If you click on these precious striped legs, it will take you to a flickr set. Since I’m having so much trouble getting pictures to happen the old way, I think I’ll try a new way.

Well, I don’t want to play anymore.  My list of things that I have to do this year is much shorter.  I’ll record it for you and posterity right here:

TO DO:
1.  Put my family first.
2.  Be where I am, at all times (not in my head, working on my lists).
3.  Be kind to everyone.

TO DO NOT:
1.  Do not take on so much that I am overwhelmed.
2.  Do not take it out on the people I love when I ignore #1.

If you look carefully, you’ll note that nowhere on my lists is there any mention of Christmas cards, gifts, or cookies.  No parties, decorations, or Santa photos.   Because I don’t have to do any of that stuff.  It’s supposed to be fun, not obligatory.  So I’ll do however much of the fun stuff that seems manageable, realizing that with two children under four, it may be less than in previous years.  Like maybe waaaay less.  And that’s fine.  But I won’t be screamed by this year.  And I won’t be miserable 90% of the time, trying desperately to look Rockwellianly peaceful when I see a camera.

And hey, speaking of Rockwellian peace and cameras, as soon as I figure out what the problem is with this blog and/or gallery and/or blahblahblah, I’m going to post some pictures from Thanksgiving.

My Aunt Kelly  (we recycle names a lot in my family) put together a collection of photos of Nana that was displayed at the service.  I had not seen the majority of these photos.  I only knew my grandmother as just that….my grandmother.  I had no idea that she used to be young and gorgeous, carefree and vivacious.  She was Charlene Jennings, young bride and mother.  I didn’t know that my grandparents had had so much fun together.

After the service, back at my Papa’s house, I was talking to him about how beautiful she was, and how I just had never known.  He nodded and teared up and whispered, “Yeah, she was beautiful.  I have a picture of her in my medicine cabinet, that I see every morning.  She borrowed your mother’s bikini one day [fortysomething years ago] and tried it on and I took a picture.  She was beautiful.”  Of course I wasted no time sneaking into his bathroom to see my grandmother’s pin-up.  He was right; she was very beautiful.  She had a thousand-watt smile, and she looked good in a bikini.  But what was so touching was not the picture as much as the fact that he still saw her that way. That was the woman he fell in love with; that was the woman he still loved.  What I saw in him yesterday, more than sadness, more than anything else, was pride.  He was so proud to have had her as his wife.  He was so proud to show her off, one last time.

He is ineffably beautiful to us.  And his sister is screaming her lungs out at my feet.  Brevity is the soul of motherhood.

This is my Nana.  Her name is Charlene.  She grew up in Wrightsville, Ga (same town as Herschel Walker, she’ll tell you).  She was a younger child in a family of girls, and her father’s name was Charlie.  As far as I can tell, there is nothing my Nana enjoys more than holding a baby.  Here she is with Charlie.  She has spent what probably adds up to years bouncing babies, singing songs like “Three six nine, the goose drank wine, the monkey chewed tobacco on the street car line….”

I’ve been lucky to have a few wonderful women as my grandmothers, but she is the last.  And since that’s the case, I can now tell you that while I genuinely have loved them all, she’s my favorite.  It’s because of her disposition….she’s always been so sweet, happy, untroubled.  I wish I had her happy genes, but alas, since she’s my grandmother by marriage, there’s no chance of that.  I do hope, though, that having her name could in some way help my daughter to have a disposition like hers.

Nana is not doing so good, y’all.  She’s been diagnosed this year with diabetes, and then pancreatic cancer.  This is not a pleasant member of the cancer family.  I’ve been spending a lot of time pretending otherwise, for my tender granddaughter’s heart’s sake, but it’s possible that Nana may not have a lot of time left here to be my favorite.  Please pray, or think, or do what you do, for my Nana.  And my Papa, who has been right beside her, worrying over her like a new father, through it all.

Today, she can go from horizontal to sitting all on her own.