Once upon a time there was a young girl from the Kentucky hills who loved music. She dreamed of being a singer, but when she opened her mouth to sing her hound dogs howled and her younger brother covered his ears and hid under the bed. She decided she wanted to learn to play an instrument. Her aunt tried to teach her to play the piano, but she refused to practice. Her mother took her to guitar lessons, but she refused to practice (the gal was slightly lazy and distracted by teenage boys). Her only talent, when it came to music, was listening. Luckily for her she enjoyed a wide array of music; everything from Willie Nelson to Elvis appealed to her.

At the same time that this girl was discovering her lack of musical talent, some of her high school friends were putting together a band. First they were known as The Itchy Brothers and later they evolved into a group known as The Kentucky Headhunters. In 1989 they had a multi-platinum Grammy award winning album called Picking on Nashville. And 20 years later they are still going strong!

Saturday night that Kentucky gal took her hubby, all of her kids and her granddaughter to hear the Heads play.

I think it’s safe to say that this nana STILL loves to rock and roll!

Rock on Heads! Rock on!

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My web designer and I have been working on this site for awhile and I’ve managed to keep it totally secret from my family, which hasn’t been easy because they are really nosy people. Especially my seventeen year old twins who get on my computer and surf the net for hours looking at every truck with big wheels that promises to squirt black billows of pollution in the atmosphere. It’s not that they really care what I do when I’m not doing their laundry, cooking for them or sitting at one of their two thousand ballgames every season (which I thoroughly enjoy), it’s just that my email isn’t password protected and so if it pops up, they are going to read it. I’m okay with that. I have nothing to hide (my sons call it having a boring life). So even though Char (my web designer/friend/email buddy) and I have been discussing this for awhile, my inner circle had no clue.

Yesterday I made the decision to pull out the rusty trusty trumpet, blow the horn, and announce the birth of NanaHood.com  My husband was supportive. My daughter was enthusiastic. The twins said, “Cool. Can we have $24 to go play golf?” But it was son #2s comment that’s got me still simmering and working up to a boil.

“That’s nice,” he said. “Old people need something to do.”

Even though my frying pan was within arm’s reach I resisted the urge to bang it over his head; mainly because he’s 22 years old. A boy in a man’s body and even though he THINKS he knows EVERYTHING, he doesn’t.

I am not one of those women who freaks out about her age. I’m 53 and just happy as rooster in a hen house to be here. You can announce my age on the local call in radio show and have everyone pat me on the back because I’m as good as gold. You can stick 53 candles on a cake and sing to me in a restaurant (as long as it’s not the Mexican restaurant. They smash a pie in your face) Age is relative and really not important, but when you throw everyone over 40 into a pile and label them “old people who need something to do.” Then I have a problem.

Like I said, I’m still simmering.When I reach the boiling point I may say “You knucklehead. Follow me around for a day and see if I need something else to do!” But I probably won’t because when you are 22 and looking at life it seems like the other side of 40 is light years away.

It’s not of course. The years fly by faster than the scenery outside my van window. One day son #2 will realize that, but until then I’d better get busy. It’s Saturday. My granddaughter is here for a visit and she wants to play restaurant. Thank goodness because I was worried I wouldn’t have anything to do.

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I called my nana Grandma Layne, which my children never understood because her name was Nettie. My grandfather’s first name was Layne (His mother must have had a thing for names that began with L. His brothers were Lee, Lowell and Lawrence, but his sister’s name was Florence—go figure). I was the oldest of the grandchildren and at some point I must have decided that if my poppa was Grandpa Layne then Grandma would of course be Grandma Layne; seems logical to me.

Anyway, Grandma Layne had a rocking chair and over the course of her life time I’m guessing she logged at least one million miles in that chair. My grandparents were hard working country folk who rarely left the farm. A trip to town on Saturdays was about the extent of their travels. When I went to Grandma Layne’s little white farm house (and I did as often as I could) I didn’t want to go anywhere else. Her house was heaven. Besides, she took me places in her rocking chair.

We visited Mr. McGregor’s garden with Peter Rabbit and his siblings, Flopsy, Mopsy and Cotton-Tail (If I were a rabbit I’d probably be a Flopsy) We traveled to Spain and saw Ferdinand the bull and learned about his penchant for sitting under trees and smelling flowers (Maybe that’s where my desire for shade trees comes from!) And we picked blueberries with Sal. Even though I’d never seen or eaten a blueberry back then, I loved the story. Anything to do with food interested me then and still does. I probably was eating biscuits and jam while Grandma read to me because that was my favorite nana-treat at her house.

Grandma was from the “we grow it ourselves, pick it ourselves, can it and keep it generation.”  She made homemade jams, jelly and preserves and I’m telling ya girlfriend, she put Smuckers to shame! There was nothing better than coming in from school and getting one of her homemade biscuits, covering it in her hand-churned butter and then spooning on blackberry jam. My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Now that I’m a nana and I realize what good memories I associate with those treats I sort of kind of wish I had the time or energy to make homemade jams and preserves, but I’m from the “if you want something Nana will go to the store and buy it generation.”

I’m not the nana Grandma Layne was, or my mom for that matter, but in my own way I still rock. Tonight I’m taking the whole family (including my grandchild) to a rock concert. No, I’m not kidding. I’ll make pictures and tell ya about it tomorrow. Stay tuned.

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One of the nanas pictured in the header on my blog is my first cousin, Martha. Martha is not your average nana (if such a creature exists). Come to think of it, she wasn’t your average mother either. She has three grandchildren, two boys and one little girl. Two of them live close to her but the other one is several states a way. Now that daughter number three is getting married I’m guessing more grandchildren are on the horizon and I’m betting on Martha to have the energy to keep up with all of them, no matter how many there are or where they live. Why do I say that? I’ve already told you, she’s “not your average nana.”

Martha was an elementary school teacher for ??? years. Just listening to the activities she did in her classroom could make perky little Kelly Rippa tired (sorry Rippa fans, I like her but she is perky). Martha was into hands on stuff in her classroom before the educational gurus told teachers that kids learn better by actually doing something than by just being told HOW to do something.

Occasionally Martha’s enthusiasm and zeal for learning have taken her into uncharted (and very nasty) waters. She once took her class on a field trip to the water treatment plant, not realizing they would tour the facility where raw sewage was being removed from the water. Okay everybody, all at one time…..EWWWWW GROSS!!!!!!

To further illustrate what I mean for a moment imagine that Martha and I are taking our grandchildren together to the playground. It’s a hot summer day and there are no trees near the swing set, slides or jungle gym. Within five minutes I’ve found a tree to sit beneath while I sweat like a hog (can hogs sweat?) My hair is limp, my body limper (before you call the grammar police I know that’s not a word). Martha, on the other hand, is not sweating. All her makeup is still where it’s supposed to be on her face and she’s alternately pushing all three of her grandchildren in swings at the same time. She looks like Mary Poppins on steroids and I am insanely jealous. Of course I’m not insanely jealous enough to leave the shade of my tree, but I’m jealous.

Super Nana is alive and well. Her name is Martha.

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When I found out that my husband and I were going to have our first child 28 years ago, I started keeping a journal. I wrote to my unborn child and dreamed the somewhat naïve and inexperienced dreams of a young mother. I thought for sure the baby was a girl (it was a boy). I thought that labor and delivery were the hard part of parenting (wrong again). I thought I couldn’t possibly love another child as much as I loved the first (definitely not true).

I was wrong about parenting so many times that I couldn’t even list all my misconceptions, but I got one thing right. There is no love like the love of a parent for a child, and while I made more than my share of mistakes, I made them out of ignorance, not because I wasn’t trying.

Now I am into the second phase of the motherhood journey. My granddaughter will be 4 years old this month and I’m doing my best to get this “nanna” thing right. I spoil her, love her, and hand her over to her father when she gets fussy. I make sure I have plenty of corn as well as mac and cheese when she comes to visit. We watch Hannah Montana, Disney movies, and sometimes we sing karaoke into a pink and purple microphone. (I can also sing the SpongeBob SquarePants song if you’d like to hear it).

I learned about being a mom from my mother and about being a nanna from my grandmother. If ever there was a perfect nanna, it was Grandma Layne. My twin boys were recalling just this week how they loved Jell-O when they were little (they called it jelly). Grandma Layne had tiny, little white bowls and she made them their favorite treat every day. She lived just down the hill from us, so I’d watch as my boys ran over the hill to her house to gobble up a bowl of Jell-O.

All Grandma Layne’s grandchildren and great-grandchildren have special memories of her. I hope someday my granddaughter has wonderful memories of the moments we share. I already do.

Being a nanna is a wonderful thing!

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This website is a work in progress – coming soon!

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