Love manners and matters

/

When I was a child, I rated my affection for something based on one question: Did I love it more than I loved my mom? To me, love was a hierarchy, and Mom was firmly and forever at the top.

Sure, I loved macaroni and cheese, I loved mashed potatoes, I loved listening to the Bay City Rollers and wearing my ever so stylish elephant pants. But did I love those things more than Mom? Not even close.

I soon started applying the same question to people. I loved my sixth-grade teacher, but not more than Mom. I loved my BFF, but not more than Mom. I even thought I loved a boy or two, but certainly not more than Mom. (Their failing the test, I now see, was truly a blessing for me.)

Then came Jim. I soon learned a very important lesson: My love test was silly, my love test was naive. Love isn't a matter of degree, I realized, it's a matter of manner, and I loved Jim in a far different manner than I loved my mom. Not more, not less, just different.

Yes, I loved my mom, but I sure didn't want to spend the rest of my life with her. I did, though, want to spend the rest of my life with Jim. Fortunately he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, too. So we married. And had kids.

When the first baby was born, there was the struggle of coming to terms with the fact—for Jim and for me—that the manner of baby love was such that it required more attention, more nurturing, more time than anything else in our world. It wasn't a matter of loving the baby more than Jim, though it took a while to convince him of that.

When the second baby was set to arrive, I had to convince myself that I wouldn't love my first more than the second. I had yet to learn how much the heart expands with each child. The lesson was confirmed when that second baby arrived. And again when the third baby arrived.

Again and again I've learned—and did my best to teach—that each and every one of those loves of my life were loved the very most I could possibly love, just all in a different manner. I've never loved one child more than another; they're loved in manners befitting them. Sure, there were—and continue to be—days when one drives me more batty than another, but that has nothing to do with love. I love them all fully, love them all completely. I just love my oldest daughter in a manner far different than the second, which is far different than the third. I like to think, and continue to hope, that the manner in which I love them is the manner in which they need, deserve, love in return.

If you're a mother, you get that.

When I learned I'd be a grandmother, though, I clearly didn't get it. Not fully. I wasn't sure I could love my grandchild as much as I loved my children. How, how, how could I, I wondered, when I loved my girls so fully and completely?

Again the matter of manners came into play. The manner in which I love my first grandson is so very different than the manner in which I love his mom...and his aunts. No one more, no one less, all of them different.

Which made it easier when my second grandson came along. I now fully and completely love him, too, yet in a manner so different from how I love his brother.

It's been more than thirty years since I first learned the lesson that love isn't a hierarchy or a matter of degrees, that it's a matter of manners. My love has grown to encompass so many in that time. I love my grandsons. I love my daughters. And I love my cats, my dogs, my house, my home. I do still love macaroni and cheese, too, and do still love potatoes. The Bay City Rollers? Well, not so much anymore.

Through all the additions, though, I still love my mom.

And I still truly and deeply love Jim.

And despite all that we've been through in our decades together, all the other manners—and the oft-heartbreaking matters—that have been thrown into the mix, I do still want to spend the rest of my life with him.

All of my manners of love matter, but today, that is the manner that matters the most.

Happy Valentines Day!

photo: stock.xchng

Today's question:

What love manners and matters are on your mind today?

Now I'm a believer

/

Surprise! I do love Mac. More than I thought I would.

Despite many a grandparent telling me it would happen, that I would fall in love with the second grandchild as easily as the first, I didn't really believe it.

Despite having written a post — and recently re-publishing that post — about how my heart grew with each additional child I birthed, I didn't really believe it.

No, I didn't believe it. I love Bubby beyond words and I couldn't imagine lightning striking twice and feeling such a way for another child.

Silently worrying that I might be flawed and not have the proper grandma gene or that I may have missed out on some elite grandma training, either rendering me unable to automatically love and adore the second, I took the advice, the words of wisdom — from others and from myself — in stride. I didn't really believe it. I figured I'd just keep it hush-hush once I met Mac and confirmed that he didn't rock my world the way Bubby did.

 

But rock it he did. And after only a day or so with him, the tremors courtesy of Baby Mac become full-blown heart movers and shakers.

I didn't cry when I first set eyes on Mac, as I did with Bubby. Yet my heart did a whoop-de-doo or two upon seeing his adorable bowed lips, chubby cheeks, long legs and round little fuzz-covered head. It was upon holding him that the tremors began ... and intensified with each cuddle, each cry, each tiny grip of his fingers around mine.

Sure, Mac likes to eat. A lot. Which worked in my favor during my visit. Megan supplements nursing with bottles, so Mac's hearty appetite provided me plenty of opportunities to bond with him over bottles.  

And, yes, Mac is responsible for the very worst-ever diaper-changing episode endured by this grandma. Worst. Ever. But his relieved face with bright eyes focusing on light play on the ceiling as I changed him — three times in a row in one visit to the changing table — plus his soft coos upon finally being cleaned up led to more bonding, not cussing.

  

Then there were his grunts and groans. Not during diaper fillings but during his sleep...while I or anyone else held him. Just like this:

Hearing such baby noises was the final straw, the act that fondly and firmly cemented Mac's place in my heart. Right next to Bubby's place.

Equal to Bubby's place.

I admit it, fellow grandmas and grandpas: You were right. I can love the second grandchild just as much as the first. More importantly, I do love my second grandchild as much as the first.

Now I'm a believer!

And a real grandma after all.

Today's question:

Do you grunt, er, snore in your sleep?

Grandma's No. 1

/

Grandmas are bonkers for their grandkids ... usually. I know there are some grandmas who are of the sort to offer little more than a "meh" when it comes to their grandchildren. I've seen them, met them, talked to them. But I think those are the exception, the women who had the same "meh" response to their own children.

The moms whose kids were -- and likely still are -- a priority, though, those who put raising their children at the tippy top of the list of Important Things To Do in This Life, well, those are the ones who grow up to be grandmas whose hearts glow and gushings flow when it comes to their grandkids. Those are the ones deliriously bonkers for their grandbabies.

I admit I'm pretty much of the bonkers variety. Lately, though, I've worried that all the mushy-gushy love-love stuff I've got going on for Bubby makes my daughters a little jealous, a little worrisome that I love my grandson more than I love them. Deep inside we all still want to be mom's favorite, no matter how old we get, and I have a feeling my girls see my bonkered state for Bubby as proof that he's No. 1 in my eyes, in my heart. Not that they've said anything, would even consider saying anything, for they all love Bubby to bits (especially his mama, Megan, of course). Let's just call it mother's intuition.

Maybe. Maybe it's not mother's intuition at all. It very well could be my own overzealous and usually unfounded guilty conscience kicking in because of all the verbal backflips and whoop-dee-doos I perform when it comes to talking about my grandson. And because I don't want my girls to think they figure any less prominently in my heart since Bubby came along.

The thing is, when it comes to grandkids -- and any grandma knows this, so I'm pretty much talking to the non-grandmas here -- it's such a fresh, new, overwhelming love that it's hard to not gush and glow over it. New mothers feel the very same world-shaking love for their newborn, for their little ones as they grow, for the one, two or eighteen lights of their lives.

The difference, though, is what happens in the years between a baby's birth and that newborn's entry into young adulthood. For those years from newborn to adulthood are filled not only with knee-weakening love and adoration, but struggles and strife and, if we're all honest here, a lot of screaming and crying and heartbreak as the child tugs this way and mom tugs that way, all in the name of growth, independence, maturity and just plain ol' life.

Sadly, those struggles lessen a mom's enthusiasm a tad, diminish the mushing and the gushing. But they never, ever, ever lessen the love and adoration mom has for a child. At least not for this mom; probably not for most moms. Despite -- or maybe because of -- the battles, a mother's love for her child matures as the child matures. It grows into a more quiet love, one no longer eliciting butterflies and balloons and all-out blasting of horns to announce the bliss.

But it once did. With every child. And grandchildren bring all that back -- the butterflies, the bliss and more. Which is why grandmas act so goofy, so obsessed, so gosh-darn twitterpated. Much to their delight, they're getting a second opportunity to relish the fully-enveloping motherly love for a child.

And relish it we do.

Just like we did when our first child was born. And the second. And the third. And more.

Just like we did and do and will with each and every grandchild to come along.

It doesn't mean we love our original little ones any less. It just means we're keeping the enthusiasm in check. For the adult child's sake, of course. Because we understand how much the mushy-gushy PDAs from mom embarrass the oh-so grown-up kids, whether they're 13 or 30.

And we know kisses on the lips and big ol' noogies on the head no longer make children-turned-adults giggle in delight. So we bestow them on our grandkids and eat up the giggles they gurgle out as if they were Godiva chocolates.

But any adult child of mine is more than welcome to a noogie, a liplock, a great big bear hug any time they ask for it. Sometimes even if they don't ask for it.

Because although I don't say it nearly enough, the love, the bliss, the being bonkers for my babies is still there, still burning hot in my head, in my heart.

And cuss the numbers, the ranking systems, the logic; mothers and grandmothers don't believe in such things. What we do believe in, though, illogical as it may seem, is that each and every one of our babies, of our grandbabies, is truly No. 1 in our eyes, truly No. 1 in our hearts.

Today's question:

Other than relationships, in what would you most like to be considered No. 1?

My answer: I'd like to be ranked No. 1 on the bestseller list ... for children's books.