Where Does the Joy Go?

Amalia was born, turning me into a grandmother, over four years ago and I wrote this post when she was nine months old.  Today second grandchild, Nicolas, is 14 months old and I find myself wondering the same thing as he sings his "happy eating" song while I'm feeding him or shrieks with excitement at seeing the ducks in the lake near our home.

It’s been a privilege and an inspiration to spend time with granddaughter  Amalia during her first nine months of life, as she discovers her body (first hands, then feet) and the world around her.

Nearly forty years ago, when my own three children were born, I watched our firstborn’s first year—even took some notes that ended up in a child development text book—but by the second, there was no time for taking notes and by the third, not even a baby book stuffed in a closet in a bag filled with souvenirs.

I had forgotten until now the overwhelming joy with which a baby meets the world (as long as she’s not ill or in pain.)  To see Amalia light up and squeal with joy when she wakes up from a nap and sees your face is enough to make any day wonderful.

She loves to eat (anything including vitamins and paper towels) and when she’s fed something she really likes, she will croon and sing and even clap her hand in appreciation.  Once she liked her food so much she stood up in her high chair and did a little dance of joy before plopping down and opening her mouth for more like a baby bird.  She’ll “read” her picture books by herself, pointing and squealing at the baby animals.

The things that make a toddler ecstatic are so simple: blowing soap bubbles, stomping in a puddle, playing peek-a-boo, feeding pigeons.  The things that elicit that throaty little giggle the ones that are at first surprising and perhaps a little scary but then turn out to be funny instead.

Until she was about eight months old, Amalia loved everyone, and when I pushed her stroller down the street she’d babble and wave to passers-by, even homeless people in doorways and construction workers on a cigarette break. Everyone responded to her as we passed: “Hey! That baby’s talking to me!”

Now, at nine months, the slightest tinge of stranger anxiety has crept in.  She won’t go into the arms of a newcomer until she’s had about ten minutes to get to know them. But if she’s sitting next to you in an airplane or restaurant or on the playground, she’ll soon pat you on the arm to say hello.

And although no bad thing has ever happened to her, Amalia’s starting to fear things that she never noticed before—like a large stuffed lion in a toy store, or the guttural voice that comes out of one of her counting toys.  A lot of her “job” these days is figuring out what is real and what isn’t.  And I know the stranger anxiety is a necessary skill—undoubtedly an instinct useful for survival.

All babies and children are filled with joy—just in being alive.  Look at puppies or colts in a field.  What a child needs to be perfectly happy is so simple: warmth, food and the feeling of security—knowing they are protected by someone more powerful than they are.  It’s such a shame that every child can’t be guaranteed those basic things during the critical first years of life.

And they need a person to interact with them—to echo their feelings and show them the world around them.   While pushing a stroller every day to Central Park, I kept seeing moms and nannies perpetually talking on their cell phones while the child in the stroller is staring straight ahead with vacant eyes.

Outside the apartment where she lives, Amalia hears someone vacuuming the carpet every afternoon, and the roar of the vacuum cleaner has started to worry her.  When she frets, I take her into my arms and reassure her that there’s nothing out there to be afraid of.

How terrible it must be for parents who can’t tell their babies that with conviction—because the child is ill or there’s no money for food, or because the living situation is dangerous, as it is for those children who were executed in Syria recently.

But no matter how protected and cared for Amalia is, I know the bubbling joy she shares every day with eventually fade.  We’re all familiar with temper tantrums and the terrible twos.  Does anybody know a pre-teen so thrilled by dinner that they’d jump up and dance with joy?  Or laugh in ecstatic surprise at soap bubbles floating around them?

I think of people my own age who reply to  “How are you?” with a litany of aches and pains, and seem to walk around with a cloud of gloom hanging over their head.

No wonder friends have been telling me for years that grandchildren completely change your life. Just the sight of Amalía’s delight in her new world is all the motivation I need to try to take are of myself and stay alive longer than my parents did, so I can watch her grow and learn. I hope she can hold on to the joy.

Are You Happiest at Age 23 and 69 and Gloomiest at 55?

Since this is a month of family birthdays for the Gage family, I'm re-posting this from two years ago. Would love to hear your opinion of these ratings for happiness at certain ages. I'm coming up on 75 and think that things just keep getting better (cuz I have a new grandchild!)

Yesterday in the local paper I read an essay by syndicated columnist Tom Purcell saying that a study published by the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, as reported in the Daily Mail, had determined that happiness among humans peaks at age 23, tanks at 55 and then peaks again at 69.

Purcell said, “The findings make sense to me”, because “at 23 you are…confident your future includes great riches and fame, a lovely wife and a perfect family and home.  As you move along, though, it doesn’t take long for the disappointments to begin piling up.”

Purcell mulled on each of the decades he had passed, as reality and expectations clashed.  “And then you are 50.  Good God, a half century?…Your mistakes and regrets come into sharp focus…You worry about the future more than you ever have.” 

I learned, at the end of his essay, that Purcell is about 51. “I still have four years to reach my peak crankiness,” he concluded.

I mentioned the study’s findings to daughter Eleni, who is presently 38, and she disputed the idea that  23 is one of the happiest ages, pointing out that it’s when life can be most challenging—you’re looking for a job, a career, a life partner. Everything is up in the air and you’re suddenly faced with all sorts of worries and responsibilities you didn’t have before.

I  searched to find out more about the study, which I learned was conducted on 23,161 Germans between the ages of 17 and 85, and led by Princeton researcher Hannes Schwandt for the London School of Economics.   He cited  “unmet aspirations which are painfully felt in midlife but beneficially abandoned later in life.”  But at around age 60, he learned, happiness began to steadily increase as people move beyond past regrets and onto a level of acceptance.

The study did find, however, that after age 70, happiness again starts to decline.

Personally, I remember age 23, just out of graduate school and working at my first job, as being stressful and pretty depressing.  At thirty I was newly wed and I spent the next decade having babies and moving overseas, which means that I pretty much missed the 1970’s.

To tell you the truth, I can’t remember being 55—that was in 1996—but I think it was a pretty good time of life. 

Not long ago I was asked to contribute an essay for a book which is being published in the fall called “70 Things to Do When You Turn 70”. 

I titled my contribution “Musing on the Joys of Cronehood” (naturally!) and said in part: “I used to think the best time of life was when your children are young and future triumphs are still possible.  But now I think that, if you’re a woman and lucky enough to remain in good health, your cronehood – after 60—is the best era, free of the drama, responsibilities, worries and the insecurities of youth….When women reach that milestone, they often channel the creative energy they spent on home, children and jobs into some long-hidden passion….They allow themselves to try the things they’d always dreamed of but never had time to do.”

So yes, I’d say that right now, age 72, is one of the happiest times of my life—enjoying travel and some “bucket list” experiences (which of course I record here as they happen).  High among them is the joy of hanging out with a 2-year-old first grandchild who is showing me how to look at everything with awe, as if for the first time.

Of course being healthy is critical to being happy at this age. Every day I say a prayer of thanks that I can still climb stairs and carry my own suitcase--though not as easily as before—because many of my friends are not so lucky.  But I think even those who are weathering hip and knee replacements and all the other hard knocks that old age has in store would still rate their happiness level as pretty high, because by now we’ve made peace with the disappointments and unrealized dreams of our younger selves.

.

Are You Happiest at Age 23 and 69 and Gloomiest at 55?

Yesterday in the local paper I read an essay by syndicated columnist Tom Purcell saying that a study published by the Center for Economic Performance at the London School of Economics, as reported in the Daily Mail, had determined that happiness among humans peaks at age 23, tanks at 55 and then peaks again at 69.

Purcell said, “The findings make sense to me”, because “at 23 you are…confident your future includes great riches and fame, a lovely wife and a perfect family and home.  As you move along, though, it doesn’t take long for the disappointments to begin piling up.”

Purcell mulled on each of the decades he had passed, as reality and expectations clashed.  “And then you are 50.  Good God, a half century?…Your mistakes and regrets come into sharp focus…You worry about the future more than you ever have.” 

I learned, at the end of his essay, that Purcell is about 51. “I still have four years to reach my peak crankiness,” he concluded.

I mentioned the study’s findings to daughter Eleni, who is presently 38, and she disputed the idea that  23 is one of the happiest ages, pointing out that it’s when life can be most challenging—you’re looking for a job, a career, a life partner. Everything is up in the air and you’re suddenly faced with all sorts of worries and responsibilities you didn’t have before.

I  searched to find out more about the study, which I learned was conducted on 23,161 Germans between the ages of 17 and 85, and led by Princeton researcher Hannes Schwandt for the London School of Economics.   He cited  “unmet aspirations which are painfully felt in midlife but beneficially abandoned later in life.”  But at around age 60, he learned, happiness began to steadily increase as people move beyond past regrets and onto a level of acceptance.

The study did find, however, that after age 70, happiness again starts to decline.

Personally, I remember age 23, just out of graduate school and working at my first job, as being stressful and pretty depressing.  At thirty I was newly wed and I spent the next decade having babies and moving overseas, which means that I pretty much missed the 1970’s.

To tell you the truth, I can’t remember being 55—that was in 1996—but I think it was a pretty good time of life. 

Not long ago I was asked to contribute an essay for a book which is being published in the fall called “70 Things to Do When You Turn 70”. 

I titled my contribution “Musing on the Joys of Cronehood” (naturally!) and said in part: “I used to think the best time of life was when your children are young and future triumphs are still possible.  But now I think that, if you’re a woman and lucky enough to remain in good health, your cronehood – after 60—is the best era, free of the drama, responsibilities, worries and the insecurities of youth….When women reach that milestone, they often channel the creative energy they spent on home, children and jobs into some long-hidden passion….They allow themselves to try the things they’d always dreamed of but never had time to do.”

So yes, I’d say that right now, age 72, is one of the happiest times of my life—enjoying travel and some “bucket list” experiences (which of course I record here as they happen).  High among them is the joy of hanging out with a 2-year-old first grandchild who is showing me how to look at everything with awe, as if for the first time.

Of course being healthy is critical to being happy at this age. Every day I say a prayer of thanks that I can still climb stairs and carry my own suitcase--though not as easily as before—because many of my friends are not so lucky.  But I think even those who are weathering hip and knee replacements and all the other hard knocks that old age has in store would still rate their happiness level as pretty high, because by now we’ve made peace with the disappointments and unrealized dreams of our younger selves.

.

Where Does the Joy Go?

It’s been a privilege and an inspiration to spend time with granddaughter  Amalía during her first nine months of life, as she discovers her body (first hands, then feet) and the world around her.

Nearly forty years ago, when my own three children were born, I watched our firstborn’s first year—even took some notes that ended up in a child development text book—but by the second, there was no time for taking notes and by the third, not even a baby book stuffed in a closet in a bag filled with souvenirs.

I had forgotten until now the overwhelming joy with which a baby meets the world (as long as she’s not ill or in pain.)  To see Amalía light up and squeal with joy when she wakes up from a nap and sees your face is enough to make any day wonderful. 

She loves to eat (anything including vitamins and paper towels) and when she’s fed something she really likes, she will croon and sing and even clap her hand in appreciation.  Once she liked her food so much she stood up in her high chair and did a little dance of joy before plopping down and opening her mouth for more like a baby bird.  She’ll “read” her picture books by herself, pointing and squealing at the baby animals.

The things that make a toddler ecstatic are so simple: blowing soap bubbles, stomping in a puddle, playing peek-a-boo, feeding pigeons.  The things that elicit that throaty little giggle the ones that are at first surprising and perhaps a little scary but then turn out to be funny instead.

Until she was about eight months old, Amalía loved everyone, and when I pushed her stroller down the street she’d babble and wave to passers-by, even homeless people in doorways and construction workers on a cigarette break. Everyone responded to her as we passed: “Hey! That baby’s talking to me!”

Now, at nine months, the slightest tinge of stranger anxiety has crept in.  She won’t go into the arms of a newcomer until she’s had about ten minutes to get to know them. But if she’s sitting next to you in an airplane or restaurant or on the playground, she’ll soon pat you on the arm to say hello.

And although no bad thing has ever happened to her, Amalía’s starting to fear things that she never noticed before—like a large stuffed lion in a toy store, or the guttural voice that comes out of one of her counting toys.  A lot of her “job” these days is figuring out what is real and what isn’t.  And I know the stranger anxiety is a necessary skill—undoubtedly an instinct useful for survival.

All babies and children are filled with joy—just in being alive.  Look at puppies or colts in a field.  What a child needs to be perfectly happy is so simple: warmth, food and the feeling of security—knowing they are protected by someone more powerful than they are.  It’s such a shame that every child can’t be guaranteed those basic things during the critical first years of life.

And they need a person to interact with them—to echo their feelings and show them the world around them.   While pushing a stroller every day to Central Park, I kept seeing moms and nannies perpetually talking on their cell phones while the child in the stroller is staring straight ahead with vacant eyes.

Outside the apartment where she lives, Amalía hears someone vacuuming the carpet every afternoon, and the roar of the vacuum cleaner has started to worry her.  When she frets, I take her into my arms and reassure her that there’s nothing out there to be afraid of. 

How terrible it must be for parents who can’t tell their babies that with conviction—because the child is ill or there’s no money for food, or because the living situation is dangerous, as it is for those children who were executed in Syria recently.

But no matter how protected and cared for Amalía is, I know the bubbling joy she shares every day with eventually fade.  We’re all familiar with temper tantrums and the terrible twos.  Does anybody know a pre-teen so thrilled by dinner that they’d jump up and dance with joy?  Or laugh in ecstatic surprise at soap bubbles floating around them?

I think of people my own age who reply to  “How are you?” with a litany of aches and pains, and seem to walk around with a cloud of gloom hanging over their head.

No wonder friends have been telling me for years that grandchildren completely change your life. Just the sight of Amalía’s delight in her new world is all the motivation I need to try to take are of myself and stay alive longer than my parents did, so I can watch her grow and learn. I hope she can hold on to the joy. 

The Christmas Card Crunch

My pals at the North Grafton post office received me with hoots of derision when I walked in on Tuesday holding 150 Christmas cards all stamped and ready to go.  “Not already—you’re early this year!” They remember well the several past years when I’ve sent out my cards AFTER Christmas, referring to them hopefully as “New Year’s cards”.

The following day I came back with another 60 cards, and declared myself finished. This year I designed the cards, plus a newsletter with text on one side and, on the other, a collage of small photos illustrating the highlights of the year.

The highlight of 2011 for us, of course, was the arrival in August of Amalía, our first grandchild, so we included a lot of shots of her, despite the suggestion of one acquaintance: “Go easy on the baby photos.  We’ve all seen enough by now.”

Not a chance!  I just cut the critic off my list.

Why do I spend a big chunk of my precious pre-holiday time designing cards and newsletter and photo collage, addressing 200 cards, stamping them and sending them off?  Well, for one thing, I love getting cards with news of all those friends I haven’t heard from in a year.  Because we lived in Greece for five years and Manhattan for 14, because I grew up in Minnesota, went to college in Wisconsin and Berkeley, we have friends spread around the world.  About 35 percent of our cards need overseas stamps. 

I love opening holiday cards and reading them, especially if there are photos.  One couple always sends a poem, to be sung to music—usually Gilbert and Sullivan.  Two couples always feature a painting by one of them. One couple  photoshops themselves and their dog into cartoon-ish situations.  A gutsy female friend manages to stalk a celebrity every year and get her photo taken along with said celebrity.  Last year it was James Gandolfini who played Tony Soprano.  The text of the card said:  “Hanukah, Xmas, Kwanzaa…Fuggedaboutit!  From Bada-Bing and Lotsa Bling.”

(Some of my more tech-savvy friends send animated E-cards—even ones they’ve animated themselves, but it isn’t the same.  You can’t store them in a closet in a shoebox to revisit next year.)

Since childhood, daughter Eleni has reveled in the cards we receive, sitting by the tree, studying them all.  This is the first year she sent out her own family card (featuring, of course Amalia—it served as a birth announcement as well.)

Eleni wrote a blog post on “The Liminal Stage” about holiday cards, called “The Ghosts of Christmas Cards Past”  and included some rules for senders of newsletters. (I know that people like Miss Manners think family newsletters are tacky, but  even so, I adore getting them and sending them.  It’s the only time of year I actually “correspond” instead of e-mailing.)

Eleni’s rules for Christmas-card writers can mostly be summed up as “Don’t embarrass your children”

Eleni wrote:  I’ve read cards bragging about stellar SAT scores (a delight for proud parents, a nightmare for shy kids). But the worst text I’ve ever seen described a seventh-grade boy’s multiple accomplishments and then added, “and yes, he has discovered girls.”

          Which leads me to the first rule of holiday card and newsletter writing, which I’d like to offer as a public service: Puberty has no place in your holiday newsletter. If you have a pre-teen, it is already all over your photos. Please, do your sensitive child a favor and ignore any references to a social life and/or physical developments. This will not only save your relationship with your child, it will spare me, the reader, from flashbacks to my own awkward years.

         In a similar vein, vacation shots on holiday cards are great. Bikini photos, not so much. I say this as a person who finally had to tell her mother I didn’t want to see my breasts on any more holiday card newsletters...

         While we’re on the topic of body image, you should know that if I receive a photo of just your children, not you and your children, I’m going to assume it’s because you don’t want me to see how much weight you’ve put on. (That’s harsh, and not in the spirit of Christian charity and lovingkindness, but I’m telling it like it is.) Your kids are adorable, but you’re the one I went to college with; I want to see your smiling face, too! Of course, this year, our own Christmas card features just the delightful baby Amalía, but that’s because it’s doubling as a birth announcement. And because I don’t want you to see how much weight I’ve put on.

         But the biggest faux pas you can make holiday cardwise, as far as I’m concerned, is not sending one at all.

Here are some rules of my own from the viewpoint and wisdom of a senior citizen:

Omit any mention at all of any significant others in your child’s love life—until they’re officially engaged.    Lines like “Susie and Oscar Vanderbilt seem to be getting serious” can look awfully embarrassing in a year, after Oscar has come out of the closet and married Rodney Thistlewaite and Susie is back on the dating market.

No matter how fascinating your year has been, even if your last name is Obama, you don’t get more than one page to tell about it.  Okay, this year I had to take my Arial 12 point font down to 11 point, but I sternly adhere to the one-page rule.

This is a biggie for senior citizens—whatever grim medical procedure you’ve undergone, do NOT go into detail.  No one wants to know.  Just sum it up in a cheery matter: “Despite having a knee replacement, Cedric will soon be back on the golf links.”

Of course if Cedric passed away in the past year, you owe it to your friends who may not have read the obituary to tell them.  In fact, I suspect the entire newsletter would be Cedric’s obituary, with a line or two from you, the widow, thanking everyone for their support and condolences.

(One more thing—if your pet passed away, please make it clear that it was a PET.  Otherwise we get sentences like, “We are still grieving the loss of our beloved Lancelot”—which leads to scrambling through old Christmas cards to try to remember the names of your children.  Better you should say, “our beloved Golden Retriever Lancelot” )

I second Eleni’s remarks about photos—we don’t just want to see photos of your adorable grandchildren, we also want to see YOU in photos, so we can judge how well that last facelift is holding up.

That’s all the rules I can think of as I recover from this year’s Christmas card crunch and await what the next few days will bring into the mail box. The only final rule I have is:

Send that holiday card.  I want to know about your kids and grandkids and the hip replacement and the 50^th high school reunion.  And if you don’t send me a card this year, you're off my list next December.

A Grandmother Kvelling

  

I belonged for many years to a woman’s group in Worcester that met once a month to discuss a pre-selected topic.  There were a few topics that were verboten, however:  politics, pets and grandchildren.

I can see why.  Nothing empties a room faster than an approaching Grandma clutching a brag book of grandchildren photos.  The clever antics of another person’s grandchild are just about as interesting a conversational topic as the  details of one’s recent operation.

That said, permit me to rhapsodize a bit about my granddaughter Amalía.  No, she did not get into an Ivy League school, nor did she play Moonlight Sonata in a piano recital.    She did not learn to ride a bike or even become toilet-trained.  She can’t even sit up.  Her latest achievement is managing (sometimes) to get her thumb into her mouth.

Amalia is eight weeks old today. (But officially two months old on Oct. 26, when she’ll go to the pediatrician for a check-up.)

Even though she can’t even sit up by herself, it’s a wonder and a delight to me to watch her discovering the world around her (including her hands and her reflection in a mirror.)  I think I was too tired to savor this stage of development in my own children. 

She sits (or lies) there, wearing one of her pre-Halloween outfits and with great seriousness watches the fascinating and puzzling world around her, looking to me as if she has some memory of where she was before and is now trying to learn the secrets of this new place. 

This thought led me to look up some of William Wordsworth’s lines in “Intimations of Immortality From Recollections of Early Childhood”:

         Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
          The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
              Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
                And cometh from afar:  
                  Not in entire forgetfulness,      
             And not in utter nakedness,
             But trailing clouds of glory do we come
              From God, who is our home:
        Heaven lies about us in our infancy!

 That's how Amalía seems to me as she studies her new world--she came to us trailing clouds of glory.

She also reminds me of “New Soul” by the Israeli singer Yael Naim, a song that Amalia’s parents, Eleni and Emilio, included in her birth mix— to be played  during  labor and delivery:

I'm a new soul

I came to this strange world

Hoping I could learn a bit 'bout how to give and take

 On Sunday October 9, daughter Eleni and her husband Emilio took Amalia to the Greek Orthodox church in Miami, Saint Sophia, for the ritual that marks her 40^th day of life and introduces her to the church.  The priest says a blessing both for the mother and for the baby.

As Eleni pointed out in “Fabulous at Forty (Days)” –posted on her blog,  “The Liminal Stage”, many societies believe that the 40 days after birth are a special time when mother and baby should stay together indoors until the child is taken out on the 40^th day. She mentions Judaism, Chinese culture, and Yogis among others.  As Eleni writes on her blog,

“Like all rituals, there’s the liturgical explanation for the 40-day churching (we bring our babies to be presented at the Church the way Mary brought Jesus to the Temple), and then there’s all the folklore that rises up around it. …As with so many folk customs, this one crosses boundaries and spans multiple cultures.”

Amalia wore a beautiful dress for her first visit to church, and the brief ritual and blessing seemed a perfect way to mark her passage from the first 40 days of infancy to an individual ready to take her place in the church and the world.

Eleni summed it up in her blog post:

My favorite part of the entire experience was when the priest said, “Bless also this child which has been born of her; increase her, sanctify her, give her understanding and a prudent and virtuous mind.” I felt a thrill at that moment thinking of the little baby in front of me as a person with a developing mind, one which, God willing, will be prudent and virtuous and joyous and expansive, and all the things that mothers in all cultures wish for their baby.