June 20, 2009

Adoptive Grandparents




Above: Don at the Zoo, 2009.



Himself: Counting the days: 6 work days. He applied at all the RAC’s yesterday, then got the bodywork bid on the truck cut from $1228.00 to $695.00. Felt triumphant until he went shopping at the Discovery Shop.

Herself: My feet hurt. Now that’s something I haven’t said since I worked at the Padre’s. I guess that pair of shoes I wore yesterday goes to the thrift store. Bought a kitchen rug at the thrift store. Ah, guilt be my name.

Reading: Dresden 7.

Balance: Being able to volunteer.

We have 14 grandkids, and we see few of them. Although in two cases we are not adoptive grandparents, in all the other’s we are.

We see nothing of the Santee family; they don’t like us as we are not Christian’s. Today the Barcelona family is in Greece. I’ve never met them and am grateful they send pictures. The Campo kids are all grown up and flown except for one in college. We get email. One OB child was taught that we are not ok folks so we see her only at Christmas. She lives less than a mile away. There’s the Escondido family….only an hour away. We see them the most of all……and that isn’t often enough tho there are daily phone calls.

How I love that.

The truth, my family was dysfunctional, I was dysfunctional, and I raised dysfunctional kids. I would not want to pass on the horror of my life to children, yet I did to mine.

Today there is the La Jolla Family. The children, Don and Meg, were both adopted by this delightful couple. The husband’s mother lives next door; the mother’s father lives in Berkley. We may be grandparents, but we are the adoptive grandparents. We see them maybe once a year. I wish I could have known them other than in passing.

Today is Don’s high school Graduation. I have to brag that this is a truly wonderful, brilliant, talented young man with a great imagination who is able to reach out and embrace the world around him. His family put an amazing amount of love and caring into his childhood, and he is who he is because of them and the doors they opened for him.





Above, L: Don at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, 2008. R: Don, August 2003.
Below: L: Don with his sister Mohave June 2003. R: Don at graduation, June 2003.


3 comments:

  1. I like how you write, very direct, saying things as they are. I admire your frankness. You sound like such a generous person.

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  2. thank you for your nice comment on my blog! I too am so glad to have "met" you. I am glad you are going back to painting.
    The heat is tremendous, 40 degrees centigrade, I dont know what it would be Farheneit, it is like the Sahara...with a bit of exaggeration...just a bit...Barcelona will probably be a bit cooler as they are on the sea.

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  3. June. Beginnings and endings.

    ReplyDelete

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