Charlyn Slade and Renee Slade
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- Charlyn Slade
- Renee Slade
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00:01 Hi, I'm Renee Slade. I'm 36 years old. Today is Sunday, April 25th. We're in Oak Park, Illinois, and I am interviewing my mother-in-law Charles and Slade and she's going to introduce herself as well.
00:17 Hi Renee. I'm charland slide.
00:21 I am as of Friday 63 years old, which should be my mother not me and we are sitting here today and Sunday April 25th at Renee and Michael and Alana and baby exes house.
00:43 All right. So so I wanted to do the interviews to be able to record some of our family history. So I'm going to start by asking you about your parents who I know both of which I knew both of your parents. But of course Alana will never remember your mom and neither of our children. Well, I will have known your father and Alana was named after your dad and baby Elise cousin Elise is named after your mom. So if that's okay with you if we can start with that or we can we can skip to something else if you want to.
01:32 Why don't you talk about some of the memories that you had as them growing up in some of your family traditions? So, let's see. I think I can remember back as far as being maybe 5 and we lived in a little apartment on the southside of Chicago.
01:54 I'm right across the hall from my grandma and grandpa. My mother's mother and father who I used to call Bubby and zadie tell me their name Alice and Harold Hardesty and what I remember most about that was we are really like one big happy family and we both lived on the first floor us on one side of the hall and them on the other side of the hall and we used to leave the front doors open and we run back and forth whenever we felt like it but what I remember most is running a store and going Bobby Bobby. My mom is killing me and my grandmother then would give me whatever I wanted because I was the very first grandchild and I was very special that much they always made me feel and we are all very lucky because my grandparents were alive.
02:49 Really until my children were burned Bat Mitzvah age. So we are very lucky. So I remember living on the southside of Chicago and when I was 10 years old, we moved to Skokie. We had our own house. It was a townhouse.
03:06 And my grandparents thought we were moving to another country with so far away cuz probably it was like an hour's car ride, but we were only there a few years when my grandparents moved up to Spokeo also to an apartment.
03:23 Our family was always a very tight family. My father's parents died when I was very young. I think that my Grandpa died when I was two or three. Do you know their names? Also I do my grandpa was wiser shackman and my grandma was Pearl shiffman and Auntie Lori is named after Grandma Pearl her Hebrew name is passy for prom. So we are very close to my mother's family because we always lived very near them and they were a very traditional family. We celebrate it besides celebrating all the holidays with them both secular and Jewish holidays. We also always did shabbes with my grandmother and grandfather but me and Sadie and let the candles and my grandma always had a huge crowd at our house for Shabbos dinner. I still can't figure out how she did it because she cooked for everybody for house was always Immaculate you could eat off the floor. She cooked everything from scratch. No mix
04:23 After she had no dishwasher. She beat everything by hand and everything tasted just wonderful. Our best thing did two things that were wonderful. She made the best chocolate cake in the whole world, which I've tried to make many times but never comes out as high as her cuz I use the Mixmaster. I don't beat it by hand and she has to make something called the krait and I don't know what that means but was essentially sweet and sour cabbage with meeting at having meat and it was delicious and nobody ever made it after my grandma. Stop making my parents never made up, but we always had a lot of fun together did a lot of things when when I was a little girl. My grandmother used to take me downtown and train every Saturday commercials what used to be Marshall Fields and we would have lunch in the Walnut Room.
05:18 And walk around the toy department and she would always let me pick one thing and it was probably the 10th thing that I picked cuz everything was so expensive there. But my grandmother would have done anything for my brother Mark and I and was just so excited to have grandchildren around and spend the time with them. I think the most important thing my grandparents gave to me what I believe my parents escaped. My children was time and a spending a lot of time with them.
05:48 My father used to be off my father works three jobs when I was growing up cuz he was trying to save money for college.
05:57 And used to be off on Tuesdays. So every Tuesday after school during the school year and on Tuesdays in the summer it always plan a special adventure for my brother and I whether it was going to play Miniature Golf we still out there was a kitty land 9500 South and ways to add a kitty land and we would go right next door to a place for ice cream balls called rainbow and it was rainbow sherbet three scoops a different color sherbet. And that was really a very special treat to us. The only vacations we went on we were little kids where we used to rent a Shack on the beach in Benton Harbor, Michigan.
06:40 And we would go with other families. I can't even remember who we went with cuz I was really young at the time. But what I do remember is my father when we got up every morning. My father would have walked down to the Corner Bakery and he brought us back chocolate milk and cinnamon rolls. And that was a real highlight of spending, you know special time with with my dad and my mom was a stay-at-home. Mom. Just being there all the time. She is she was probably world's most wonderful cook wanted to make sure we ate everything was eat eat eat eat. If you didn't clean your plate you're in real trouble, which is probably why I look the way I look today cuz I'm so used to cleaning my plate, but she really tried very hard.
07:31 To be a wonderful mother to all of us and it you know, I think it was really hard for her when she moved away from my grandparents because she was so used to all that the support right across the hall if you want to go out to the grocery store, whatever they would watch us, but then we moved away it was a little bit harder but it was a lot of fun. You know, I haven't thought about those years for a very long time.
07:58 So you talked a little bit about about holidays with your family. I want you to tell me about Thanksgiving now is it is a holiday that wouldn't Mike and I were dating thing. He invited me to come to Thanksgiving at your house and he told me that Thanksgiving is a very important holiday to my mom and so as far as I know you've always done Thanksgiving but there must have been a time before you did it. So tell me about what things giving was like when you grow up and then how the tradition came to be that it was your holiday.
08:33 When I was growing up all the holidays were at my grandmother's house and my grandma Alice Bobby Ellis. She had a dining room with she only lived in apartment never get a house or dining room was enormous and my grandmother had two sisters and two brothers one of them who died early on but she had two sisters who were alive and a brother who was alive her one sister had no children my aunt Eva and my uncle jack her next sister my Aunt Anna had two children her brother Mannheim and had five children.
09:13 She had all of them at her house always for the holidays my grandfather.
09:23 He had one sister and three brothers and there were times when she had all those people and all their children in her house and people just ran around and Rihanna now around there was always a lot of food, but is children grew up and got married. Everybody couldn't be in the same house anymore cuz it wasn't big enough. So my grandmother always did the holidays when my grandparents moved from the south side to the north side. They moved into a very small apartment. It was a senior citizen apartment.
09:56 And my mother started doing the holidays then and my mother did Thanksgiving. So how old are you around that time?
10:06 Maybe 13 14 and my mother did all the holidays.
10:14 The Jewish holidays as well as Thanksgiving and Fourth of July and everything my mother always entertained.
10:20 Until my mother decided that it was time for Carroll my sister-in-law at Carroll and I to start taking some of the holidays.
10:29 So truthfully I said I have to take Yom Kippur cuz it's the easiest one. But Auntie Carol said enough. She was taking Yom Kippur. I was fine. Cuz Carol always did one night of passover and one night of Rosh Hashanah and I used to do Hanukkah before Laura shackman so good. So do Hanukkah and Thanksgiving. I don't know how it ended up that way. But once I started doing Thanksgiving, I love turkey. I loved having the leftovers and it seemed that you know, once the kids were older and start Dwyane Wade College. It was a time when everybody came home and was home together. Maybe that's why I really like the holidays so much cuz it was having everybody together and you know, that's
11:11 I love spending time with each of my children and grandchildren independently, but I love seeing the kids together. And what's important to me long-term. Is it all my kids have a relationship and that was it was really always important to my mother my brother and I fought like cats and dogs when we're a little kids and it's just so interesting to see how things turn around.
11:34 You're my brother and I fought to and then I'll brothers and sisters fight. All right, so I'm going a little farther back actually, right? I just finished interviewing your husband Barry and right at the end of his interview. He was telling me about just very briefly. He said you had a grandfather who was in a coma for six months. So tell us that story. I only know the story from my zaidi telling it to us Alice's husband Harold Harold.
12:11 Cuz my grandmother was still at Lori's Bat Mitzvah, but I know Michael would have only been 18 then he had me to tell he was 19 Wright 1820. Okay. Okay. So my grandfather at that point in time, I think he was driving a milk truck or a pop truck some kind of truck with bottles on it and he was in a car accident was how old was he?
12:40 Young my grandma said she had three little girls cuz my mother has two sisters. So they were young. They were newly married and he was driving a truck that had bottles on it. I think it was Sodapop not milk, but I could be wrong and he was in an accident and there was an accident he fell out of the truck and the battles fell on top of him and he hit his head and he was in a coma from I don't know if it was 6 months, but for many many months and they didn't know if he was going to be okay or not and then one day he woke up and was fine.
13:14 Death how they tell the story to normally just woke up and he was fine. He was fine. But you know, my grandpa had a very rough life. He had the only came here from the old country. Did Mary tell you that story to my grandfather came on a boat from Romania when they got they came to Houston, Texas and when they got to Texas and they all had to go through a health screening my grandfather had chickenpox.
13:46 So first shot his father had come to the United States earlier left his mother and all the children behind and then sent for them. So his mother was on the boat with all the children and my grandfather had chickenpox. They sent them all back by the time he got back. He was fine and I turned around and came back, but he his father going to make enough money to send for them. So they came to the United States in through Houston.
14:17 And he grew up in
14:20 I want to say like Kirksville, Missouri is where he met my grandmother.
14:26 And they were very young when they got married and my grandmother was just a beautiful woman at that time when she was even till the day she died, but she was really a beautiful young woman and they got married young and had children right away and she had three little girls when he was in this accident when he was after that when he was okay. He did something with Cars and auto parts and eventually
14:55 The job that I remember my grandfather and was he on his own new stand on the corner of 12th and Wabash. That's Wabash and Roosevelt Road, and it was a new stand right outside of a liquor store.
15:10 A need a terrible accident there as well a drunk driver crashed into the newsstand which came down on him. And that's when he really started getting debilitated. He had his leg was broken and I don't know many places and he was in a very long time and rehab and after that he always walked with a limp and always had a lot of pain in his leg. But you know, he worked hard his whole life is was outside in the cold weather end of this is Chicago and it gets cold in the winter. And he was always very generous with his money. He helped to bring my grandmother's one sister who was last in Europe to bring her and her family over and he was very generous with his brothers and their wives and always gave everybody whatever he had said, he was a very generous man and he was a very loving and caring man.
16:04 And after probably when he hit about 75, he developed diabetes and
16:13 He lost his leg to diabetes from an infection in his foot and just never came back after that. He didn't want to live. He just said he wasn't the whole person and didn't want to live and we die and I'll try to have a psychologist talk to him and everything, but he just lost his will to live then and when my grandfather died my grandmother said herself down and it with Aaron she was still living to and she probably live just a couple more years after that, but we are lucky cuz we had him around for a very long time.
16:44 So my grandfather died.
16:47 Sometime between Allison's Bat Mitzvah and Lori's Bat Mitzvah. So that would have been if Elsa was born in 76. So that would have been somewhere between 89 and 92. Am I you know, my grandmother died just after Lori's bat. Mitzvah.
17:11 Can you?
17:14 Can you talk about Barry was also telling me that there are relatives when they were still in Europe who hid in the water. Do you know anything? He said people would hide in the water from the soldiers who were coming?
17:35 From the Nazis and I'm not sure I don't know. I don't know. My grandfather was a wonderful Storyteller and I'm sorry we didn't record his stories but very specific for my grandpa with my grandfather for hours and talk about the stories and he has a much better memory than I do. So, I don't know about that. Okay, I'll have to get him to talk about that. So one of the things changing changing Focus.
18:01 You and I have that we share is that we're both medical professionals and it actually
18:11 I appreciate very much that you are working mother because I think it helps me and my relationship with Mike that he he grew up with a working mother and so he know he supports what I do. He supports that I work and that my work is important because I think a lot of men don't have an appreciation for that. So I wanted you to talk a little bit about how you decided to become a nurse and the process of becoming a nurse and how you went on in your career as a nurse cuz your career really stand from you know, being being a nurse and then becoming an administrator, so I wanted you to talk about that guy.
18:49 I decided to be a nurse as far back as I can. Remember when I was growing up women were generally teachers or they went to secretary school and they were secretaries. My father had two sisters who are nurses on my aunt Bertha and my Aunt Clara and when they used to talk about their work and I didn't see them very often cuz they lived in New York, but it was so interesting to me and I was always very interested in medicine and healing in I can remember once I was about 14 or 15 and I opened up the refrigerator.
19:28 And a bottle of coke fell out and in those days all the battles were glass broke. The piece of glass came up and cut my leg drive us down on my luck and you could see my bone. My mother started screaming at me. Clearly. Remember this my floor my floor and his father with me off to the emergency room. And I remember sitting up and watching them. So my leg up after they put novocaine and explaining to me what they were doing. And the nurse that was their held my hand and was very sweet and everything. I just as far back as I can. Remember. I wanted to be a nurse. My father said he would not allow me to go to nursing school unless I went to college because he had back one's college and he felt it was very important that I went to college and his sisters both told them that the future of nursing you have to have a college degree.
20:23 So I went to a 4-year University. Are you the first person in your family to go to college?
20:30 My mother had two years of a junior college, but my father did not say so you would have been the first to get a college degree. Correct? Right? So I went to school at the University of Illinois, which was a four-year Bachelor of Science in nursing program. And as I went to nursing school first, I thought I wanted to be an hour nurse and then I didn't like it at all because you really don't have to talk to the patients. You were just kind of the surgeons handmaiden. So I decided that wasn't for me and I fell in love with Pediatrics.
21:09 And I'm I the summer between my
21:17 Freshman and sophomore year in college. I worked at Skokie Valley Hospital as a nurse's aide and I got to work on the floor that had some children and my favorite time was always talking to the kids the summer between
21:34 My software engineer. I worked at University of Illinois, and I wanted to work in Pediatrics. So I was assigned to the Pediatric division, but the director of nursing there were seven different Peds units the director of nursing hired 14 students and she gave no one there a choice you two are going to the newborn Nursery you two are going to the premier Nursery you two are going to 14 East which was Pediatrics you two are going to 13 East which was kids 5 to whatever at 14 East was a newborn to 513 East was 5 to 13 and you are going to last and I got stuck I thought in the preemie Nursery, but I fell in love with it. You know, the tiny baby is in there is probably nothing as rewarding as having a really sick baby and sending a home to a family who really wants the child and loves the child. So I really liked it. I worked in that Nursery then during the school year the next 2 years all the Summers when I graduated I took a job there.
22:34 And I went on nights for 6 weeks.
22:37 Which was hard, but in those days, we only had one RM on the night shift and you know, unfortunately you learn by doing and I learned an awful lot. We had very sick little babies their unfortunately lot of them. They have parents who really never even came to see them but I work there from before I graduated I graduated in 69 I work there until 72 and in 1972, one of our graduating neonatal fellows was going to Lutheran General to set up a high-risk Nursery cuz they had and they'd always ship without their sick kids and he asked me if I would come with and higher in nursing staff and train the nurses and I went up to Lutheran General to talk to them and they had never hired a head nurse from outside of the hospital. They always promoted from within they didn't have anyone who had the expertise of caring for sick babies. So they hired me and Henry and I had remained Garden who was the neonatologist we had made an agreement.
23:38 Then if I got up there and ask her you're there weren't any sick babies there would be no hard feelings, but I went back to the universe today. But of course we had tons of sick babies and we started out in the barrel room with a newborn Nursery where we set up six incubators six beds and we got some space and we built a 16 bed unit. And that's really why I went back to work when I had Michael construction took longer than expected surprise surprise, and it wasn't done. So I wanted to come back and get everybody moved into the nursery and I was very lucky. I had a very very supportive husband and an equally support of War Boss who had also worked as her children were growing up and they were much older than mine. So that was very surprising.
24:24 So when you have to work still as the nurse manager Head Nurse of the preemie nursery and we built the 16 bed unit and then a bigger unit at 36th beb unit and I was really lucky cuz this was kind of the Forefront of true neonatal Intensive Care Nursing and Henry Mandarin and I had the Good Fortune of speaking all over the country and what we had done and probably the highlight of of what we focused on was really including the families in the care and we started one of the very first national parents parents support groups, and we did a lot of speaking around the country on its some publishing on it and everything.
25:00 And then when I get my second child, I cut back to 4 days a week, but I work for 10-hour weeks till is the nurse manager and then when I hit my third child Lori, I decided I was going to go back to graduate school and got a master's degree. But again, I was really lucky cuz the vice president of nursing convinced me to stay on work weekends covering the houses the nursing supervisor and chair the committee to develop a clinical ladder in nursing and she assured me that it would help me write all my papers for graduate school. So I was really lucky I did that it took me about three years were just working on the weekends and I pick up one or two evenings a week. If a supervisor wasn't around and then when I got my Master's Degree the director of nursing for Women and Children's Services I had resigned at that time. So I moved right into that role and I worked as the director of nursing really Clinical Director.
25:58 For number of years and the hospital Administration put in a new structure of product line structure and I became the administrator responsible really for the whole p&l statement for all of women and children's services and I had some wonderful opportunities. I set up besides a neonatal transport program in an ECMO program. I also got to develop from a hole in a proposal to develop and IVF program in vitro fertilization. I learned so much about that as we set it up and we partnered with the Jones Institute Norfolk, Virginia, which is really the very front where the very first IVF baby in the country was born. I had a lot of great experience and I was in that job probably around eight years when we got another new CEO and he decided to do away with the product line structure.
26:50 And they offered me a job to go back and be the director of nursing or to take a package and I decide to take the package and leave so I left I think.
27:01 It's
27:03 It's very important. I think for women to have outside interests besides their kids cuz your things just get swooped into everything about the kids and even moms who don't work tonight. I just personally think it's important to have some interests outside of your house. Mike is just a joke and say that I spent more time with them than some of their friends mothers who didn't work because when I was home, I always sensed the nanny's away and I really spent the time with the kids growing up and I cherished my days off and doing things with them. And you know, my mother is just to say my kids were over programmed, but I wanted to give them everything I could so it was a lot of fun, but I do think that everybody should make a decision about what's best for them and those of us who love their person should support that decision.
27:56 So I'm glad that you got it perfectly way for me to ask my next question about your kids. So why don't you tell me about some of your favorite moments see whether it be proudest moments are no special In-N-Out summer pick one or two moments with each child of yours.
28:15 Mithila Michael S. First Michael was born on March 23rd 1974. I was so excited.
28:25 I was real as scared to death of Labor because I thought I'm delivering where I worked and what if I made a real soon and they all talked about me. I was really worried. It was like nothing. It wasn't nearly as bad as I imagined and Mike was born on a Saturday. And what do I remember? Most random is a delightful good sweet baby when Michael was about I don't know if 3 months old.
28:54 We had had a bad snowstorm and my friend Quorum who lived way on the south side, but work with me would stay at my house. Whenever the weather was bad and Michael got sick. He had like a g i going.
29:08 And Corey and I were both neonatal intensive care nurses, and I remember Michael throwing up they had me give him.
29:18 They had me give him like tea or something at that time. I'm trying to remember the way Michael started throwing up. It looks like coffee grounds core and I were like, oh my God, what's wrong with him? This is coffee grounds emesis. He was by now and he got fines. I think what do I remember most about Michael when he was five. He was the star of the school play. He was the Pied Piper and I can still picture his little tiny body leading his way through everything in his some his first grade teacher told me he was a very special little boy which I already knew already. He loves sports tremendously which made his father so happy cuz his father loves sports.
30:02 I think I was telling most terrified when Michael came down us sledding hill right into a pole and came home with two black eyes. Fortunately, he was fine for that. I think probably, you know, I was proud of him all the time and love to watch him debate. Although he used to make him nervous.
30:23 But I think what I remember the most clearly is Michael didn't get into any of the colleges. He really wanted to go to he's a really smart kid, but is really pretty lazy and High School's first two years and he did his first choice was Georgetown. He didn't get into Georgetown and he got into Tufts off the waitlist.
30:47 And Michael and I went to Boston to look at Tufts.
30:53 We are sitting in the orientation for Tufts less than 2 less than 5 minutes when I knew he wouldn't go there because the woman doing the orientations feel said and everybody who comes to tuska very well-rounded education. Everybody who comes here will get two years of a foreign language no matter how much they've had it and Michael hated foreign language. He looked at me. I looked at him and I said, did you want to leave now? He goes? Yep.
31:18 So where do you want to go? Cuz he and I were in Boston for the weekend. He said let's go to Harvard Square and walk around. I'm like, okay, we parked and we parked and we went to a Chili's on the second floor to have lunch. We're sitting in the Chili's having lunch and he took out the car to fill it out and say I'm not coming to Tufts. We ate lunch and we went for a walk and we're walking through the Harvard campus, you know, which is just incredible the first time you see those big Gates.
31:44 And Michael said you know what Mom. I'm going to law school here. And I said you get in Michael and I'll pay
31:51 And that's what that's what happened. I can remember exactly where I was when Michael called me to tell me he got into Harvard Law School.
32:01 And he was so excited and I was so proud of him. I was in the airport in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and I have been traveling all day. And remember this is days before cell phones have been traveling all day for work and I called my secretary before I got on the plane and she said to me did you talk to your son and I'm like no Kathy and she said you have to get in touch with your son. I'm here, you know, here's where you can reach him and I called him up and he's like I got into Harvard Law.
32:34 So that was the highlight and we are very very excited.
32:39 You know about him doing well in law school and really loving it and it made us really happy. We're also really happy at the time that he had found Renee because of a hand and found Renee. I don't think I ever would have found anyone in his head up the butt off the books. So that was very special and I think my next most special time is dinner when Michael and Renee told us they're having a baby.
33:07 So we're excited elephant is
33:12 Just a really special and fun little girl. Elephant has two year two and a half years younger than Michael. She was born September 6th 1976. I was so excited to have a little girl because I really really wanted to have a daughter after Barry had his son. I thought was really important that I got a daughter to
33:36 And I'll let see what kinda body Ellison Ellison was. Also one of the always one of those kids that hitch do everything perfectly. I think she probably was a lot like Renee that
33:49 Why don't you be the best at everything really wanted to excel she loved the LA. She took piano lessons did real well at piano. She loved the ad and never had a single problem with her in school. She loved school, and I'm did really really well it at
34:06 Allison also didn't get Hunter first choice for college, which was Brown University shouldn't get in there and they are there was a saying going at our high school that nobody had gotten into Brown in like 10 years out of high school, but I went to Washington University and she really did very well there and excelled as very proud of Allyson when she got accepted to the Teach for America program that was really important to her. And of course everything else in his done, you know in the last 7 years setting up Namaste charter school getting the charger for it really doing a ton of the fundraiser singing and running it.
34:45 I'm just absolutely and over what she has accomplished and she has done. She never got into trouble. Like I couldn't tell you she was ever bad. She just was always a really good little girl. We were always really worried about the Allison cuz she was so little and so skinny and she was never on any of the charts, but she was the feistiest little girl strong and feisty.
35:14 Nelson was you know, very very devoted to and good to my parents. It's all the kids were but that Alison was really made an effort.
35:28 Especially when she went away to school to keep up with my mom and keep her, you know updated as to what was going on.
35:35 Nelson Has bright red curly hair. None of us know where it comes from.
35:41 And
35:44 She's terrific and then there's the baby Lori. She's not my favorite. They are all my favorites in different ways. Lori is Michael used to always say that Lori got away with murder. I used to say I was just tired of fighting I figured out what was important by them.
36:03 Lori was in trouble. Lori was the one that wanted to try things and Lori smoked a lot of Pat and it drove me up the wall. I couldn't stand it. I tell her she would kill him her brain cells and it made me really crazy and nervous Lori of the three kids. Lori was the most happy-go-lucky. She didn't cannot everything rolled off of her. She just rolled with the punches and everything really rolled off of her.
36:36 She
36:38 Was very friendly should have big circle of friends.
36:44 Lori was very into and still is
36:49 You know, what's the coolest thing to wear? What's that at? This is how I have to look Lori went away to college and called me up and said Mom all the girls here have Prada purses and I'm like, what's that? But that's Lori Lori.
37:04 It has been very very happy. I think or get a few really miserable years when all her friends are getting engaged and getting married and she was you know, as found something wrong with every boy she dated, but she has really found her match, and it's so nice to see her really happy.
37:24 What can I tell you about Lori? When was I most proud of Lori? I'll be most proud of her if she gets saved a master's degree.
37:33 But she promises me she's going to finish the paper for all she has left is one paper.
37:39 So yeah good kids and now I'm very lucky because of the apple of my eye a lana my granddaughter who was born on my 60th birthday and she's fabulous and Elise was only a peanut 5 months old but she's really developing quite a personality and she's adorable too. So I feel very fortunate to have my babies around and then be able to spend time with them and you know, I kind of feel right and I'm in such a good place in my life because I can still work a little
38:18 And I can spend time with the kids and it's been really a good ride just in one minute left. What are the things about being a grandmother that we're what you expected and what's been different for you.
38:34 I honestly used to laugh at my mother when she would say you have no idea how this feels the whole different thing because you take the time to enjoy every minute and when I'm with Alana and I talked about Alana because I spent so much of my time with her when I'm with Alana. I don't think about if I have to do the laundry, I don't think about what I have to get at the grocery store. I don't think about the hundred things I have to do. I'm 100% with her and enjoying her and what she wants to do when you know, I don't know if you remember this but last Wednesday when I came in the house to pick up the towels and she came to say goodbye me to put her arms around my neck, and she said to me very softly Thank you Grandma. I had the best day ever. It's like you melt you melt you look at this little thing.
39:28 And you smile and you melt.
39:31 And you know, there's nothing more special than these kids are my children, of course our children Berry's children my children were very special test when they were little but you're so worried with the everyday pieces of life.
39:46 That you don't really focus on the child and adhista guy. I can't even tell you how much I've enjoyed the days. I've spent it. They've been so special. She loves them to thank you for talking with me today.