of thing. I was glad they weren’t on this side of the lake but it was nice to think they were there in principle.
My favorite spot on the boat was the bow. I sat at the tip like a figurehead. I bounced on the waves towards destinations unknown (at least to me). I would sit there for hours taking in the breeze and the sunshine. To this day whenever I need a happy spot I go back on the bow of the Charmar III (for that was its name).
When I die I want my ashes spread on the shores of Lake Michigan at sunset. I will return to my happy place and become one with it. Like Ulysses my life has been a long journey wanting to go home and in the end I will, doing daily to arrive at my personal Ithaka.
Tell me a meaningful memory of your own; it need not be a good one only memorable.
*It’s an interesting question to ask a date or a stranger at a cocktail party but don’t as it sounds too much like work. The person being asked is immediately wondering what are you up to and goes on guard.
**Later I learned it was only Wisconsin. I was a disappointment.
Spo-Reflections 