There was one little word, one three-letter word, that completely salvaged what was otherwise a mediocre-to-poor day. I'd been tripping from minor inconvenience to minor inconvenience all morning. Little things went wrong, but nothing so big that it justified really complaining about. I was just in a bad mood, sort of tired, sort of achy. I arrived barely on time to Rotary, when I was supposed to have been early to stand at the front door and be the greeter. (I was asked at the very last minute to do it, but before I could get there, I decided my foot hurt too bad to stand for twenty minutes, when I also needed to sit and take notes on the meeting.) I walked in the side door that comes up from the parking garage, as usual, and the first face I saw was the foreign exchange student (what did I say I'd nickname her here? XS?). She saw me and lit up. After a hug, she turned to introduce her sister, who had come to visit her from Croatia. She said, "This is my new mom." And at that moment, the whole way I thought of my world changed, and my mood improved. That made me feel so good, that I'm not just a host, I will be a stand-in parent. I knew that this situation held the possibility that XS and I could end up being friends for the rest of my life. But it could be even better than that. I could get to perform one of my favorite moves, and become her honorary mother. I was already looking forward to having her here. Today it took on a glorious complexity that I hadn't allowed myself to expect before.
I went from Rotary to my daughter's, to help her edit something important she was writing. She was really close on it, but she wanted a little reassurance that she was saying what she intended to, in the most respectful and inclusive way she could. I only tweaked a little sentence construction, and suggested one more careful clarification. And then I hung around and chatted and tried to catch the eye of some of my grandkittens. For the most part, the cats entirely ignored me. I think having them all living so much closer, so I'm there more often, has made it to where I'm not a novelty anymore. Maybe next time I go, I bring cat treats in my purse, so they come check me out.
My mother sent me a digest of our genealogy several days ago that alerted me that my ancestry is even more weighted toward Germany than I had thought previously. I hadn't realized that my grandmother's family was evenly split between Scottish and German forebears. I thought it was my grandfather on that side who provided all the German line. It was just another layer of "oh, that makes sense" when I think about my body and face type. And then tonight, my uncle dug up a photo of that same motherline, one I had never seen before. It was my great grandmother, surrounded by her five children, the youngest in a pram, from sometime in the mid to late 1920s. My grandmother is the second little girl from the left (in the picture below), the one who is looking slyly away, like she is contemplating the trouble she could get into once the photographer is done with them. I'd love to have known just what it was she went and did after that picture.
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