Continued from previous post….
Today’s post is continued from the previous one. I am still working on the same painting and I am posting an aspect of it here today. As I’ve been working on it and going through the book again I have been thinking about my grandmothers and a whole range of emotions have risen even though I mostly know them through narratives. My grandmothers had fourteen children between them and lived through wars and hardships. Through painting this elderly woman my heart seems to have also been opened to their experience; however, this image also represents the ageing and dying processes that live in us as potential, and can sometimes be triggered prematurely…. Almost all of my grandparents’ children lived into their late eighties and nineties. Some are still alive. Despite their hard working class lives they all survived into old age with relative grace. I often wonder if we, the grandchildren, will be graced with longevity, but this could be a topic for another post….
For the time being, I am posting a link to the Wellbeing podcast by Rick and Forrest Hanson on decision making at: https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-how-to-make-a-big-decision/, This more balanced and realistic discussion on making decisions was somewhat refreshing. Also, in this week’s podcast on compassion with Kristin Neff Rick Hanson wrote:
“There is a very useful distinction between two different meanings, or connotations, of the word “victim.” In the first and simplest sense, a “victim” is just someone, anyone, who has been assaulted, attacked, or otherwise mistreated. Someone walking in a crosswalk with a green light who is struck by a drunk driver is a victim. There is no shame in being a victim. In fact we should honor victims in this sense! When one has been mistreated – when one has been victimized in the simple factual objective sense – for sure it is appropriate to have compassion for oneself much as we would have compassion for anyone else who had been mistreated – who had in fact been victimized – in the same ways. For most people, the accurate recognition of how they’ve been mistreated along with self-compassion leads to adaptive coping and action, not to helpless immobilization.
In the second and actually uncommon sense, in some quarters the word “victim” or related terms such as “victim consciousness” carry the context of a kind of indulgence in or usage of the “victim role” to extract sympathy or other things inappropriately from others, or to sort of “wallow” in inappropriate self-indulgent “poor me, woe is me” forms of helplessness. In this particular sense of the word “victim,” self-compassion might conceivably get exploited or co-opted in the service of these kinds of inappropriate behaviors.
Frankly, I have rarely seen the mis-use of the sense of being mistreated, victimized, or being a victim described in the second sense. The greater problem I have observed is people who really were victimized being dismissive toward themselves or putting up with others being dismissive of them, including others who are prone to reducing and distorting and dismissing actual mistreatment by waving the “oh shame on you, don’t be such a victim” card.”
Additionally, I am posting a few more extracts from the book: Grandmothers: Essays by 21st-century Grandmothers, edited by Helen Elliot
Anastasia Gonis (writer, reviewer and interviewer)
“This was my utopia, the village in the south of Greece from where my husband had migrated sixty years before. We had lived there, in the dream house we had built, for nine years in the eighties, when I had raised my children to adulthood. It was where I felt at home. The warm weather would be therapeutic: my chronic back pain had wearied me and stolen my spark. I was going to finish writing the two books I had begun. I also had plans to create a writers’ retreat. For me, at fifty, it would be a time to flourish, to do something that I felt would enhance me. Our three children had built lives of their own and I felt comfortable that we would see each other often— we were, and still are, a family of travellers…..
My husband and I realised we couldn’t stay away. Our children and grandchildren would need us. And we wanted to be there. I left my projects and dreams locked in that white house and travelled back in time; I pretended that I hadn’t left Australia at all, that living again in Greece had been an illusion. I made the decision based on what I had been taught: that a mother always makes sacrifices for her family….. As a child born in Cyprus into a Greek-Cypriot family, regardless of being raised in Australia, I had been taught the fundamentals of what is expected of a woman: family first, no negotiation on that. Then respect and obedience, no negotiation there either…… I made the decision to come home as an onlooker only in my children’s new lives as parents. I fully intended to continue with my ambitions as a writer. And I did not object in the slightest to being included in everything….
When I held my grandson, a transformation occurred. A fierce love swept through me, an awakening quite unlike the one I experienced at the birth of my own children. I recalled the Greek adage: The child of my child is twice my child. I felt that, with this new baby, I could begin to make amends for the ignorance of my youth…… I remembered myself as a young girl giving birth in a hospital, all alone. How did I survive that? Why did it happen that way? And who was I all those years ago? Had my experiences in any way prepared me for the role that I had now chosen? I couldn’t yet tell. The shift in my life came so quickly: I stepped into the role of grandmother as if into a new dress. It seemed the most beautiful dress I had ever owned…. I was creating memories for them to take into the future. I felt central. I felt useful. And this gave me a new identity. I measured my learning against my teaching and found it hard to ascertain who benefited more…..
I began to attend literary events again. I tried to return to the books I had started writing so long ago, but just couldn’t reignite the spark. Writing needs emotional energy. Mine was extinguished. I no longer had the passion or persistence to regain a foothold in the small writing community I had once been part of……. I wouldn’t let go of the grievance I felt for what had happened to that dreamy young girl full of promise, reading a book beneath a plum tree all those years ago. She saw herself as a writer, but couldn’t see all the other things that would make up the rich texture of her life, the reality of family. Just as, later, I couldn’t envisage what the role of a grandmother entailed, and so cheated myself of the wonder that came with being one. But I made those choices, and now I can look back and examine the different identities and roles I took on, especially now that I have retrieved a portion of my writing life, which I protect with reinforced armor. The race continues. A grandmother is me at my most authentic now.”
Katherine Hattam (artist)
“The oldest child is marked in a different way from the others. I was nine and already taking on responsibilities. Work, love and responsibility have jostled for my time since I was very young, and the urgency of my work, something I always felt, has persisted into grandmotherhood. Art, creative work, is reparative, but it demands selfish time, and getting time for myself, time for my work, has been a battle from the beginning. Wanting to have it all has meant that I have sometimes come unstuck….. Family and work have always been in competition for me. There is urgency and pleasure in both, but not at the same time. Perhaps grandmothering will mend this division within me? Grandmothering is simpler and takes me backwards and forwards in time in a lovely way. Age has given me perspective, which means I am puzzled at some of the things my younger self did in terms of my divided loyalties…..
It is not that artists don’t choose to paint babies and children— they do. The paintings, however, rarely feature in catalogues or retrospectives, as, until recently, they have been considered minor works— the central miracle of life relegated to the margins. The issue has been compounded by the historical invisibility of women artists. But things are changing…”
Carol Raye (ballerina, actress and television producer)
“By the time the war ended, it seemed unsuitable for them to return to London, so my father built a granny flat and they lived with us until they died at an old age. My parents also came to live with me in their later life. I think that is what family is all about, being together, looking after each other. My grandparents had a big influence on my life as a young girl. Life with them and my parents was secure, filled with the certainties of love and belonging. In contrast, my grandchildren’s world is global, and seems to me to be full of uncertainties.
I like to think of my role as a grandparent as a special privilege, because a grandmother can give a unique feeling of security in today’s world, which seems so volatile and invasive for young people, especially when they are confronted by 24/ 7 media. Providing that extra feeling of stability, as someone who has lived through significant moments in history— been there, really, on D-day and still survived and is part of your family and loves you— this is a true grandparent’s role, and a most gratifying one. I am still here, so I give my grandchildren an intimate sense of continuity, a thread to their own past.”
Cheryl Kernott (was a senator and leader of the Australian Democrats, patron of the Australian Women’s Cricket Team, professor at the University of Oxford and then at UNSW’s Centre for Social Impact)
“Several factors— the cost of housing in Sydney, the need for my daughter to revert to part-time work when their child was born, as well as my wanting to downscale my work responsibilities— all led to our joint decision to move to the Hunter Valley, where I was born and grew up and where my daughter spent many happy school holidays with her maternal grandparents and cousins. We were going to pool our resources and design our own version of intergenerational living…….. Intergenerational living that allows for separate spaces is a distinctly twenty-first-century evolution.
Joan London (writer)
“I have come to inhabit that curious grand-parental emotion of instantly and deeply loving them, while being aware that I occupy a place of secondary importance. I think of us, the grandparents, as providing a sort of backup team, a well-meaning, cheerleading squad….. I am a grandmother in modern form, in jeans and sneakers, aware when child minding of the importance of stimulation, initiating cooking projects, reading, drawing, acting games… anything to keep them from boredom and electronic devices. I know that now is the time to establish a relationship with them, before they are consumed by their own lives.
Perhaps that is one of the functions of a grandparent, to remind children of the ages of man. For them, we are the frontline representatives of what it means to be old. And, more than likely, in the future, it will be us who will furnish our grandchildren with their first experience of death.”
Cresside Collette (tapestry artist)
“My hopes for her in an uncertain world are coloured by the yearning I have to be present for her at all times, as my grandmother was for me, offering security and protection. As she steps out, sure-footed and completely confident, to make her individual mark upon this world, I will be right behind her.”
Ramona Koval (writer, journalist and honorary fellow in the Centre for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne)
“I even extended my research to other mammals. Like grandmother killer whales, human grandmothers live many years beyond the end of their fertility— thanks to menopause. Our fellow primates— chimps, for example— die soon after their fertility ends. So this gift of extra years must have an evolutionary value. Killer whale grandmothers live for twenty-five years after menopause, long enough to see the oldest of their grand-calves to sexual maturity….. we need to convey to our grandchildren our lived wisdom, together with our data and our fighting spirit. Defending these children should now reach well beyond the schoolyard, outwards towards a global movement for action and change”
Yvette Holt (poet, essayist, editor, stand-up comedienne and artist)
“Regardless of your ethnic or cultural background, there just do not seem to be enough stories or verse memoirs written about intergenerational matrilineal relationships, stories that should pass on from one grandmother to another. I am most fortunate that my great-grandmother left such an indelible impression on my mother that it has carried into the generations who have succeeded her. An infinite source of survival and love”
Judith Brett (retired professor of politics and writer)
“When I read Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space in my twenties, I knew what he was talking about: the house as a cosmos, holder of memories, shelter for dreams, securing me in the world. But it was not Bachelard’s storied European house of cellars, front parlours and attics that was lodged in my unconscious. It was my grandmother’s single-storey wooden farmhouse with a corridor down the middle, a big kitchen, lots of doors opening to wide verandahs and the shimmering light of a flood plain. Bachelard imagines the house as vertical; mine is horizontal, and I much prefer plains to mountains or even rolling hills. But, like him, I imagine the house as safe, where I am who I am. I know not all houses are safe, that dangers can lurk……. But I never lived in such a house. Coming back from a walk at nightfall, I would see my mother and grandmother through the lighted kitchen window, preparing our tea, and feel happy…….
The other gift my grandmother gave me was the past as a lived reality. Because of her, and my grandfather too, I have ended up as a historian, reading old documents, visiting old buildings, looking at photos and paintings of things that once were……… Grandparents are a doorway back into history. Their stories of childhood and school, work and war, and of our own parents’ childhood and youth convince us that time is real, and full of consequences. Even if they are not storytellers, their very existence tells us that things were once different and that we too will one day be old like them, if we live that long.”