Blog Post #50A: Fifty for 50

As I am writing and about to publish the 50th blog post for FinallyNana.com, it has been about seven years since I began writing my blog, describing all the excitement of finally becoming a Nana and my many international experiences with our grandson Cooper from his gestation, birth in Australia, and through his infancy, toddlerhood, and childhood. So I have decided that 50 is a significant number to conclude my Finally Nana blog posting.

Cooper turned nine years old in 2025, while his mother, my daughter who made me a Nana, turned 50 years young. So I have decided to dedicate my 50th and final blog post to Stacy, describing 50 poignant details and highlights about her early life, of course seen through my eyes, which pre-dated her becoming a mother, and presented predominantly in chronological order.

Before I get started, however, I want to tell you about a more recent Nana/grandson interaction when Cooper was 8 years old. In January 2025, Jesse and I visited our Fiji family during which time we returned to stay a few days with Cooper at the lovely Nanuku resort near their home. As the accommodations are strung out in a row from the main facilities, they are equipped with bicycles for optional internal resort transportation. Having not been bike riding much lately, I cautiously hopped on one, noticed the seat was somewhat high for me, but rode it carefully to the main building. However, when I slowed down to stop and get off, I awkwardly disembarked from my elevated perch, causing me and the bike to tip over onto a hard gravelly road. Fortunately, neither the bike nor me broke, but the impact created a lot of scrapes and bruising all along my right side, hitting my shoulder, elbow, wrist, thigh, knee, calf, ankle, etc., and creating a strong sense of  embarrassment. Even so, when Cooper and I left our bungalow the next day, and he jumped on his bike, I started pull out a bike as well, to get back on the proverbial horse that threw me. But Cooper looked over at me and said with much concern in his youthful voice, “Nana, I don’t think you should ride the bike.” I judiciously took his advice.

Now to the Stacy memories:

#1. Infant Stacy had blue eyes from birth and blond hair when it eventually grew in, a surprising appearance to both her father of dark brown hair and eyes, and her naturally brunette mother with hazel eyes. Although her Granny, my mother, had beautiful blue eyes. Given Stacy’s coloring, Dad Jesse jokingly voiced concern about her really being our biological child. There was no doubt in Mom Beryl’s mind.

# 2.  As previously described in blog post #42, in her infancy Stacy became attached to her yellow baby blanket, often stroking it on her face as she sucked her thumb. Her blanket became known as Noonie, because she would carry/drag it around the house chanting something like “noon-a-noonie, noonie, noon,” which was a refrain from a song on her favorite television show Sesame Street.

# 3. And speaking of Sesame Street … Stacy was a very adorable and smart toddler but she did have her memorable tantrums. She grew up in the 1970’s when television shows were only broadcast at specific times, pre-dating VCR’s, with no ability to be recorded, saved, shown at will at a later time or day, etc. Stacy adored Sesame Street but became almost apoplectic if we missed turning on the television in time for the opening song.

# 4.  Noonie was the culprit in a bloody Stacy accident, or maybe it was Mom Beryl’s fault. Dr. Jesse had warned me about the potential child hazard of the beveled glass-topped cocktail table in the living room of our small Wellesley house, but I liked its attractive design with a wooden, snail-like base and kept the table anyway. During Thanksgiving weekend three year-old Stacy wandered into the living room holding Noonie. She tripped on her blanket, falling onto the edge of the glass top, cutting herself just above the chin. Worrying about scarring on our pretty young daughter, we took her to Mass General Hospital where Jesse was an orthopaedic resident, to be seen by his plastic surgeon colleague Dr. Jim May. Jim agreed to stitch her up but was busy until later in the day. To kill time, we spent a couple hours at the New England Aquarium. Hmmm … might that be when Stacy’s love of marine biology began?

# 5.  Out of her many stuffed animals, Stacy favored her little yellow dog the best. As he became very loved like the famed storybook Velveteen rabbit, the little dog “aged” so we called him Old Yeller.

# 6. With her love of Old Yeller, Stacy accumulated several other stuffed yellow dogs in her “kennel.” Fortunately, one of the dogs was almost a twin of Old Yeller, which was particularly advantageous when original Old Yeller was lost. That was under dad Jesse’s watch when he brought Stacy with Old Yeller to visit me at the hospital when baby Benjy was born. Old Yeller mysteriously disappeared between the parking lot and Boston Women’s Hospital, never to be relocated. Thank goodness Old Yeller’s twin was waiting at home to fill in as favorite dog.

# 7.  Getting back to the tantrums, Stacy would also have a fit if her banana broke as it was being peeled or when she was eating it, which would begin with a silent scream evolving into a heaving crescendo of crying.

Also when Mom would spell out to Dad about pre-school age, tantrum-prone Stacy, “She’s just T-I-R-E-D,” Stacy would scream, “I’m not TIRED!

So raising our curly-headed child, I was often reminded of the nursery rhyme, “There was a little girl, who had a little curl, right in the middle of her forehead. and when she was good, she was very, very good, but when she was bad, she was horrid!”

# 8. Busy young Stacy often yelled to me about our Irish Setter in our Wellesley house, “Brandy’s bothering me!” She was more often annoyed by our nosy dog than loving toward her. When we moved away for her dad’s hand surgery fellowships, our house renter agreed to keep Brandy as well. Truly absence made the heart grow fonder, as 4 to 5 year-old Stacy became totally enamored of her wonderful dog Brandy, who was often the focal point of her drawings. But our renter, who had grown to love Brandy, asked to keep her even upon our return. As a busy working mom with an even busier surgeon-in-training husband, with little extra time for a pet dog, I agreed to his request. I had to diplomatically explain my decision, telling Stacy that our recently divorced, probably lonely renter, was more in need of Brandy than our family, and perhaps another dog would be in our future.

# 9. While we were all in Switzerland for one of Jesse’s fellowships, as previously described in blog post #41, we had a near-disaster with four year-old Stacy’s “Old Yeller” dog. Renamed “Vieille Jaune” by Cousin Claudia, the peripatetic yellow dog disappeared in a Coop market parking lot in Geneva, but fortunately Geneva-residing Claudia was able to explain “en francais” the problem to Coop personnel who located the beloved “vieille jaune” doggy.

Curiously, in recently cleaning out our Weston house to move, I came across a charmingly written, well- illustrated story Stacy created for her sixth grade English class about Old Yeller, called “Lost in the Co-op.” Wrote Stacy, “Old Yeller knew he was coming to the Co-op that day, but he did not know the unlucky fate that awaited him”

#  10.   When we went to Davos for a week as part of Jesse’s Swiss fellowship, I signed Stacy up for her first ski lessons. In the Swiss Alps in 1980, kids ski class was a lot more rigorous than today’s magic carpet ski training. After a lesson, I asked Stacy how the class went. She replied somewhat sadly, “The instructor only tells me what to do, not the other kids.” I thought about that and realized, as I told Stacy, “You’re right, the instructor only told you what to do in English. But he probably told the other kids in Swiss German, French, German or Italian.”

# 11. When we lived in Louisville, Kentucky for one year when Stacy was a kindergartner, she quickly developed a southern accent. She was “faave” (5) years old, and could jump off the “ haah daave” (high dive) at the swimming pool of our apartment complex.

# 12. Stacy was generally a model student from early on. But at a parent/teacher conference her first grade teacher only had one concern, “Stacy is always so studious. Does she have any friends?” My reply, “Of course she does, and she certainly enjoys playing with them after school. But when in school, Stacy just takes her work very seriously.”

# 13. Young Stacy was a very sweet and loving older sister to her younger brother Benjy, who requested to be Ben when he entered kindergarten, 2 & 1/2 years younger than and 3 grades behind her.

#14. One weekend in the spring of Stacy’s first grade year, she tried out her friend’s two-wheel bicycle. Our road was on a hill on which Stacy lost control, slid down our neighbor’s downhill driveway, and collided into their garage. She was pretty banged up with lots of scrapes. When she came home from school on Monday, I asked, “Did your teacher say anything?” Stacy replied, “Yes, she asked if I fell off a bike.” Not even, what happened? Obviously, her experienced elementary teacher was pretty familiar with the source of springtime bruises in first graders.

#15. Young Stacy loved to do many extracurricular sports and activities, such as gymnastics, ice skating, and Brownies/Girl Scouts. When our neighbors joined a local swim team, Stacy wanted to do that too. It was one of the few times I denied her request which made Stacy very upset. But as a working mom with two children, and a husband who was usually busy 24/7, I could not imagine fitting another activity into our already busy family life.

#16. One time when I was watching Stacy’s gymnastics, another mother with a younger daughter in class, that I knew from my son’s nursery school, approached me. “Is that your daughter?” she asked, indicating Stacy. When I said yes, she observed, “She’s so pretty,” paused, and then added,  “But she doesn’t look at all like you.” She did not appear to recognize the implication of her two successive comments.

#17. I chose the name Stacy for our daughter because a friend of my mother had a young daughter named Stacy and I liked the name. Also I did not want to choose a very unusual name as Beryl has been difficult to live with. Stacy sounded pretty and recognizable. So I was surprised to find out that Stacy was teased for her name, the kids calling her Spacey Jupiter! That never would have occurred to me.

When I chose the name Stacy, I also chose to spell the name S-T-A-C-Y. I did not see any point of adding unnecessary letters. But I had no idea how frequently others throughout her whole life would choose to spell her name with an E between the C and Y. To make matters worse, one of Stacy’s first created email addresses was spaceyjup@yahoo.com (no longer in use).

#18. One time when I took Stacy’s brother Ben, about 5 years old at the time, to get his hair cut with his usual stylist, Kathy called me to her station. She quietly told me, “I won’t be able to cut Ben’s hair, because he has lice,” and she proceeded to show me the tiny white nits on his dark brown hair. I was mortified but she assured me that lice was unfortunately quite common in schools these days, even in our pleasant suburb. To make matters worse, we had just been away with our kids during the past weekend in November and they had stayed in the same hotel bed, so eight year-old Stacy was likely lice-infested too. The popular over-the-counter product was Rid, with instructions about shampooing their heads and providing a narrow-toothed comb to tease the lice nits, the clinging egg sacks that looked like tiny rice kernels, out of their wet hair. I also had to wash all the bedding and vacuum couch cushions. Locating and removing all the nits in Stacy’s long wavy blond hair was much more challenging than combing them out of Ben’s short dark hair. The lice have a three-week life cycle, and upsettingly Stacy’s head started itching 3 weeks later. Just miss one nit and lice emerge and populate. So we had to “rinse and repeat” and try as hard as possible to locate every nit. Despite trying to be as thorough as possible, I could not believe that Stacy’s head would start itching every three weeks. More RID, more sheet washing, more cushion vacuuming. I was so frustrated but an understanding enough mom that I did not threaten to cut Stacy’s lovely long hair. I recall almost freaking out when I had an itch on my eye when driving, checking the car rear view mirror for lice on my eyelash. As it turned out, Ben never had a repeat case. Jesse and I never got lice.

But this went on all winter into the spring! In April we were all in Orlando, Florida, and guess who’s head starting itching again. More importantly, after Orlando we were heading to stay with my parents in Boca Raton. I said to Jesse, “ I absolutely cannot bring Stacy to my parents’ house with a head full of lice. Just go to CVS and write a prescription for Quell,” the high-test, lice eradicator. It might have toxic side-effects but as I told Jesse, “Our daughter is very smart, she’ll be fine even if we kill a few brain cells.” And finally, no more lice! And we did not appear to compromise our daughter’s mental functioning.

#19. The extracurricular activity that Stacy became most involved in since 6 years old was figure skating, the skating rink being located in Wellesley, convenient to where we lived. We loved going to the year-end performances, complete with costumes coordinated to the music. But when Stacy was young she would often need assistance tying her ice skates. To my chagrin, I was frequently admonished, “They’re not tight enough, tie them again!”

As Stacy’s skating ability improved, she was recommended to change from group to private lessons, about middle school age. We were glad to see her progress but surprised at the higher cost of private lessons, which also came with the need for higher quality ice skates.  Who knew that figure skates came in two parts, boots and blades (like skis and bindings).  The new skates were intentionally stiff so they had to be broken in by wearing them at home. Stacy’s first pair of quality ice skates, purchased in the mid-1980’s, cost $500, definitely sticker shock. And the skates did not last forever, as her feet grew and the boots lost stiffness. Each time Stacy needed new skates, I always asked her, “Are you sure you still love doing this?” And the answer was always an emphatic, “Yes!”

#20. Meanwhile, our family began skiing in the 1980’s when Jesse started lecturing at orthopaedic and hand surgery meetings in ski areas. Shortly after Jesse and I began learning to ski, we took the kids on their first ski trip at Loon Mountain, New Hampshire, in 1983, when Stacy was 7 years old, her first time back on skis since the few Davos lessons when she was four. Despite the poor January conditions, Stacy caught on fast, and continued to improve as we skied often in New England and at meetings out west.

#21. When Stacy was almost 10 years old, a friend of hers had pet mice and would occasionally bring one to school in her pocket. Stacy thought they were cute and and only wanted pet mice for her 10th birthday present. Who knew mice were pets? I had only thought of them as research animals or food for other pets? But we went to the pet store to look into  this and Stacy came home with 3 female mice, which she named Snowy, Coffee, and Pinto, which aligned with their coloring. And of course, it was very important to get all the same sex to avoid procreation. We also had to buy a clear tank, shredded wood chips for bedding, and mouse food. The tank got pretty smelly after a few weeks and had to be cleaned out and relined with fresh wood chips, a job Stacy and I initially did together. By the time Stacy was 12 years old, only Pinto was left, as the other 2 had died of natural causes. I was looking forward to no mice and no more bedding changes. However, when I was accompanying Stacy’s dad on a business trip, Stacy, without consulting me, convinced their kid sitter to take her to the pet store to buy two more supposedly female mice, who Stacy named Poco and Sandy. Not exactly the welcome home committee I was expecting. Even more surprising a few weeks later was the mewling litter of 5 red-skinned hairless mouse pups. That made the tank get smellier even sooner. Eventually, after several births overflowing the tank with mice, I made Stacy get rid of all of them. Even she was sick of the smell of a tank on mice overload.

# 22. When we went to 6th grade parents night, in one class posted on the wall was a list of answered questions for each student. The last question was, “Tell us something that is different about you than your classmates.” Eleven year-old Stacy from Weston, Massachusetts, wrote, “I’ve traveled to more places than anyone I know.” In fact, those included at her young age, in the United States to all the New England states, New York,  Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., Georgia, Florida, Illinois, Colorado, [see photos to date trips] Idaho ?, Utah? New Mexico, Arizona, and California. And internationally, Stacy had been to Mexico, the Bahamas, Switzerland and France.

#23. When Stacy was 11 years old, we took a family summer trip out west which began with a small group hand surgery meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where the kids got some experience riding horses.  The trip also included a visit to the Grand Canyon where I had booked well in advance an overnight mule ride to Phantom Ranch at the bottom of the canyon and back up the next day. There was a height requirement and Ben was getting close but a bit short so we bought him some elevating cowboy boots. But that did not turn out to be our biggest concern when Stacy woke up somewhat sick the morning of the mule ride. Due to cold symptoms, I gave her an antihistamine, which was not such a well thought-out idea, having forgotten they could also cause drowsiness. Once we were on the mules, with their rhythmic rocking gait, I was seriously concerned that Stacy might doze and fall off her mule as we descended into the canyon. Riding behind her, I kept singing songs in my less-than mellifluous voice, to keep her awake. She did not appreciate my silly songbook. But at least she did not fall off  her mule.

#24. When Stacy was about 12 years old, she asked to paint a mural on her bedroom wall. Having already seen what a talented artist she was becoming, I agreed and she painted a delightful rainforest scene, which remained on her wall until we sold that house in 1997.

#25. For Stacy’s bat mitzvah at the traditional age of 13, I was very excited to invite and celebrate with local friends and visiting out-of-town relatives. Stacy excelled at the Saturday morning service at our temple, where I welcomed everyone with teary-eyed joy, and Jesse gave an excellent speech which referenced Cindy Lauper’s song True Colors (we had met her briefly at the Enchantment Resort in Sedona the prior summer, where my brother encouraged reluctant Lauper to take a photo with Stacy). We continued the celebration with a dinner dance at our temple that evening. That meant we needed two outfits, a great shoppertunity. When Stacy picked out a strapless evening dress, I was concerned that it was too risqué for her age and wondered what would hold it up. But she looked adorable and all went well.

Considering that this Stacy tribute post is becoming fairly long while I have only written 25 reminiscences, I am going to break here and label this post #50A. I am hoping you won’t have to wait so long for the conclusion in Post #50B.

So again, please stay tuned for the next blog post with more of my generally chronological reminiscences from Stacy’s youth and pre-maternal life, which hopefully will not be so long to wait for.