Strange Machines

My 100 year old grandmother, fiesty as a whip in her day, succumbed to organ failure from advanced pancreatic cancer, and passed away peacefully on Friday with her family around her.

Just one week ago she was lucid enough to recognise and smile at me but last Wednesday she was out of it, dazed from the morphine administered to ease her pain.

She was on oxygen when we went to say our farewells and took her last breath only after my sister and her family arrived, as if she was waiting for all of us to gather to send her off.

She was a titan in her time and we all admired her for her strength, her love, and her steely will to survive. Rest in peace, Mama. It was one helluva ride.

My Grandma has been diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. I hope she will feel the love and comfort we bring to her in her final days. She’s lived 99 years. I hope she will see 100.

Me: Are you glad to have Kitten in your life?

Wolf nods.

Me: Why?

Wolf: Because she’s so cute!

I must confess first. I was a TV addict.

After work, dear hubby and I would cuddle up in from of ole Faithful and watch our fave programs like CSI and munch on junk food. I could not live without TV.

Fast forward to year 2006 and Wolf was born. I read that the cost of watching TV was the opportunity lost spent on other more creative and productive things like reading, playing, or talking to Mom. According to many peer-reviewed studies, kids who watch TV have less vocabulary than kids who don’t, and the latter are more sociable.

I was sold. I swore my kid would never watch television. Ever. And I had to set an example. The TV became a glorified plant holder and took up half the space of the living room. Surprisingly I found life without TV pretty alright, since we were busy with the kids and really have no more free time. I do fantasize about the days when the kids are off to college and I can finally turn on my 35″ TV and watch all the dramas I missed in the last 18 years.

As for the old clunker, we gave it away to an elderly neighbour who was thrilled to have it. She was retired and watching TV every day on a tiny 20″. We figured that by the time the kids were old enough to watch TV, our CRT would have decomposed and we could get a brand new plasma t.v. for $200. And let’s make it a Samsung plasma tv or a Panasonic plasma tv.

And is there credence to all the reports about increased sociability and higher vocabulary? According to people who have met Wolf, he is very sociable with people of all ages and speaks non-stop like a Duracell bunny.

I don’t know about other children, but after 3.5 years of no TV, Wolf isn’t fond of watching it and he would prefer to play or read than watch TV. He went through a brief phase of TV phobia, probably from something he saw on it at Grandma’s house. But he sat through The Lion King (his cousin was watching at Grandma’s) just last week (which from a child’s eyes, seems awfully negative about brotherhood and rather pro-revenge and violence). His first actually.

According to the scientifically-based Nurtureshock, kids pick up extracts from a story, so even if a story with conflict that gets resolved at the end, the child may simply pick up the conflict and not the resolution.

We can’t shelter our children from the media – heck I want my TV back one day – but the first few years are crucial to protect them from the effects of the media, much of which we as adults are already immune to or unaffected by. But children are vulnerable and judging from our viewing of the “children’s movie” The Lion King, I won’t be letting Wolf watch any more till he is much older.

It is that developmental time again when babies start learning to crawl, even when they wake up at night, a little perplexed why they are on all fours, and that’s when they call for Mom.

In Kitten’s case it started about a month ago, I’d find her looking rather confused, on all fours, so cute in her baby night dress, just wavering. I’d take her in my arms and nurse her back to sleep.

Tonight, she even cried when she felt me move an inch away. But soon she was asleep again, till the next 4 legged wake up call, till morning when she discovers cute animals on her bumper walls and looks upon them in intrigue and amazement.