Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul (18 page)

One morning as we rode down to the lobby in the big iron elevator, Honie was doing her usual “tch, tch,” as she decried the fact that European hotels “never, ever, ever supplied washcloths” and announced that she would just stop by the front desk to request three for the next morning. Approaching the desk clerk, she said slowly and distinctly, “Excuse me, but we . . . don't have . . . any . . . ,” and folding her hand into a ball, she vigorously scrubbed her cheek.

“Soap?” he asked.

She shook her head in irritation. “No, no, washcloths.”

“Ah,” he nodded knowingly. “I will see to it, señora.”

Mission accomplished, we were off to Nazare for a day of exploring. The next morning she informed us once again that she needed to stop at the front desk.

Timorously we followed and waited while she informed the clerk that we were out of Kleenex in our bathroom. This request included placing her hand over her nose, saying “achoo” several times and wiping her nose. Now it was the clerk's turn to roll his eyes, but he acknowledged her request and we were on our way.

The next morning we were halfway across the lobby and almost out the door when Honie stopped us. “Just a minute, girls. I need to tell the desk clerk that we're out of toilet paper.”

The picture of how she might dramatize that request was more than any of us could face. We were out the door in a flash, leaving Honie to face the clerk on her own. There is a limit to what even the most dutiful ducklings will endure.

Phyllis W. Zeno

Going Places

F
un gives you a forcible hug, and shakes laughter
out of you, whether you will it or no.

David Garrick

I've been to an N'Sync concert. I've snacked at Jekyll and Hyde, the popular theme restaurant. When Britney Spears was involved with a restaurant in Manhattan, I dined there. Am I a teenybopper? Ha! Far from it. I've visited playgrounds, amusement parks and Chuck E. Cheese's. Am I a toddler? Of course not. I've been at the huge kaleidoscope in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York and visited Liberty Science Center where patrons are encouraged to touch and test the museum exhibits. Okay, now you've probably guessed it. I'm a grandmother.

You'll find there are many perks to being a grandparent . . . once you recover from that initial shock. And I say shock, because no matter how lovingly anticipated, the birth of a first grandchild is a milestone moment. Many of us become grandparents when we're not quite ready. It seems like only yesterday we were caring for our own babies, and now one of them has a child.

But soon we learn that grandchildren look upon the world with new eyes and that it's quite possible to share that gift. They're great company; they inspire us to go on quests without traveling to exotic lands and foreign shores. I've taken a couple of young ones on an elephant safari . . . on the Jersey Shore. Thanks to my pitiful sense of direction, we wandered about before finding our quarry. And there we were, looking at Lucy, the Margate elephant, a historical structure, once a publicist's ploy to urge folks to buy property, then a tourist camp and restaurant, and now a fascinating building, complete with howdah atop. We climbed into one huge right leg, went to the upper story, looked out Lucy's eye at the ocean and then climbed up to the howdah.

On a recent off-season visit to the giant kaleidoscope, we lay on the floor and looked up as the world changed before our eyes. Would I do that if I didn't have a kid next to me? I'd love to say I would, but I doubt it.

Grandchildren allow us to enjoy the things that either weren't around when we were kids or things we never got to see. Sure, I did some of this stuff with my own kids, but life was so busy then. Now I can enjoy all these little pleasures.

Merry-go-rounds—I've always loved them. I enjoyed riding the horses that didn't move when I was a young child and riding the horses that went up and down when I was a teenager. Now I pretend I'm going just to take a toddler for a ride, but it's a sham. I love every minute of it.

I've ridden merry-go-rounds at amusement areas and malls and on the historical flying horses carousel on Martha's Vineyard.

I've visited a simulated rainforest where butterflies flitted about, landing on our shoulders and backs. I've been to a small local museum where huge, mechanized dinosaurs roared and shuddered. I've ridden the rails on the Hello Dolly train in the Pennsylvania Dutch country and clambered aboard the swan boats in Boston for an old-fashioned ride.

I've tuned in Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network. I find it wonderful that despite all the changes in the world my grandchildren often watch the same cartoons and shows that I did years ago. We can watch Bugs Bunny or
I
Love Lucy
together and laugh at all the same things. I thought I'd be bored at kids' movies, but I've seen some truly original ones, like
Babe
and
Toy Story
and, of course,
Shrek,
while swiping a few handfuls of popcorn from my little compatriots.

There is always a grandchild willing to go for ice cream or pizza, and the kids love to traipse through the little candy store nearby and pick out penny candy the same way I did when I was a kid. There is always someone to laugh (and as they get older, groan) at a corny joke. And any grandkid under the age of eight is happy to be my dance partner when I have old-time rock 'n' roll blasting on the stereo in my living room.

Just about everything, from making cupcakes to painting ceramics, is more fun when there's a grandchild eager to learn how. All of sudden I'm an expert, despite my lack of skill in many such endeavors.

Dr. Seuss wrote a wonderful book called
Oh, the Places
You'll Go!
and I'm grateful that I have grandchildren to take me along.

Thanks, grandkids!

Carolyn Mott Ford

Will He Remember?

W
hat we learn with pleasure, we never forget.

Alfred Mercier

I have a confession to make. I am in love with a younger man.

It is a deep and lasting love unlike any other I have experienced. When we are together, all is well with the world. When we are apart, I long for his presence to fill the ache in my heart. For over four years, his unconditional love has completed me like the last piece of a puzzle. I now understand when poets and romanticists describe how they would lay down their life for someone they love. I would do the same.

The object of my affections is my only grandchild. I marvel at being a grandmother, but I wear it well, like a comfortable coat that feels right. I wonder why I do, since I have little experience of having a grandmother myself. My maternal grandmother died before I was born. My paternal grandmother lived in Europe, and I only recall her visiting us once. When I was about fifteen, my parents sent her a plane ticket to come to Canada for my sister's wedding. She came, but the language differences made it difficult for us to communicate. I wondered what she felt when her son packed up his family and moved across the ocean so many years ago. I wished I had known her better. I wished she had come with us. I wished I had memories with her.

I never knew what I missed until I became a grandmother myself. I can barely remember anything until I began school, and even then, they are only half-remembered fragments. My biggest concern is that my grandson will not remember our days together. Time is fleeting; it steals memories of yesteryear, evaporating with the dawn.

Our days together, grandmother and grandson, are filled with fun, learning and play. Some days we just sip at the day, savoring it slowly, and other days we take a deep swallow and taste all it has to offer.

With the consent of his parents, I have been fortunate to be part of many firsts in his young life. I was the first to take him to see Santa at the mall. I took him to his first movie, his first trip to the beach, his first haircut with “a real lady at a real hair-cutting place.” We have enjoyed lunches at restaurants, visits with friends and excursions to museums. We have ridden the bus and the train. We have scoured the neighborhood for garage sales, played in parks, fed the birds, splashed in puddles, raked leaves, picked pine cones and built snowmen. Will he remember any of this?

I wonder if he will remember who taught him how to crack eggs and whisk batter nice and smooth for the pancakes he loves so much. Or how we built a secret fort under the dining room table with blankets. Will he remember who played endless games of Checkers, Candyland, and Chutes and Ladders with him, while teaching him how to lose gracefully? Will he recall who taught him to play “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” on the piano, his little fingers stretching to cover the right keys, his face a study in concentration?

My grandson rejuvenates me. Seeing the world through his eyes is nothing short of wondrous. His energy is refreshing, and his infectious giggle makes me laugh. I pray he will remember the lullabies, the laughter and, most importantly, the love when he is grown and has a family of his own.

Will he remember me?

Maria Harden

5
THROUGH THE EYES OF

I
love these little people; and it is not a slight
thing, when they, who are so fresh from God,
love us.

Charles Dickens

Love Never to Be Blinded

T
he balls of sight are so formed, that one man's
eyes are spectacles to another, to read his heart.

Samuel Johnson

“Mom! Come look at the sunset!” My six-year-old daughter called, running to the window at the retirement home. Mandy could be demanding and full of energy, and she seemed to be far more so when my attention was on someone else. Right now that attention was on my mother, frail and angry and sitting in the lobby of the retirement home we had placed her in.

“It's an institution! You're trying to put me into an institution!” Mother had declared when we first suggested the idea. But with her age and her blindness and our trying to raise two very active girls and balance jobs to pay the bills, she finally relented. I had tried to make her happy and feel at home, even taking time to make her a lavender and blue quilt, her favorite colors before she lost her sight.

So here she sat, huffy, gloomy and not talking to me. The caretaker of Suncrest Home came over with a cup of tea. “Now, Mrs. LeSage, how about a nice cup of tea? It's your favorite, Earl Grey with lemon.”

“Mom! Come see! Come see!” Mandy interrupted from the corner by the window.

The caretaker smiled. Mother turned away and the tea was placed on the table beside her. I shrugged, not knowing what to do, how to cope anymore. I wasn't far from tears.

The caretaker pulled me gently aside. Away from the lobby and out in the corridor, she placed her arm around me as I collapsed into sobs. “I just don't know what else to do,” I said, my voice breaking. “I know she hates me for it, but I don't know what else I can do. She can't be on her own, not with her blindness and . . .”

“Quit blaming yourself,” she said firmly. “That won't help either you or your mother. Right now you have to be firm but loving. In time, she will adjust to her new surroundings . . . and besides, you're only a few miles away.”

Not that it matters,
I thought, remembering my mother's stony glare and silent face. She would probably never talk to me again. I was walking back toward the lobby when I heard the excited voice of a child. Mandy! I had left her in there with her grandmother and the other residents! What could she be up to?

“It is purple! Real, deep purple. Purple like the grapes on Uncle Willis's vines in September!”

“And what about the red? Is there any red?” an elderly voice asked.

“Red? Yes there is red in it too! It has all different kinds of red—like the bike that Grandpa gave me for my birthday when I was five. Do you remember, Grandma?”

I came in to see Mandy and her grandmother standing by the window as the warm sun set outside. Mandy gently pressed my mother's hand to the glass. “I know you can't see the red anymore, Grandma, but you can feel it, right? And the golden yellows and the orange and . . .”

My mother smiled and clasped Mandy's hand, then pulled her close for a hug. “Yes, I can. I can feel the colors of the sunset.”

She let my daughter guide her back to a chair and hugged her once more. “And when you tell me what you see, well, it makes it all real for me.” She turned to me and said, “Well, now it's your turn. Tell me, what color is that quilt that you made me on my bed?”

From then on, Mandy met with her grandmother at least once a week and phoned her often. She told her of the colors of her school—brown wood and bright yellow paint with a picture of a happy face on the door. She told her of the green of the ocean when she first visited it and how the stormy blue sky was the same color as her cousin Jennifer's eyes. She shared the dark black of her graduation gown and the glorious yellow rose corsage that Grandmother sent for her special day. She phoned her long distance to share the black sand of Hawaiian beaches and the icy crevices in the Yukon. She even told her the shade of hair of the boy she fell in love with—dark and wavy, just like the old pictures of Grandfather.