Dessert First

'Keep Calm and Carry On' (see yesterday's post) makes me think about my mother-in-law Ruth Payne Marotta who worked at the forward-thinking Tufts University lab school I mentioned yesterday. During her time there she would try to get me to  bring my first baby in. I'd do it sometimes, bring her dressed in a little baby bonnet  – she was balder than the Buddha – and sometimes even leave her for a while at Ruth's request. I was never sure just what happened while I was gone but I knew it had to be good.She was the most open-minded adult I have ever known, this Ruth Paybe Marotta. "There's no reason not to have dessert first," I heard her say to my kids more than once as she spooned ice cream into small Bert-and-Ernie bowls. You also couldn’t shock her so you didn’t try. She regarded children, and all young people,  as spiritual equals to adults and she spoke to them in grave matter-of-fact tones. That baby of mine graduated from the great high school she attended some 17 year after her visits to that Child Development Center, and her cousin Katy and her old pal Alden came all the way into the city to attend the ceremonies. At the special lunch we went to afterward Alden sat beside Grandma Ruth. He asked her what it was like to be old. He always had this childlike curiosity Alden did and he asked this in the most respectful way.She didn’t flinch or rise up in all haughty in her chair or rap his knuckles; far from it. She welcomed the question and answered it carefully and thoroughly. I remembering wishing I could sit just a little closer to better hear what she was saying.Ruth had a gay roommate back when they were both members of the Class of ’39 at Tufts and was  a loyal friend to her for their whole long lives. And she didn’t bat an eye when one of her own family members and then another revealed that they were gay themselves.I feel so lucky to have met her at age 19; to have had her as an 'extra mother' - even before I married her son at 21. For years I watched her calm way of dealing with life and learned at her feet, because my family’s way was so different. (We yelled, we laughed, we sobbed - sometimes while laughing. (We were Irish what can I say?))  But now all these years later I am actually more like 'Grandma Ruth' than I am like my own mother.Anyway I’m quieter than I was and calmer too, slow to take offense, and impossible to shock and all of this I lay at her doorstep. Or maybe on what promises to be this sunny warm Thursday I will go find her gravestone and lay it there, with some spring tulips for my thanks.

She was the beloved younger child of a couple of New Hampshire Unitarians. This is Ruthie now, peeking shly at the camera. I have to say her son is just like her.

Keep Calm

Keep calm and carry on: Good advice for us all right now in our state of near-panic over Japan’s unfolding tragedy. I saw Professor George Scarlett of Tufts University's famous Eliot-Pearson School of Child Development on TV this morning and he says that’s the ticket for us all now, especially as we relate to the children in our lives.He gave some basic Dos and Don’ts: Don’t say “Oh that’s way over there,” thus downplaying the magnitude of the loss, and don’t fan the fears that such a cataclysm is due here too any minute.  I especially see the wisdom of this last. Children are so tender; and if I’ve learned anything as a worker with youth all these years it’s that teens are too, with a world view still very much in the making.)In sum he says to (a) model an appropriate behaviors of concern and compassion but also of optimism that all will be well; (b) use this as an opportunity to help them learn about the forces of nature world; and (c) model helping behaviors in any way that seems natural for your family, from donating money to simply praying of prayer can ever be called simple.The worst thing I have seen people do and I’m sorry to say it’s older people who do it is to say “Oh the world is going to ruin. I’m glad I lived when I did!" If you feel that way I say go become a day trader or a mime or a toll taker at the edge of a bridge in the back end of nowhere, but please please please stay away from the young.And now if you have the six minutes, click here for one of the world’s tenderest songs by a singer-songwriter I have loved through all her career, from the wild rebellious young redhead she was at the Michigan Women’s Festival in the early 80s to today when she is.. well, not so young, but still so strong in her heart. "Clean your house in troubled times" the words say and seek out those people who will wait for you when you are walking through your own private hell.Seek good friends and clean your house. Stay calm and carry on.