A Thin Line Between Love and Hate

Friends. Everyone needs them, and they can add so much to a person's life...support, encouragement, love, fun and a shoulder to cry on. Friends can do so much with so little; just by saying "I'm here for you". They can cheer us on when we feel like giving up and they can pull us up when the stuff of life drags us down. We trust them with our spare keys, our garage openers, our children, our secrets and our home security codes.

But sadly, there is too often a darker side to some friendships. Sometimes a person will cross over the line and breach that trust and that unity that we take for granted. Sometimes the reasons are obvious; then again they are obscured from view and from understanding.

The very best of friends have occasion over the course of time to disagree and actually argue about differences of opinions and other things. They have "falling outs" among them. The good news is that more often than not these disagreements are proceeded by a reconciliation with no residual hard feelings and life goes on.

Not so in the case of the "falling out" between two of the Grandmother friends. After all is said and done, one of them will decide not to forgive or forget and will harbor ill feelings that quickly escalate into something ugly and potentially dangerous. One will be the perpetrator and one will be the immediate victim; but the bond of sisterhood that previously existed between all four Grandmothers will have suffer serious fallout.

Will they choose up sides like children in a playground fight? Will this be the beginning of the end of the twenty-five year friendship? Will there much finger-pointing and accusations?

It's a "thin line between love and hate", and that's not only for love affairs gone wrong either. Many believe that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference. That indifference can become a deadly accessory when used as an insulator for a cold and uncaring heart.

Mother to Grandmother...And Still a Woman

What every mother enjoys as she raises her family is the fact that she is needed. Needed and valued and family life just cannot function in it's fullest fullness without Mother. We start off involved in our children's lives with the unmatched joys of infancy; diaper changes, bottle washing, sleepless nights, you know the whole drill. These life events are permanently etched in every part of our brain, and they make up cherished memories and the memories multiply as each child reaches a milestone in their life. Before we know it, we were standing at the bus stop sending them off to elementary school and the next day we are in the audience at their high school graduation. Fast forward to college years, marriages, and births of the grandchildren and viola! you get to do it all over again. Here is the difference this time around...you are usually not the one in charge and your role is to mentor (parents first; remember the new parents who used to be your very own little kid?) and later on in life to the second generation child.

Now I know that the "so-called traditional role" of Grandmother has morphed into full-time substitute Mother in some families where Grandma is the only Mother some children have ever known. That is nothing new. And one major reason why we should not define "traditional" slots for us to fit in. The real grandmother role has been up front and center for ages. Some of us live in, some of us have the grands as members of our own household or we commute to babysit. Either way the scenarios change depending on the family dynamic and we provide whatever they need from us. That's what we are all about.

But, there is a flip side. Aside from being loving and nurtuing to the grandchildren and providing intricate support systems and functioning as cheerleaders for our own sons and daughters guess what? We exist as a separate entity. We are intelligent, intellectual, sensual, interesting, and independent of our families. We can balance our checkbooks, change the air filters in our homes, engage in enlightening conversation and hold our own in a political debate. In other words we are REAL. Romance, intrigue and love exists in our lives. These are some of the topics I will be discussing in my posts. Follow me and let's see what this is all about.