As
a Friday ritual, I begin with my own version of the “check, call, care” routine
and stick my face into the nearest window, the window into her heart and soul,
or at least the window into the room where her heart and soul spend the
majority of their time. When she finally happens to glance up and see my face
peering in at her through the window, her expression of extreme concentration
on the article at hand turns to one of pure delight and excitement; her mouth
and eyes open wide in her version of a smile. Once I see that I’ve caught her
attention, I then proceed to make silly faces at her through the window, solely
for her enjoyment, of course; these may or may not include sticking out my
tongue, blowing up my face with air, and crossing my eyes.
Slowly,
my Bubby strains her legs to support herself and rises from the chair, the
chair so imprinted with the form of her body that, though she is now standing,
it is hard not to imagine her shape still sitting there. As she begins to
meander her way through the hall to the front door, a path that I know so well,
I take the necessary step to my left, stick my hand through her mail slot, and
patiently await her arrival.
When
I feel her soft wrinkled fingers on mine through the slot, I retract my hand
and let her open the front door. I give her a big hug and let her kiss me on the
forehead before dropping off her groceries on the kitchen table. I then try my
hand at getting her out the front door as quickly as possible, although I have
yet to reach my speed goal.
Throughout
the car ride home I sacrifice myself to a rigorous hand-holding session, not
relenting to my own comfort until my familiar pink front door comes into view.
I slyly slip my hand away and jump out of the car and, fighting the need to run
into my house, I turn around to help the old lady out of the vehicle.
The
gloomy grey sky’s promise is disappointingly fulfilled just as I am pulling
open my Bubby’s door, and, while I watch her slowly and painstakingly gather up
her belongings, bag after bag of carefully collected junk in the form of
presents, I realize that my future does not look very dry. I try to help her by
grabbing some of her bundles and beg her to leave others in the car with a
promise of a later retrieval. We have a system in my family; she floods our
house with useless newly-rediscovered items, and we graciously accept them
because it is the only way my father can throw things out and clean up her
house. Of course, she takes the process of gift-giving very seriously and is
wary of leaving her precious goods in the car. “Just let me bring them in!” she
says stubbornly, clearly unaware that I am standing in the rain.
Already soaked through my clothes yet still
not past the point of caring, I’m too frustrated to realize that I am pulling
her by the hand, desperate to get inside. The image of the parents pulling
along their children on those baby-leashes briefly comes to mind, an idea that,
under normal circumstances, might prompt a smile but now can’t even get a
lip-twitch out of me. When I finally muster up enough strength to pull her into
the front door, I brutishly fling everything on the ground and run upstairs to
change clothes, leaving the downstairs inhabitants to say their ‘hellos’ and
handle the newly arrived guest. I feel perfectly content wearing my
‘don’t-come-within-a-20-feet-radius’ face and even frown sympathetically when I
hear the melody of my grandmother showering my sister’s forehead with an
infinite amount of kisses to the tune of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star’.
On
my way back to civilization I manage to calm down a little, but I walk slowly
down the stairs and into the kitchen, still unsure of what my slightly
oblivious grandma will be up to. I gingerly stick my head through the kitchen
door and, seeing her and my sister sitting at the table reading magazines, I
deem it safe enough to enter.
When Bubby sees me, she perfectly
forgets our previous episode and feels the impulse to supply me with fragments
from her vast knowledge of not-necessarily-true information. “I read that you
shouldn’t wash your hair more than once every other week. If you wash your hair
too much then you’ll have to start dyeing it at a younger age”. She then
proceeds to reminisce in a lengthy monologue about what her hairdresser told
her when she first started dyeing her hair, and doesn’t stop before she adds,
“Loosen your ponytail; you’re going to get a receding hairline like your cousin
Jen”. My cousin, in her defense, does not have a receding hairline; her
forehead is just on the larger side.
After flipping through a few pages
of her magazine my grandma pauses and forms a look of explicit concentration,
furrowing her eyebrows and staring at the particular page with eyes that one
would be surprised to know do not, in fact, contain lasers. After examining the
page and coming to the same conclusion that she comes to at least once a week,
she looks up at me and says rather matter of factly, “It looks like full skirts
and long hair are the style now”. Now, I
choose not to answer this particular interjection because I know that full
skirts and long hair happen to have been the concluded “style” of every month
of every season for the past three years. When she realizes that I will just
continue to make eye contact with her without actually offering some sort of
verbal response she opts to go back to making eye contact with her magazine
instead.
If
there’s one thing my grandma knows, its magazines. Well, that and channel 24
news, the only channel that gives her hourly company in her small TV room; and
her lifeline into the real world. But in that room also sits a stack of
magazines of all types, food, home, fashion, men’s health. You name it, she
subscribes. And I subscribe vicariously through her, I guess.
I
decide to sit down alongside her and read one of the magazines that she gifted
us with, one of the pleasures buried in the stress that comes along with having
my grandma for dinner. I am halfway through reading about this season’s
‘Must-Haves!’, an article with claims so grave and urgent that I am
contemplating running out the front door that second on a search of items that
I see no chance of survival without, when, out of the corner of my eye, I see
my grandma scrunch up her face. “Would you wear this!” she exclaims, put more
as a comment for which the obvious answer should be “Goodness, no!” than a
question, and slides the magazine over to me. The picture is that of a model
wearing crazy geometric-shaped Lady Gaga-esqe platform shoes. Clearly no sane
person, let alone me, would ever consider wearing these shoes, yet I
enthusiastically inform her that I not only love them, but also wish I had a
pair in my size. In response she opens her mouth and eyes in surprise, looks at
my sister and lifts her shoulders up in a shrug, and returns to her shocking
photos.
I
make sure that she is still distracted by her article on the dangers of
something before I hurry to set the table for dinner. Luckily, today she has a
magazine to occupy her attention, for on other less unfortunate days she
insists on playing the role of table-setter and I must watch in suspense, waiting
for her to drop and break a cup or plate.
After
putting the food on the table, my family and I, Bubby included, take our usual
spots at the dining room table. My sisters and I usually alternate between
sitting next to my grandma and today happens to be my turn to help her with her
food and give her smiles of encouragement in case she feels excluded for lack
of a remote that turns up the conversation volume. When she offers me the bowl
of salad even though I have enough salad on my plate I politely refuse and show
her my proud assortment of colorful veggies, and throw in a smile free of
charge. I can’t say I respond as patiently when she offers me the salad five
minutes later, and then again three minutes after that. I am sorry to say that
I just might have initially responded by continuously offering her a certain
food option that she happened to already be eating until she, too, reached a
point of frustration. When I notice Bubby’s pout and slow-swiveling head I grab
her hand and smile at her. After she continues to hold my hand for the
remainder of dinner, I know that was all that she needed. I will never
repeatedly offer her food again, unless of course it’s a triple chocolate,
chocolate cake, of which she will never tire; when her plate has no more room
Bubby has no problem wrapping up leftovers and sneaking them into her purse.
This is only when no one is looking, of course.
I
move past my momentary lapse in kindergarten-taught manners, because two wrongs
do not equal a right, and enjoy my family’s company. We’re a jolly group. We
discuss a wide range of topics from which dessert is chocolatier and therefore
better to the best foolproof method for solving world peace. When we’ve
finished discussing the details of our oh, so complicated lives we often break
into spontaneous song. Might I add that my sisters and I have quite the
a-cappella group going, and if any of us had any singing ability we’d be
straight down the path of a record deal.
During
this spectacle I happen to glance over at my Bubby and see her hands covering her eyes, tears
streaming down. “My husband would be so proud of you all. He would be so
happy,” she tells me. Under normal circumstances, that word choice for my
Poppop, “my husband,” usually encourages an eye roll because he was my grandpa too, but now I feel a pang in
my chest. My natural instinct is to get up and wrap my arms around my Bubby. I
slowly walk over to her and slide onto her lap, a comforting gesture that I
know she has loved ever since I was a little girl, when we would both fall
asleep, she on a chair in her little TV room and I on her cushiony lap, wrapped
in her warm embrace.
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