Children, Chickens, Epiphanies in Target

It's Wednesday, still morning, and I've already had my walk and gone to yoga. I knew after yesterday's walk that I had to start getting up earlier and get out before the temperature got into the nineties because let's face it- I'm old and it's a bit contradictory to have a stroke while trying to do something good for my health.
And the chickens are fed and the dogs and feral cats, too. We have two of those. Well, I think we actually feed at least four cats but only two hang around. They like to laze together, not touching of course, but in proximity. The chickens do this too, only they do touch. When it starts to get really hot, around noon, I notice I no longer see them in their pen and I go out to check on them and find them back in the coop, lying all next to each other, wallowed down into the dirt and actually panting. Yes. Chickens pant. Or maybe they're just doing yoga breathing, aligning their chicken chakras, meditating on the Tao of the Chicken.

I don't have to go to town today. I went yesterday and part of it was wonderful. I went to the birth center with Lily and Jason to listen to the baby's heart beat. Last week the midwife had worried that there was skipping in the heart beat so she wanted to check again and I went because whenever I go, that baby BEHAVES! And again, she/he did yesterday, too. The heart beat sounded like a marching band, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh in a rhythm I immediately made up a song to, and sang, right there in the midwife's office, such a steady strong beat. The heart of my grand baby.
Can you believe that?
And we were all happy and relieved although in my deepest bones I truly think that everything is perfect with that child. On the way back to Lily and Jason's house we talked about what the baby is going to call me. I've always said that the first grandchild gets to name the grandparents and this is true, but as Lily pointed out, you have to give them something to shoot for. I can't be Granny because that's my mother. I sort of like the Greek grandmother name which is Ya-Ya and I suggested that. Lily pointed out that Ya-Ya is another name for vagina and I said, "Well, what's wrong with that? The vagina is a holy thing. Plus, I think Woo-Woo is a better name for vagina anyway."
Here in the south, grandmothers are frequently known as Me-Maw or Maw-Maw, which are sort of good but also bring to mind an old woman with short gray hair in a shapeless faded house dress endlessly making gravy and watching daytime TV.
I have known two grandmothers whose grandchildren call them Ma. That would make me feel a little bit like the mother in Lassie, though, I think.
It would be fun to have little children call me Grandmotha, spoken in an English accent with the grand stretched out and emphasized but that's a little much to ask, don't you think?
Big Mama? Hmmm. Not really. But maybe. Then Mr. Moon could be Big Daddy and it could be all Cat On A Hot Tin roof around here.
Well, we'll see. The child is yet to be born and probably won't be talking for quite some time, although I am certain he or she will be verbal at an indecently early age.

After I left Lily and Jason I went to Target. And it was there that I had an epiphany in the aisle where they sell face creams. There was almost an entire aisle of pots and tubes of creams all screaming promises to make our wrinkles appear less obvious, to prevent the wrinkles from happening in the first place, to even out skin tones, to hydrate, regenerate, protect, clear up acne, to nourish, to lift, to firm. There were store brands and fancy-sounding brands and brands that promised to be organic and all natural and some had vitamins and some had sea minerals and some had face food and some had scent and others did not.
I stood there, and wondered what would happen if I just slapped some Vaseline on my face before bed every night and put some sunscreen on it in the morning.
Really. What recession? If women can still put out eighteen dollars for an ounce of promises (and this is the cheap stuff) then we're still doing okay.

I had a moment there. A moment where I was thinking about all we have here in this country. I was thinking about an article I'd just read in the New Yorker about how in areas where the most money is spent per capita on health care they do not have the best medical outcomes. More surgeries, tests and treatments do not mean better health. Take childbirth for instance....
And then I thought about what it would be like to live in a third world country where I had to walk to a market to get what I needed. To see meat hung from a wooden frame, the way I have seen it in Mexico, a leg, a chunk of side, a head, flies everywhere on it. To buy my meat from that sort of seller. To select a handful of herbs, a liter of oil, whatever sorts of vegetables and fruits I couldn't grow myself, stacked neatly on the ground or on a wooden table. To have to search to find things like peanut butter or white flour or sugar.
Could I do that? Would I be satisfied with that sort of choice or what I reach a point where I started screaming, "I want to go to Publix! I want organic trail mix! I want to go to Target! I want to buy some picture frames!"?
I don't know.
But I stood there, completely overwhelmed by my choices and I think we're all confronted with that daily. It seems like every time I go to the grocery store there are new choices in everything. Yogurt now comes in so many forms and flavors that I don't know what to do. Fruit on the bottom. Sugarless, Light, Fatfree, Greek, organic, plain. Yogurt with probiotics. Yogurt that claims to lower your cholesterol.
I'm overwhelmed.
And you have to consider not only taste and whether your cholesterol needs lowering but how much things cost. Where did they come from? What is the carbon footprint of each and every purchase?
Hell. I have no idea.
All I know is that the next meal I cook here in Lloyd is going to consist of squash and potatoes and salad from the garden and grouper from the freezer. Do you know how happy that makes me? I would rather spend three hours working in the garden in the sweltering heat than go to town and face the yogurt selection.
I ended up buying the brand of face cream that if I got two products, I could get a five dollar Target gift card. Then I went over to the Starbucks and got a two-dollar cup of coffee. And there you go. I seriously doubt this face stuff is going to do anything to stave off the ravages of what I do to my face. And part of me really is disdainful of myself for spending good money on false hope. Hope that I don't even really care about. I am who I am. I look like what I look like. I've beat my body up by giving birth and raising kids and digging ditches and pulling weeds and mopping floors and hauling things that are too heavy my entire life. So what?
Maybe I am a Me Maw or a Maw Maw. Maybe I am a Big Mama. Or maybe I'm a Ya-Ya. I have a ya-ya. Or a woo-woo. I know I can get my ya-yas out a lot easier than I used to be able to. A walk in this heat and an hour in the garden and I don't have a ya-ya left in me. It used to take a lot of liquor and hours of dancing to achieve that.

Well. I'm going to be a grandmother soon and I will be renamed. One day my first grandchild, the grandchild whose heart I made a song to yesterday will come running towards me, reach up her arms (or his) and say....
What?
I don't know.
A mystery for now.
But whatever that child says, that's who I'll be.
And I will grab that child up and hold him (or her) and that child will love me, wrinkles, sags, aching hips, and non-regenerated skin and all.
"Can we go feed the chickens?" that child will say.
"Certainly," I will answer.
And out we'll go to the chicken coop that Big Daddy or Grampa or Paw-Paw has built and we'll fling corn to the chickens and we'll laugh together.
We'll do the simplest things, me and that child. I imagine we'll even go to town sometimes and go buy groceries or even go to the mall and see Santa. But that's not what I'm looking forward to. I'm looking forward to being right here, showing that child how to plant beans and how to cook them. How to feed chickens and how to tell pines from oaks. How to listen to frogs and how to watch lizards catch flies.
Real stuff. And that child will probably ask me what those ugly brown spots on my skin are and how I got them.
"Those are my age spots," I will tell the child. "And I got them from life."
"Will I get them too?" the child will ask, big-eyed.
"If you're lucky," I will say. "You sure will."