Okay, I didn't post this because in ANY SHAPE OR FORM do I think I'm called upon to babysit my grandchildren too much - if anything, I don't get to do it often enough. But I LOVED the universal "conundrum" we ALL have as mothers and grandmothers with leaving our children with others. "For Better or For Worse" has been one of my favorite (and steady) comic strips throughout it's entire run. Lynne Johnston has allowed her characters to AGE, something no one else has done. My Jennifer and her Michael are about the same age. My Tim and her Elizabeth are close in age. Okay, my Chris and her April are about 10 year apart but still, it's a third child, right?
Elly was pregnant when I was pregnant. She had toddlers when I had toddlers, Michael was getting married around the time Jen was getting married. I've always felt that she was my dear friend whom I visited with each day. And now Elly and John are grandparents. Mike and I are grandparents. It's a little one-sided I guess since I'm always reading about HER (albeit fictional) life and family (the first "blog"?) but can't tell her about mine. But the simple truth of the matter is, her (Lynne Johnston's) observations about human nature, motherhood, child rearing and sibling rivalry have always resonated with me in a day BEFORE blogs and cheap phone calls, before we moved back to the USA again. My mom would send us the anthologies every year for Christmas. Mike and I would literally fight over who got to read it first knowing FULL well whoever read it first was going to end up reading most of it out loud to the other - it was THAT good for us!
Whenever Lynne decides to "hang up" her pens and let the strip end, I will be one mournful soul who will have to re-read the anthologies to get my "daily dose". If you've never read her, you can get it online here. And you can read archived strips as well.
Enjoy...and relate!
2 comments:
I love For Better or Worse!
I'm blessed to have great in laws who love to babysit. Last week we had hired a babysitter because we felt like Colin's parents had been watching the kids A LOT lately. Cason loves sitters, because they're cute girls of the teenage variety (his favorite drives a Hummer and she takes him to Chick fil A while playing "Cars" that he watches on the tv screen in the headrest of the seat in front of him...so much cooler than his mere mortals of parents can do). Anyway, when they found we had hired someone, they were upset because THEY want to babysit all the time.
Great stuff ~ personally, I miss "Calvin & Hobbes"...
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