My grandmother:
I have always known that my
grandmother is an amazing person. Growing up, I only had one grandparent. I
have only ever known what it was like to have that specific grandparent as a
grandmother. I have noticed that people
like to claim possession of “eccentric” grandparents. They use the word, being
affectionate and positive. When we use the word about my grandmother, it’s
forced optimism and an understatement. It’s
an “err on the side of caution” and “less is more.” It’s a way of being polite
out of a sense of loyalty to the woman but also unwilling to let people dive
undeservingly into something they don’t understand. It’s a lie. In fact, the only time
I would use the word “eccentric” to describe my grandmother would be with heavy
sarcasm. The word that is most often
used to describe my grandmother is “memorable.” And she is very memorable. I
was in a pleasant conversation with several nurses in the hall of her nursing
home, when one asked me, “Who’s your grandmother?” At my grandmother’s name all
three women’s faces darkened and their attitudes towards me cooled. Was I
surprised, taken aback or dismayed by this reaction? Not at all. I had been
trying to avoid saying her name. Someone once told me at some function that
they had an “unforgettable experience” with my grandmother, before walking away
without introducing themselves. I took that to mean my grandmother was the
unforgettable part.
Here are some of my experiences with her
that I will never forget.
As a young child, when I began to realize that
other grandparents were called a plethora of titles and names besides grandma
or grandpa, I asked her how she felt about being called grandma, or rather,
would she like to continue being called grandma, since I didn’t remember if I
had given her a choice? She looked at me and spoke as if
speaking to someone with far less intelligence than herself, “I am your
mother’s mother, not your mother, thank god, nor am I compensated in any way
for taking care of you. I’ve done my job, I raised your mother. So I am your
grandmother. Your grandma. Understand?”
She once received
a boom-box with a CD player and several CDs, which she couldn’t figure out how
to open and found incredibly frustrating. Frustrating and apparently very
fragile as she had only tapped it a few times with a hammer, and not only had
the CD case shattered into a million pieces, so had the CD. This was her
closest brush with current technology for many years afterwards.
Once, while walking somewhere on the
streets of New York City, I spotted some conveniently placed scaffolding. I
quickly climbed the scaffolding and managed to do a couple flips around a
horizontal bar before I was violently ripped off by my grandmother and a
policeman. The policeman held me by one arm, demanding, “Who’s child is this?”
while my grandmother was gripping my other arm, much more painfully, and yelling
at me that I was going to be arrested, put in jail and then crack my head open
on the sidewalk. She even yelled at the policeman to reprimand me more and then
didn’t give him an opportunity to, as a crowd gathered, mostly of construction
workers who also had things to say to me. My grandmother was yelling and
shaking me, “Look down! Look at the cement! Imagine the cement covered in
blood! Dripping into the cracks!” When
the policeman asked my grandmother if she knew me, she just stared at me for a second
before admitting, “Unfortunately, yes. This appalling child is my granddaughter.”
Even after that, the policeman seemed reluctant to release me into my
grandmother’s custody and inquired about my mother, who I had spotted blithely taking
pictures of the window displays a ways away while my grandmother was screeching
about blood on the sidewalk. My mother
came bustling over with her camera and tried to whisk me away to stand in front
of the window display for a picture. She knocked my grandmother’s hands off me
but was halted by the policeman who continued to hold onto my arm. My mom asked
him brightly, “Would you like to be in the photo, too?”
On another
occasion, we were riding in a cab, my grandmother seated between my mother and
I in the back. I was behind the cab driver. My forearm and hand had been
casually resting on the armrest of the door when suddenly my grandmother
screeched at me, “DON’T OPEN THE DOOR!” Naturally this was very alarming to
everyone. In the resulting chaos and screaming, the cab driver veered sharply
to the side of the road and threatened to kick us out, my mother began yelling
in my defense, and my grandmother continued proclaiming that I had been about
to open the door and leap out, killing us all.
We used to visit
her in her Manhatten apartment and sleep on her pull-out sofa bed. On one such
occasion when I was around seven, she was preparing dinner and I realized her
kitchen lighting was one of those dimmable round knobs and I promptly treated
all of us to some spontaneous strobe lighting. While turning around in alarm,
Grandma spilled a large amount of spinach on the kitchen floor and started to
scream at me. This was followed by lots of slamming things around. While she
was still yelling, my mother thrust twenty dollars at me and kicked me out the
door. In a split second, she had decided that the streets of Manhattan were
safer than being trapped in an apartment with an enraged Jean Fischer. I have a vague memory of waving the twenty
dollar bill in the air while skipping down the sidewalk and a man sitting
against a building, calling out to me, “Hey, honey, do you want to break that
twenty with me?”
More recently,
when my mother was telling my grandmother about how I hadn’t had a boyfriend in
so long and she was worried about me and my social life, my grandmother
suddenly said sharply, “Shush, Mary! She might be gay,” And then turning to
look directly at me, “And we would still love her the same, anyway.” She said
very solemnly. Which prompted my mother to also turn and look directly at me, nodding
with an equal amount of gravitas, “That’s right, we would.” And my grandmother
said, “And she can still get pregnant and have children.” “That’s right, she
could,” my mother said with a smile, and my grandmother continued with raised
eyebrows, “So she should be careful while she’s figuring that out,” My mother
nodded again, solemnly, “That’s right, she should.”
They continued to look at me
without blinking, so I said contemplatively, “I don’t think I’m gay…”
“I don’t think you’ve really tried
it yet,” my mom said.
“I find myself very drawn to the
male form... and sometimes even… their minds – “
“You think you’re attracted to them
because you have no imagination and have never been exposed to any other kind
of life!” My grandmother stated grandly, leaning forward with her finger in the
air.
My mother frowned at her, “No,
mom.”
“It was expected of you to like
men, you never had a choice!” My grandmother continued to preach.
“Mom, what are you talking about? I've always had gay friends. Two of my oldest women friends are gay lovers and they
used to babysit her when she was little.”
“….”
“I think we’re talking about your
life now, grandma.”
My grandmother leaned back in her
chair and gazed off into space. “We might be,” she said softly.
