the couple across the street have owned their home since it was built in 1951. their last name is rondunski, he’s polish, she’s irish. when they courted and finally got married his family was bitter and never acknowledged her or accepted her as part of their family.  she wasn’t polish. she didn’t mind. in fact, she never liked his mother anyway. although looking back on it now, maybe she could have made a better effort to please them or show them who she really was. but too late now, they’re long gone and she and her husband are still going strong. they play solitaire every night on card tables in the living room to keep their minds sharp. you really have to keep your mind sharp when your in your 80′s, you know. he mows the lawn once a week and she picks up the sticks before hand to make sure he doesn’t break the mower. it takes him 4 hours to push-mow  1/3 of an acre (and takes about 2 hours to shovel his 20′ driveway in the winter) but he’s a stubborn old bird and won’t let anyone help him. doctor even says he really should take it easy but he’s a prideful pollock and won’t have it any other way. they have one daughter who lives nearby and frequently stops by to visit. mrs. rondunski always wanted four but the world works in mysterious ways and never allowed her to have another successful pregnancy. it still makes her sad. and it makes her even more sad that her only daughter only has one son and doesn’t want anymore children. pattern of ’onlys’, she calls it.

we had lived in our house for a few months before we met the rondunskis. in fact, justn’s never formally met them and i haven’t formally met the mr. just waved from the lawn or passing in a car. mrs. rondunski keeps to herself but has opened up to me a few times (obviously enough for me to be able to write a fairly decent paragraph about her life). she is brutally blunt, has a wicked pissa mass accent and makes fun of her husband regularly. she’s a good shit. the first thing she ever said to me, just months after we purchased our first overwhelmingly fixer upper of a home, was how much the previous (and first) owners paid for it. twelve grand in 1952. sweet. think i’ll go cry myself to sleep now…

yesterday jackson and i were headed out for a walk to the elementary school to play on the play scape (well, not really play so much as stalk the other kids and stare at them until they get weirded out and run to their mommys). mrs. rondunski was in her yard, go figure with a bundle of freshly picked sticks in hand. i said hello and walked over to greet her on the edge of her lawn.  we talked for a while about this and that (refer to paragraph #1) mainly reminiscing about the early days of parenting her daughter. after we parted ways and jackson and i continued on our walk i kept thinking about our conversation and what a funny character mrs. rondunski is and decided, as you can see, that she and our encounter was totally blog worthy.

mrs. rondunski’s husband worked in boston and traveled a lot so he was rarely home. hmm, check. she was left with much of the child rearing  responsibilities the first several years. ironic…check. those first years were some of the best of her life. um, ok, check. her daughter was great company and she enjoyed every last waking minute of caring for her, mothering her and householding (ok, my word not her’s). how lucky i was to have a beautiful son and to have another one just weeks away. check, check. and it struck me that if i was having that same conversation with  a woman my age, or even a couple of decades older, the focus would have been more on how hard it was going to be to raise two kids 16 months apart with a husband who was gone a lot. had mrs. rondunski just forgotten how freakin hard it was? after 25 years does your brain sift through the heartache, stress and hardship only to leave the golden nugget of happiness? or maybe she had dealt with so much serious hardship like the great depression and both world wars that to her not seeing her husband for a few days was trivial. or maybe it’s generational; it was the 1950′s and ’60′s and women just didn’t talk about their problems, pretended everything was peachy keen and lived in fog of cigarette smoke and martinis? i don’t think i’ll ever ask mrs. rondunski which of those options pertained to her…maybe none of them do. and likewise i’ll never voice how my thoughts may differ slightly; just nod my head, smile and let her swoon over my beautiful son and my bulging belly. if it’s good for her, it’s good for me. 

i guess our conversation yesterday just brought up a lot of different thoughts, each probably worthy of their own blog. obviously, women of my generation are much more free to voice our thoughts, opinions and questions. we write about them and send them out into cyberspace for the entire world to read, if they so choose. part of me envy’s mrs. rondunski and how simple things seemed to be for her and how easily satisfied she was and continues to be. i’m willing to bet that she had a hard core group of friends (who were most likely also  in a cigarette and martini  induced fog) who banded together and became family.  i’m also wiling to bet that those years truly were the best of her life.  i’m sure i’ll have many more enlightening talks with this super cool lady and she may even become a  regular blog character (think i should tell her?).

bottom line is, among lots of other things. she reminded me at the end of the day (or the decade) the things that you carry forward are the ones that made you smile, pulled at your heart and brought you joy. the sleepless nights of fever, teething and nightmares fade into a distant barely-there memory. so instead of focusing on those things worthy of fading away, put all your attention on the bright spots, the ones that you’ll remember and share when you’re 82 and picking up sticks in your front yard. thanks mrs. rondunski for shedding some light on the important things in life. and in case you happen to stumble upon to the moon and back, my husband will gladly mow your lawn or shovel your driveway (when he’s here, of course). he isn’t polish, but he’s a really good shit, too.