The Story, with Dick Gordon

The Story

If you don't listen to Dick Gordon's "The Story", on NPR, you really should. It'll change your life.

So, I'm submitting my story to "The Story". Being raised by wolves and by the sweetest little old ladies in the world might be a good springboard for a conversation centering around why it is that so many people are having their aged parents care for their children. I'm not judging: there were real positives and real negatives for me, being raised by a woman in her 60s, but no one is talking about this and I think we need to.

Here's my submission:

The New Geriatric Generation of Babies

As I drove to work this morning, I was thinking of my great-grandmother, who raised me on a farm in rural Oklahoma. I have long thought that the impact of growing up in a world of women who are on their way out of this life has been detrimental and beneficial to me. I spent my youth raising my own food, pumping water from a well, wearing dresses straight out of "Little House on the Prairie". I didn't know that there was a modern world beyond the one I lived in. We spent lots of time in church, there were unspoken rules about how much more important to the world men were than women. I went to funerals, but never parties, quilting bees, never playdates. I was alone all the time, except for my older male cousins who had little time for me. I was surrounded by medical issues pertinent to women in their late sixties: mammograms, colonoscopies, high blood pressure medicine. I spent my youth in worry and isolation, but I always dreamed of a different world. I spent my days exploring biology (though I didn't know that's what it was called). I eventually educated myself off the farm and now I'm in Cary, doing research at NC State, living with my gorgeous husband and my two delicious squishy children. I see, more and more, grandparents raising babies and I wonder if anyone thinks about the way those children will see the world. The rapid pace at which they age...or maybe it's just me. I don't know. But it's worth a conversation.

Reformed theatre kid seeks a life less dramatic

A poem from 2000- ihateyou by: Candi Timmerman

You can reach inside of me and pull out the pain.
You can grab my rage and pull it in to you
But
Push me away
Pull me back and
Look past the me you see
I hate the way you see me
I see the way you hate me
I hate the way you love me
I love the way I hate you
I need the love you give me
But I want it all to end
I need it all to end
I can’t see myself for you.




I met this girl last week. I don't remember her name. She was sitting outside the coffee shop down the way from my lab. I'd gone with one of my best friends to have a cup of joe and talk. Now, don't be shocked, but we often have a cigarette or two on these pretty rare occasions, and so we were sitting outside to get some sunshine and talking and smoking and drinking coffee.

Girl-in-question plops down in the chair beside us and asks if she can have a cigarette...then launches into a 10 minute ramble about how she's "really quitting but you know one won't hurt and I'm an engineering student who does photography and did you meet my friend with the camera? I'm from North Carolina it sucks here how are you? I wish that the weather would stay so pretty...do you have a light too?" You see my point.

She was me. Only 10 years ago and a little less angry. And I told her so.

Ten years ago was 2000 - ten years ago, I left high school and struck out on my own to begin life in the late teens, early twenties. A time I have always called the wasteland. I had blonde hair, a flat stomach, a negative balance in my checkbook, a car full of books. I didn't own a plate or a purse or pearls or a toaster. I was working at Applebee's to pay the bills and drinking breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I began the first adult romance of my life late that year, with an abusive alcoholic who turned out to be the first person who ever called me on my bullshit and forced me to start growing up. I spent those years furious at him, at myself, at the world. I poured out that fury into journal after journal of mostly mediocre writing.

I spent an awful lot of time, those first years, at a coffee shop on the UA campus. I had to sit outside, smoker and all that, and I did for HOURS in between classes, before classes, after classes. I met boyfriends there, girlfriends there, friends there whose friendships endure long after I stopped being a fixture of the place. I wrote while I sat there...hours and hours of poetry and prose. Most of it was bad, but a few choice words came out just right. I learned the art of SEEING people. The art of eavesdropping and stealing phrases out of context. It's a good skill to have.

So I told you that, to tell you this: I explained most of this to the girl I met the other day. She looked just bewildered at the idea of becoming me. But it's okay, I told her. Life doesn't turn out the way you think it will and that's okay. You'll be okay.