Scribblings

Kids & Grandkids

Blogger Seeds:

Do you have kids? Grandchildren? How many?

I’m in a blending family now and I love it!

Rich and I had 3 kids together. Billy is 16, Heidi 15, and Kristin will be 12 on Saturday.

TB and Audrey had 2 daughters together, Michelle and Linda. Michelle and her husband David have 3 kids too, Brandon, Ryan and Taylor. Linda’s due to have her baby boy soon – maybe sooner than I think!

Out of great tragedy sometimes comes a great gift and that is what happened to TB and me.

You grow up and sort of expect to lose your parents at some later time in your life … when they are in their 70s or 80s and have had full, happy lives. You sort of expect to lose your aunts and uncles under the same circumstances. It’s the same with grandparents … if you are lucky enough to have them to your adult hood. My last surviving grandparent, my mom’s mom and my beloved Grandma, died when I was 24.

What you don’t ever expect is to lose your spouse or your own child. I mean, your spouse is probably around your age. If you’ve got a good marriage, your spouse is your best friend as well as lover. I think that even when you grow older together, the idea doesn’t seem possible. Even when your spouse is very ill … there’s always that part of you that doesn’t want to think about that.

Rich and Audrey both died too young. I like to think that they got together in heaven and plotted a way to get TB and me together and our families together. I think that they didn’t want TB and me to be sad and lonely all the rest of our lives. TB and I feel greatly blessed with a wonderful gift. We have such a love for each other!

So if someone asks me how many kids I’ve got, I’ll say 5. TB would answer the same way. How could we not love all the kids? There is a great deal of ourselves living in them.

Michelle and David’s kids are loveable, totally huggable and kissable … well, Ryan doesn’t seem to go for that so much but he is anyway!

I feel really sad that Michelle and David and the kids are moving to Tennessee. The cost of living is so terribly high on the east coast, especially this tri-state area (PA-NY-NJ) and people have to live, they’ve got to have happiness and some stability. I understand how it is … it was why Rich and I left LI for MD way back when we married. We knew we couldn’t afford to live in NY and so we had to leave family behind. It’s hard.

It’s hard and we’ll miss them but it’s not like we’re not ever going to see each other again. I used to go back and forth from MD to NY a couple of times a year. It’s not as great as being 15 minutes away but you have to do what you have to do to get by.

And soon there will be another baby in the family to go nuts over!