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Old 09-30-2010, 02:25 AM
 
Location: Wherever life takes me.
6,190 posts, read 7,952,374 times
Reputation: 3325

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jlowkey View Post
I think the more important question is dont you have anything else to do other than question someone about something so trivial? one to grow on I'd say. I dont care what anyone does as long as it doesnt affect me adversely. Did I make your eyes bleed by posting this? Give you the flu? Break a bone in your body?

LMAO!
You made my liver shrivel...
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Old 09-30-2010, 05:25 AM
 
28,164 posts, read 25,201,121 times
Reputation: 16664
Quote:
Originally Posted by LongIslandEddie View Post
Hello again jlowkey-

Gramps is back, he wouldn't be able to get through a day without his daily dose of drama and this thread certainly beats watching Snooki, Paulie and the Situation,
Judge Judy or CSPAN. Gramps got laid-off back in March of '09, and has been quietly going insane here at home, doing the only thing that he can afford to do anymore,
spending what is left of his fortunate life, out here on the great electronic broadway, reading about the miseries of others, it help me to contrast my own situation with others
and thus come away feeling either comparatively elevated or somewhat deflated but in any case I am provided a mirror for making a determination as to whether I am losing
or retaining whats left of my marbles.

Your original headline: To ALL the GRANDPARENTS. You DON'T OWN your grandchildren caught my eye yesterday. It might have been the single word, GRANDPARENTS,
which got my attention, after all it was one of the few categories that I felt truly qualified to respond to and after reading through the accumulated posts, I decided to "wade in".
Forgive me for addressing you as "son", it was thoughtlessly whimsical of me and was not meant to demean you and so I accept gracefully, your response to me today, as "gramps".

Having completed my military obligation in August of '65, I was married at 20 years of age. My wife had lost her father to cirrhosis in March of '65, the week that we were
married and was living at home with her parents so when I got honorably discharged in August, I moved in with her and her mother who lived in a rent controlled, two bedroom
apartment in Woodside, Queens NY. My mother in law and I were both drinkers and when my father in law passed away, her drinking habits stepped up, she had no man in her life
anymore to account to, got a job and began to "run her own life". Many were the nights, after I moved in, when we argued over trivial issues which always seemed to get blown out
of proportion, distorted by the booze but having been an alcoholic myself over the greatest part of my life, I understood that for many of us, drinking and bumping heads with others,
go hand in hand and I'll not disavow a level of responsibility on my part, I was 21 and thought that I had the world by the balls. I had served three years and 11 months in the Navy
and the world was my oyster, I was loaded with attitudes and having been brought up in a dysfunctional family myself, my wife's mother and I were like oil and water.

Our first child was born in June of 1966, and at that time, my son Karl was my pride and joy, the newest toy in my life. I struggled to grow a beard at 21 but soon came to
feel that fathering a child, seemed so much more of a statement of manhood than having a few scraggly whiskers on my chin. By December of '66, my relationship with my MIL had
run the course and become so corrosive that on our last night there in Woodside, my wife, my son and I needed a police escort as we gathered up our belongings and left her mother's
apartment for the last time and struck out on our own. My mother in law never believed that I was "good enough" for her daughter, if I had not turned her eye, she might've married
her childhood sweetheart, a highly decorated Medal of Honor recipient, actually the first New Yorker to receive the award during the Vietnam era, a fellow that was being given the
keys to the city and was being carried around on the shoulders of journalist Jimmy Breslin, parade after parade while my wife sat home clipping newspaper articles about the guy that
she might have married if I had not come into her life. Talk about feeling insecure, I'll write you a book but anyway, we left Woodside because I couldn't take any more of Betty, my old
and mean, "donkey Irish", mother in law.

I think that we had our own apartment better than a year
before my MIL began to take the bus over from Woodside, to Gates Avenue in Ridgewood Queens where we had found
a brownstone "railroad apartment" on Gates avenue for $100.00 a month. I was making a whopping $5,000 a year and the rent was all that we could afford but my mother in law
stayed away for a whole year even though we were only 15 minutes away by bus. When I was 21, my wife was 19 and her mother was 53 and as a prematurely gray woman who
had spent her entire life there in Queens, she was'nt exactly a pin-up girl and a feistier lady, I never knew. Our parting came on a snowy December night in '66, Betty (the MIL),
came home from the gin mill, pretty blown out, she had a bug in her bonnet and it was time to burrow up my blowhole. In her tirade over my worthlessness, she threw one of her new
Kitty-Kelly, high heeled shoes at me, I was sitting there on the Castro convertable, me and my can of Piels "Real-Draft" beer, probably watching Twilight Zone or maybe it was the
11 o'clock news where they were rolling the screen with the nightly count of the number, names and neighborhoods of those dead soldiers who had been wasted over in the Nam.
I ripped the heel off of the shoe and tossed it back at her, she went to the kitchen and pulled out a carving knife, the "Freddie Kruger" model, an awesome piece of cutlery and the
S**t started!

My wife was smart enough to grab the pink Princess phone and call 911 and I was smart enough to make it to the bedroom and slam the door, putting my foot against the bottom
and keeping crazy Betty from getting at me. By the time that the police got up to our second floor apartment, the carving knife was planted through the door panel, a 5/16" piece of
plywood! Between the 2 patrolmen, my wife, Betty and myself, we were able to reach the agreement wherein Pat (my wife) and I could gather up our 7 month old son and whatever
else we needed and leave. Temporarily, we went to stay with my family out here on Long Island or as Walter Greenspan (Long Island's last official city-data cartographer) calls it,
"Lawn Guyland". A few days later when we reached a peace treaty, we returned to Betty's Woodside apartment and although it only took us about a month to find a livable apartment,
as soon as we paid the broker and the security, we moved in. My wife kept in touch by phone and like I said, Betty wouldn't visit for almost a year after we split up. I remember how
strained it was the first time that she came to visit, we were both overcompensating, spackling one another with positive comments, not wanting to bring the conversation back to
that snowy day in December, the day that we had both had enough.

Life went on, we moved out to long Island in '73, Betty stayed there in Woodside and worked for Thypin Steel, she was happy to be there and enjoyed living alone, her son Tommy
and his family were only four or five blocks away from her and perhaps once a month, she'd travel out by train and spend the weekend with us. Over the years that followed, She had
"put the plug in the jug", and stopped drinking. I had gone to AA and put my own drinking in check and as life passed, we all got along ( me, the wife and all 5 children). In 1980,
Betty retired and spent almost half of her $20,000 pension in converting the garage of our Copiague home into living quarters for herself, I gave up my garage, Pat had her mother
and Betty had a home. Tonight, I'm sitting in the exact spot on the floor where Betty died in February of 2002, she was 90 but as feisty as ever! She was like "Mammy Yokum"
from Lil' Abner (a newspaper cartoon of an earlier day), she still smoked until the end and had that same old "pi$$ and vinegar" attitude that I saw in her from the day that we met.
After her passing, Pat and I moved into her quarters, the converted garage and on nights like this, I can almost feel her presence, my own mother had passed on at 52, back in
'73 and I guess that Betty became like a surrogate mother, after she moved in with us.

I know that I've kind of gotten off track with this comment but I wanted to point out to you that what you are dealing with today is not necessarily going to be there tomorrow.
You have done the right thing by moving away from your MIL, putting physical distance between you and the source of your frustration. Your wife can be a mediator if she stands by
you but you in turn, must change your attitude and establish a toleration for her and yes, there must be clearly defined boundaries between your rights as father and her rights
as grandmother (Granny), and not do as another poster alluded, "go gangsta on granny". Find a place within your new living quarters for you to retreat when your MIL comes to
visit, be reasonable when allotting time for her visits and remember always, that it takes two to tango. We often fool ourselves into believing that our young children don't have the
capacity to understand what is going on between the grown-ups but the children do understand, set a good example for your son, be a peaceful man, generate warm feelings
whenever you are with him, give him the security within his spirit that may not have been given to you as your spirit was formed. Whatever negative aspects of your own character
which you might perceive that have followed you from childhood, should not be passed along to your son, take note of where you needed nurturing and understanding as you
review your attitudes, your feelings about others, every part of your psyche and work toward raising your son the way that you would have liked to have been raised. I would say
that you need to grow up except for the reality that it will be the life ahead of you that "grows you up", what I will say is this: "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree". Someday,
your son may have a son of his own and by the grace of God, it will be you and the wife who come visiting. Check thru your music library tomorrow and see if you have the song
"Cats in the cradle" (Harry Chapin), and if you have it, pop it into your Windows Media Player, put your little son in your arms, hold him to your chest and treasure the moment.
If you play the song twice, I can almost guarantee that before the recording ends, there'll be tears in your eyes but through the tears you just might come to understand how it feels
to stand in a grandparent's shoes.
Before I even reached the end of this beautiful post, *I* had tears in my eyes. A great, great post. I only hope jlowkey doesn't shat all over it.

You bring up great points about tolerance, objectivity, maturation, etc. Very, very interesting post indeed.
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Old 09-30-2010, 07:25 AM
 
251 posts, read 416,426 times
Reputation: 104
Quote:
Originally Posted by LongIslandEddie View Post
Hello again jlowkey-

Gramps is back, he wouldn't be able to get through a day without his daily dose of drama and this thread certainly beats watching Snooki, Paulie and the Situation,
Judge Judy or CSPAN. Gramps got laid-off back in March of '09, and has been quietly going insane here at home, doing the only thing that he can afford to do anymore,
spending what is left of his fortunate life, out here on the great electronic broadway, reading about the miseries of others, it help me to contrast my own situation with others
and thus come away feeling either comparatively elevated or somewhat deflated but in any case I am provided a mirror for making a determination as to whether I am losing
or retaining whats left of my marbles.

Your original headline: To ALL the GRANDPARENTS. You DON'T OWN your grandchildren caught my eye yesterday. It might have been the single word, GRANDPARENTS,
which got my attention, after all it was one of the few categories that I felt truly qualified to respond to and after reading through the accumulated posts, I decided to "wade in".
Forgive me for addressing you as "son", it was thoughtlessly whimsical of me and was not meant to demean you and so I accept gracefully, your response to me today, as "gramps".

Having completed my military obligation in August of '65, I was married at 20 years of age. My wife had lost her father to cirrhosis in March of '65, the week that we were
married and was living at home with her parents so when I got honorably discharged in August, I moved in with her and her mother who lived in a rent controlled, two bedroom
apartment in Woodside, Queens NY. My mother in law and I were both drinkers and when my father in law passed away, her drinking habits stepped up, she had no man in her life
anymore to account to, got a job and began to "run her own life". Many were the nights, after I moved in, when we argued over trivial issues which always seemed to get blown out
of proportion, distorted by the booze but having been an alcoholic myself over the greatest part of my life, I understood that for many of us, drinking and bumping heads with others,
go hand in hand and I'll not disavow a level of responsibility on my part, I was 21 and thought that I had the world by the balls. I had served three years and 11 months in the Navy
and the world was my oyster, I was loaded with attitudes and having been brought up in a dysfunctional family myself, my wife's mother and I were like oil and water.

Our first child was born in June of 1966, and at that time, my son Karl was my pride and joy, the newest toy in my life. I struggled to grow a beard at 21 but soon came to
feel that fathering a child, seemed so much more of a statement of manhood than having a few scraggly whiskers on my chin. By December of '66, my relationship with my MIL had
run the course and become so corrosive that on our last night there in Woodside, my wife, my son and I needed a police escort as we gathered up our belongings and left her mother's
apartment for the last time and struck out on our own. My mother in law never believed that I was "good enough" for her daughter, if I had not turned her eye, she might've married
her childhood sweetheart, a highly decorated Medal of Honor recipient, actually the first New Yorker to receive the award during the Vietnam era, a fellow that was being given the
keys to the city and was being carried around on the shoulders of journalist Jimmy Breslin, parade after parade while my wife sat home clipping newspaper articles about the guy that
she might have married if I had not come into her life. Talk about feeling insecure, I'll write you a book but anyway, we left Woodside because I couldn't take any more of Betty, my old
and mean, "donkey Irish", mother in law.

I think that we had our own apartment better than a year before my MIL began to take the bus over from Woodside, to Gates Avenue in Ridgewood Queens where we had found
a brownstone "railroad apartment" on Gates avenue for $100.00 a month. I was making a whopping $5,000 a year and the rent was all that we could afford but my mother in law
stayed away for a whole year even though we were only 15 minutes away by bus. When I was 21, my wife was 19 and her mother was 53 and as a prematurely gray woman who
had spent her entire life there in Queens, she was'nt exactly a pin-up girl and a feistier lady, I never knew. Our parting came on a snowy December night in '66, Betty (the MIL),
came home from the gin mill, pretty blown out, she had a bug in her bonnet and it was time to burrow up my blowhole. In her tirade over my worthlessness, she threw one of her new
Kitty-Kelly, high heeled shoes at me, I was sitting there on the Castro convertable, me and my can of Piels "Real-Draft" beer, probably watching Twilight Zone or maybe it was the
11 o'clock news where they were rolling the screen with the nightly count of the number, names and neighborhoods of those dead soldiers who had been wasted over in the Nam.
I ripped the heel off of the shoe and tossed it back at her, she went to the kitchen and pulled out a carving knife, the "Freddie Kruger" model, an awesome piece of cutlery and the
S**t started!

My wife was smart enough to grab the pink Princess phone and call 911 and I was smart enough to make it to the bedroom and slam the door, putting my foot against the bottom
and keeping crazy Betty from getting at me. By the time that the police got up to our second floor apartment, the carving knife was planted through the door panel, a 5/16" piece of
plywood! Between the 2 patrolmen, my wife, Betty and myself, we were able to reach the agreement wherein Pat (my wife) and I could gather up our 7 month old son and whatever
else we needed and leave. Temporarily, we went to stay with my family out here on Long Island or as Walter Greenspan (Long Island's last official city-data cartographer) calls it,
"Lawn Guyland". A few days later when we reached a peace treaty, we returned to Betty's Woodside apartment and although it only took us about a month to find a livable apartment,
as soon as we paid the broker and the security, we moved in. My wife kept in touch by phone and like I said, Betty wouldn't visit for almost a year after we split up. I remember how
strained it was the first time that she came to visit, we were both overcompensating, spackling one another with positive comments, not wanting to bring the conversation back to
that snowy day in December, the day that we had both had enough.

Life went on, we moved out to long Island in '73, Betty stayed there in Woodside and worked for Thypin Steel, she was happy to be there and enjoyed living alone, her son Tommy
and his family were only four or five blocks away from her and perhaps once a month, she'd travel out by train and spend the weekend with us. Over the years that followed, She had
"put the plug in the jug", and stopped drinking. I had gone to AA and put my own drinking in check and as life passed, we all got along ( me, the wife and all 5 children). In 1980,
Betty retired and spent almost half of her $20,000 pension in converting the garage of our Copiague home into living quarters for herself, I gave up my garage, Pat had her mother
and Betty had a home. Tonight, I'm sitting in the exact spot on the floor where Betty died in February of 2002, she was 90 but as feisty as ever! She was like "Mammy Yokum"
from Lil' Abner (a newspaper cartoon of an earlier day), she still smoked until the end and had that same old "pi$$ and vinegar" attitude that I saw in her from the day that we met.
After her passing, Pat and I moved into her quarters, the converted garage and on nights like this, I can almost feel her presence, my own mother had passed on at 52, back in
'73 and I guess that Betty became like a surrogate mother, after she moved in with us.

I know that I've kind of gotten off track with this comment but I wanted to point out to you that what you are dealing with today is not necessarily going to be there tomorrow.
You have done the right thing by moving away from your MIL, putting physical distance between you and the source of your frustration. Your wife can be a mediator if she stands by
you but you in turn, must change your attitude and establish a toleration for her and yes, there must be clearly defined boundaries between your rights as father and her rights
as grandmother (Granny), and not do as another poster alluded, "go gangsta on granny". Find a place within your new living quarters for you to retreat when your MIL comes to
visit, be reasonable when allotting time for her visits and remember always, that it takes two to tango. We often fool ourselves into believing that our young children don't have the
capacity to understand what is going on between the grown-ups but the children do understand, set a good example for your son, be a peaceful man, generate warm feelings
whenever you are with him, give him the security within his spirit that may not have been given to you as your spirit was formed. Whatever negative aspects of your own character
which you might perceive that have followed you from childhood, should not be passed along to your son, take note of where you needed nurturing and understanding as you
review your attitudes, your feelings about others, every part of your psyche and work toward raising your son the way that you would have liked to have been raised. I would say
that you need to grow up except for the reality that it will be the life ahead of you that "grows you up", what I will say is this: "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree". Someday,
your son may have a son of his own and by the grace of God, it will be you and the wife who come visiting. Check thru your music library tomorrow and see if you have the song
"Cats in the cradle" (Harry Chapin), and if you have it, pop it into your Windows Media Player, put your little son in your arms, hold him to your chest and treasure the moment.
If you play the song twice, I can almost guarantee that before the recording ends, there'll be tears in your eyes but through the tears you just might come to understand how it feels
to stand in a grandparent's shoes.

Yours is a brilliant story and I thank you for sharing your life and life experiences with me; it definitely put things in perspective.
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Old 09-30-2010, 07:59 AM
 
556 posts, read 796,529 times
Reputation: 859
Quote:
Originally Posted by LongIslandEddie View Post
Hello again jlowkey-

Gramps is back, he wouldn't be able to get through a day without his daily dose of drama and this thread certainly beats watching Snooki, Paulie and the Situation,
Judge Judy or CSPAN. Gramps got laid-off back in March of '09, and has been quietly going insane here at home, doing the only thing that he can afford to do anymore,
spending what is left of his fortunate life, out here on the great electronic broadway, reading about the miseries of others, it help me to contrast my own situation with others
and thus come away feeling either comparatively elevated or somewhat deflated but in any case I am provided a mirror for making a determination as to whether I am losing
or retaining whats left of my marbles.

Your original headline: To ALL the GRANDPARENTS. You DON'T OWN your grandchildren caught my eye yesterday. It might have been the single word, GRANDPARENTS,
which got my attention, after all it was one of the few categories that I felt truly qualified to respond to and after reading through the accumulated posts, I decided to "wade in".
Forgive me for addressing you as "son", it was thoughtlessly whimsical of me and was not meant to demean you and so I accept gracefully, your response to me today, as "gramps".

Having completed my military obligation in August of '65, I was married at 20 years of age. My wife had lost her father to cirrhosis in March of '65, the week that we were
married and was living at home with her parents so when I got honorably discharged in August, I moved in with her and her mother who lived in a rent controlled, two bedroom
apartment in Woodside, Queens NY. My mother in law and I were both drinkers and when my father in law passed away, her drinking habits stepped up, she had no man in her life
anymore to account to, got a job and began to "run her own life". Many were the nights, after I moved in, when we argued over trivial issues which always seemed to get blown out
of proportion, distorted by the booze but having been an alcoholic myself over the greatest part of my life, I understood that for many of us, drinking and bumping heads with others,
go hand in hand and I'll not disavow a level of responsibility on my part, I was 21 and thought that I had the world by the balls. I had served three years and 11 months in the Navy
and the world was my oyster, I was loaded with attitudes and having been brought up in a dysfunctional family myself, my wife's mother and I were like oil and water.

Our first child was born in June of 1966, and at that time, my son Karl was my pride and joy, the newest toy in my life. I struggled to grow a beard at 21 but soon came to
feel that fathering a child, seemed so much more of a statement of manhood than having a few scraggly whiskers on my chin. By December of '66, my relationship with my MIL had
run the course and become so corrosive that on our last night there in Woodside, my wife, my son and I needed a police escort as we gathered up our belongings and left her mother's
apartment for the last time and struck out on our own. My mother in law never believed that I was "good enough" for her daughter, if I had not turned her eye, she might've married
her childhood sweetheart, a highly decorated Medal of Honor recipient, actually the first New Yorker to receive the award during the Vietnam era, a fellow that was being given the
keys to the city and was being carried around on the shoulders of journalist Jimmy Breslin, parade after parade while my wife sat home clipping newspaper articles about the guy that
she might have married if I had not come into her life. Talk about feeling insecure, I'll write you a book but anyway, we left Woodside because I couldn't take any more of Betty, my old
and mean, "donkey Irish", mother in law.

I think that we had our own apartment better than a year
before my MIL began to take the bus over from Woodside, to Gates Avenue in Ridgewood Queens where we had found
a brownstone "railroad apartment" on Gates avenue for $100.00 a month. I was making a whopping $5,000 a year and the rent was all that we could afford but my mother in law
stayed away for a whole year even though we were only 15 minutes away by bus. When I was 21, my wife was 19 and her mother was 53 and as a prematurely gray woman who
had spent her entire life there in Queens, she was'nt exactly a pin-up girl and a feistier lady, I never knew. Our parting came on a snowy December night in '66, Betty (the MIL),
came home from the gin mill, pretty blown out, she had a bug in her bonnet and it was time to burrow up my blowhole. In her tirade over my worthlessness, she threw one of her new
Kitty-Kelly, high heeled shoes at me, I was sitting there on the Castro convertable, me and my can of Piels "Real-Draft" beer, probably watching Twilight Zone or maybe it was the
11 o'clock news where they were rolling the screen with the nightly count of the number, names and neighborhoods of those dead soldiers who had been wasted over in the Nam.
I ripped the heel off of the shoe and tossed it back at her, she went to the kitchen and pulled out a carving knife, the "Freddie Kruger" model, an awesome piece of cutlery and the
S**t started!

My wife was smart enough to grab the pink Princess phone and call 911 and I was smart enough to make it to the bedroom and slam the door, putting my foot against the bottom
and keeping crazy Betty from getting at me. By the time that the police got up to our second floor apartment, the carving knife was planted through the door panel, a 5/16" piece of
plywood! Between the 2 patrolmen, my wife, Betty and myself, we were able to reach the agreement wherein Pat (my wife) and I could gather up our 7 month old son and whatever
else we needed and leave. Temporarily, we went to stay with my family out here on Long Island or as Walter Greenspan (Long Island's last official city-data cartographer) calls it,
"Lawn Guyland". A few days later when we reached a peace treaty, we returned to Betty's Woodside apartment and although it only took us about a month to find a livable apartment,
as soon as we paid the broker and the security, we moved in. My wife kept in touch by phone and like I said, Betty wouldn't visit for almost a year after we split up. I remember how
strained it was the first time that she came to visit, we were both overcompensating, spackling one another with positive comments, not wanting to bring the conversation back to
that snowy day in December, the day that we had both had enough.

Life went on, we moved out to long Island in '73, Betty stayed there in Woodside and worked for Thypin Steel, she was happy to be there and enjoyed living alone, her son Tommy
and his family were only four or five blocks away from her and perhaps once a month, she'd travel out by train and spend the weekend with us. Over the years that followed, She had
"put the plug in the jug", and stopped drinking. I had gone to AA and put my own drinking in check and as life passed, we all got along ( me, the wife and all 5 children). In 1980,
Betty retired and spent almost half of her $20,000 pension in converting the garage of our Copiague home into living quarters for herself, I gave up my garage, Pat had her mother
and Betty had a home. Tonight, I'm sitting in the exact spot on the floor where Betty died in February of 2002, she was 90 but as feisty as ever! She was like "Mammy Yokum"
from Lil' Abner (a newspaper cartoon of an earlier day), she still smoked until the end and had that same old "pi$$ and vinegar" attitude that I saw in her from the day that we met.
After her passing, Pat and I moved into her quarters, the converted garage and on nights like this, I can almost feel her presence, my own mother had passed on at 52, back in
'73 and I guess that Betty became like a surrogate mother, after she moved in with us.

I know that I've kind of gotten off track with this comment but I wanted to point out to you that what you are dealing with today is not necessarily going to be there tomorrow.
You have done the right thing by moving away from your MIL, putting physical distance between you and the source of your frustration. Your wife can be a mediator if she stands by
you but you in turn, must change your attitude and establish a toleration for her and yes, there must be clearly defined boundaries between your rights as father and her rights
as grandmother (Granny), and not do as another poster alluded, "go gangsta on granny". Find a place within your new living quarters for you to retreat when your MIL comes to
visit, be reasonable when allotting time for her visits and remember always, that it takes two to tango. We often fool ourselves into believing that our young children don't have the
capacity to understand what is going on between the grown-ups but the children do understand, set a good example for your son, be a peaceful man, generate warm feelings
whenever you are with him, give him the security within his spirit that may not have been given to you as your spirit was formed. Whatever negative aspects of your own character
which you might perceive that have followed you from childhood, should not be passed along to your son, take note of where you needed nurturing and understanding as you
review your attitudes, your feelings about others, every part of your psyche and work toward raising your son the way that you would have liked to have been raised. I would say
that you need to grow up except for the reality that it will be the life ahead of you that "grows you up", what I will say is this: "As the twig is bent, so grows the tree". Someday,
your son may have a son of his own and by the grace of God, it will be you and the wife who come visiting. Check thru your music library tomorrow and see if you have the song
"Cats in the cradle" (Harry Chapin), and if you have it, pop it into your Windows Media Player, put your little son in your arms, hold him to your chest and treasure the moment.
If you play the song twice, I can almost guarantee that before the recording ends, there'll be tears in your eyes but through the tears you just might come to understand how it feels
to stand in a grandparent's shoes.

Your life story is beautiful and wise. It's times like this that I (and many others) understand the wisdom of age and a life lived. THESE are the things that are great about places like CD. We all get a chance to hear from a perspective that in our day to day life we may not have had a chance.

Eddie, how did you woo that wife of yours away from the Medal Of Honor huy, if you don't mind me asking?
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Old 09-30-2010, 09:15 AM
 
4 posts, read 7,831 times
Reputation: 10
Quote:
Originally Posted by Crazymomof3 View Post
It could be worse....you could have no grandparents for your son, or grandparents that could give a crap less about your son. I'd give anything for grandparents that cared to see my kids. I'd happily let my parents hold my kids, or even talk to them. As it stands now, they have no contact with them...not really sure why. I imagine they're busy, living 20 minutes away and 3 hours away, respectively. It's kind of always been that way, and we've accepted it.

What I (or my kids) wouldn't give to have grandma or grandpa come see them or invite them over.

Remember, you can't change people but you sure as hell can change YOUR attitude towards them. Saves a lot of grief and anger when we try to do that.
Have you tried inviting the grandparents over? Perhaps they don't feel welcome - just a thought.
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Old 09-30-2010, 01:56 PM
 
4 posts, read 7,831 times
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how sad
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Old 09-30-2010, 02:03 PM
 
2,059 posts, read 5,734,771 times
Reputation: 1685
Quote:
Originally Posted by austinartist View Post
Have you tried inviting the grandparents over? Perhaps they don't feel welcome - just a thought.
I had to take my daughter to see her grandparents in order to get them to see her, and even then they werent that bothered. And when we moved away they accused me of being selfish. They still can't be bothered to send Christmas or birthday cards, or even enquire as to how they are doing.
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Old 09-30-2010, 02:37 PM
 
Location: Copiague, NY
1,500 posts, read 2,793,046 times
Reputation: 2414
Quote:
Originally Posted by kel6604 View Post
Your life story is beautiful and wise. It's times like this that I (and many others) understand the wisdom of age and a life lived. THESE are the things that are great about places like CD. We all get a chance to hear from a perspective that in our day to day life we may not have had a chance.

Eddie, how did you woo that wife of yours away from the Medal Of Honor huy, if you don't mind me asking?
Kel6604,

Here's an earlier post of mine that will give you better insight
as to how I was able to "win over" the hand and heart of the wonderful woman
who has decorated my life. As to what it was about me, the lucky guy who wound up with the prize, you'd have to ask my wife but because she is
not computer literate, I don't think that she'll be getting back to you with her answer. Thank you (and others) who've enjoyed reading and responding
to my thoughts. This particular response of mine was directed at a woman who wanted to tap the opinions of others who have had formed relationships
through and over the hardship that logistical distance can often bring to those who work to establish those relationships. Again, forgive me if this too
seems a tad "off-topic" but because you asked the question of me I thought that the easiest thing that I might do was to clip and paste a previous
comment of similar nature and send it out to you, over the wire.


"I believe that there is a definite advantage
to having the ability to enter a relationship by way of the internet.
When a person has the opportunity to extensively communicate in the manner that an online relationship affords,
it gives them the advantage of seeing deeper into the spirit, the attitudes, the likes and dislikes of the potential
partner and may also serve to logistically set and define those boundaries that need to be kept, until a greater
sense of trust and understanding is hopefully, mutually developed.

I met my wife when I was 20 and in the Navy.
Our paths fatefully crossed while I was on a three day pass
and had stopped over in NYC, as I headed out to visit my family who lived on Long Island. We met one another
in the "tap room", the piano bar at the Taft Hotel, she was at her senior luncheon with her mother and a girlfriend
from her graduating class and I was with another sailor, a shipmate from aboard the same aircraft carrier that I was
stationed aboard.

Along with her girlfriend and my shipmate,
the four of us spent a half hour and shared a drink together in a cozy little
bar called "Mins" somewhere near Grand Central station and all the while it seemed that it was her silly Beatles cards,
(John, George, Paul and Ringo), that were our only topic of conversation, the Beatles were the latest rage and like they
do with baseball players, they issued little wallet-sized picture cards and all of the girls would swap and trade them among
themselves. It was her girlfriend that took my buddy's address before we parted company and I headed out to Long Island,
believing that I'd probably never see her again.

About a month later, my friend got a letter
from my wife's girlfriend and in that letter she mentioned that her girlfriend
Pat would like to know if it was O.K. to write to me and I said that I'd be very happy to hear from her. When I returned to
New York again in the summer of 64, we had two dates together before my ship left for an 8 month cruise, over to the
Mediterranean sea but as I left, we agreed to keep in touch by mail while I was overseas. We wrote to one another daily,
often sending two or three letters a day. We came to know enough about one another through writing, that we became
engaged to be married, I bought an engagement ring in France and mailed it home to her in September of '64, her big brother
placed it on her finger by proxy and a few days after my ship arrived home from Europe in March of '65, we were married.

45 years later, with five children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild,
I still treasure that shoebox full of letters
still kept on the top shelf of the closet because it was through those letters and the volumes of information that we shared as we
opened our hearts to one another so many years ago, that I credit with being the strong foundation of our successful union.
I really didn't intend to stray off topic with this response but I wanted to underscore the thought that there is much that may
be derived from written thoughts when one is looking for insight and hoping to determine the character of a potential partner."
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Old 09-30-2010, 03:14 PM
 
Location: Deep in the heart of Texas
1,914 posts, read 7,134,677 times
Reputation: 1988
Quote:
Originally Posted by LongIslandEddie View Post
Kel6604,

Here's an earlier post of mine that will give you better insight
as to how I was able to "win over" the hand and heart of the wonderful woman
who has decorated my life. As to what it was about me, the lucky guy who wound up with the prize, you'd have to ask my wife but because she is
not computer literate, I don't think that she'll be getting back to you with her answer. Thank you (and others) who've enjoyed reading and responding
to my thoughts. This particular response of mine was directed at a woman who wanted to tap the opinions of others who have had formed relationships
through and over the hardship that logistical distance can often bring to those who work to establish those relationships. Again, forgive me if this too
seems a tad "off-topic" but because you asked the question of me I thought that the easiest thing that I might do was to clip and paste a previous
comment of similar nature and send it out to you, over the wire.


"I believe that there is a definite advantage
to having the ability to enter a relationship by way of the internet.
When a person has the opportunity to extensively communicate in the manner that an online relationship affords,
it gives them the advantage of seeing deeper into the spirit, the attitudes, the likes and dislikes of the potential
partner and may also serve to logistically set and define those boundaries that need to be kept, until a greater
sense of trust and understanding is hopefully, mutually developed.

I met my wife when I was 20 and in the Navy.
Our paths fatefully crossed while I was on a three day pass
and had stopped over in NYC, as I headed out to visit my family who lived on Long Island. We met one another
in the "tap room", the piano bar at the Taft Hotel, she was at her senior luncheon with her mother and a girlfriend
from her graduating class and I was with another sailor, a shipmate from aboard the same aircraft carrier that I was
stationed aboard.

Along with her girlfriend and my shipmate,
the four of us spent a half hour and shared a drink together in a cozy little
bar called "Mins" somewhere near Grand Central station and all the while it seemed that it was her silly Beatles cards,
(John, George, Paul and Ringo), that were our only topic of conversation, the Beatles were the latest rage and like they
do with baseball players, they issued little wallet-sized picture cards and all of the girls would swap and trade them among
themselves. It was her girlfriend that took my buddy's address before we parted company and I headed out to Long Island,
believing that I'd probably never see her again.

About a month later, my friend got a letter
from my wife's girlfriend and in that letter she mentioned that her girlfriend
Pat would like to know if it was O.K. to write to me and I said that I'd be very happy to hear from her. When I returned to
New York again in the summer of 64, we had two dates together before my ship left for an 8 month cruise, over to the
Mediterranean sea but as I left, we agreed to keep in touch by mail while I was overseas. We wrote to one another daily,
often sending two or three letters a day. We came to know enough about one another through writing, that we became
engaged to be married, I bought an engagement ring in France and mailed it home to her in September of '64, her big brother
placed it on her finger by proxy and a few days after my ship arrived home from Europe in March of '65, we were married.

45 years later, with five children, eight grandchildren and one great-grandchild,
I still treasure that shoebox full of letters
still kept on the top shelf of the closet because it was through those letters and the volumes of information that we shared as we
opened our hearts to one another so many years ago, that I credit with being the strong foundation of our successful union.
I really didn't intend to stray off topic with this response but I wanted to underscore the thought that there is much that may
be derived from written thoughts when one is looking for insight and hoping to determine the character of a potential partner."
Wow! Just beautiful!
I love reading stories like these.
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Old 10-04-2010, 02:39 PM
 
Location: Astoria, NY
3,052 posts, read 4,295,457 times
Reputation: 2475
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jlowkey View Post
I dont agree with that either, that's why I saw someone about anger. And while the counselor said i had no right threaten her, he did say she was too involved in my marriage.
Good thing you're in counseling, because it does seem you have a major hostility problem which is leading to you to seriously overreact to common phenomena. If my husband threatened to hurt my mother (I wouldn't care how nosy/overbearing she was), there'd be serious problems. No wonder her family doesn't like you.
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