Conversations With Grandma

My grandma cracks me up. She doesn’t mean to. I mean, she’s old and she doesn’t mean to be funny. It just comes out that way. My parents aren’t nearly as amused as I am, but she lives with them and I guess they can’t see the funny through the frustration sometimes. She reminds me a little of Bernice on Designing Women occasionally, only she’s not quite as outgoing.

One morning we were sitting in the living room and she asked me out of the blue, ” Do you think that woman is going to be President?” Her voice was just dripping with grapefruit juice or something really acidic.

Rather surprised because I thought she was napping through whatever sappy Lifetime Christmas movie my Dad had left on the electronic babysitter, I looked up from my pitiful knitting and replied after a hesitation, “I suppose it’s possible.” I tried to be as neutral as I could because I wasn’t planning on voting for “that woman” but I didn’t want to make it seem like voting for her was the wrong thing to do.

“If she does, do you think she’ll bring her husband?”

“Well, I assume so. Presidents generally bring their spouses to the White House.”

“But they’re divorced!” she exclaimed rather wide-eyed and scandalized.

I was rather taken aback by this. “Uh- No…they aren’t divorced.”

“They’re not?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Oh…” She put a hand to her cheek as if in dismay and just stared off into space as if she had to resort everything she knew now.

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Son Of The Lost

As you know, one of my crazy uncles passed a month ago, and I was somewhat relieved because he was somewhat of a mooch on my mother.

This uncle had a son — well, there is a boy who from birth this uncle had claimed as a son though no one in the family thought the boy was his actual blood relative.  Mind you, there are probably about a dozen kids out there who probably are actually his, but he has denied their claims whenever they’ve contacted anyone in the family.  However, this boy who looks nothing like anyone in the family and looks every bit 1/2 Native American (his mother was as Norwegian as you can get and we are Scotch/Irish) has my mother’s brother’s name plus “junior”.

So, this son and my mother had a falling out about 15 years ago when my step-grandmother was murdered, which is an entire story unto itself.  Needless to say that when wills are read, often families suffer schisms.  He said some really horrible words to my mother which she felt were unforgivable at the time and they didn’t speak until he called her to notify her that her brother was dead.  I haven’t actually spoken to him since long before that, perhaps since my grandfather’s funeral.  I don’t know that we had a falling out or anything, but our lives simply diverged and I had heard that he was following in the footsteps of his drug-addicted father so I felt it was best to keep away.

Anyway, apparently since his father’s death he’s been calling my mother and talking to her.  He’s been telling her that he had this terrible childhood and that most of it was so horrible that he’s blacked out much of it.  My mother is very upset that he doesn’t even remember the Christmas that his mother abandoned him and we went to get him and he stayed with us.  She’s very hurt about that.  She had wanted to adopt him then.  I remember it very distinctly.  However, her brother had gotten wind of the adoption plan and had come and taken his son away.  Now my mother is upset that she didn’t fight harder to keep him and adopt him so his life would have been different.

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The Trouble With Mother

My mother always loves the gifts I get her for whatever holiday or event it is. I think the only time she’s ever been disappointed was that one year when I was a little kid and I forgot about her birthday, but in my defense I was little and I blame my Dad for not reminding me about it and taking me shopping; after all, an elementary school-aged child cannot be expected to manage to get to the mall and buy a present on her own. I gave her handmade coupons that year and she was not impressed.

Anyway, I’ve always worked very hard to think of something thoughtful for my mother, something that fits in her interests but isn’t tacky. One year I bought her a Mexican clay umbrella holder for her birthday, knowing full well that I was buying her a Chimenea for Mother’s Day because I knew that my parents were looking at buying a house in New Mexico or Arizona. One year, because she loves unicorns, I stayed up all night on Christmas Eve to finish cross-stitching a huge unicorn to give her; gave myself tendinitis. I’ve made original stained glass art for her, filled her kitchen with ceramic chili pepper kitchen-things, and found a book on the American Red Cross that actually mentioned one of her friends.

Do you know how hard it is to top yourself present after present? Oh, sure, she says she’ll love anything I get her, but I know I have to find something at least as good as that last one. Oy.

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Losing The Lost

One of my crazy uncles died. He apparently had a heart attack in his apartment alone 10 days ago. That’s all of the story that was passed on to us from the person my mother refers to as “my brother’s son” — the only one of the numerous children claiming to be his offspring that he actually claimed and gave his name to, though most of the family thinks he’s probably the one kid who isn’t. My mother says she is sad but not destroyed over the news and not surprised.

Her brother had a lot of bad habits that led to very bad health. The only time I’ve seen him in two decades was at my grandmother’s funeral and then he weighed so much that he couldn’t walk and had to use one of those scooters. He had diabetes, was a cancer survivor due to smoking, but was chain smoking on his oxygen tank just like his old man had, he was going through a sober period but he was definitely making up for it with food. He was also still trying to figure out how to make a million dollars doing nothing — this is the uncle who went to prison for some sort of Bible Scam that no one will talk about.

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Psychological Beating

Last night I came home to discover I’d left the basement light on all day.  Normally I would beat myself up about it, but as I stomped down the stairs with a load of laundry, I actually considered myself rather lucky.

After all, I live alone so there isn’t anyone to lecture me about having left the light on all day.  There isn’t anyone to make me feel stupid for having left the light on all day.  After all, it’s not like I did it on purpose.  I am the sort of person who’s rather environmentally conscious, maybe more than average.  I didn’t do it on purpose; if it happens again, it won’t have been on purpose then either.   I can’t go back in time and stop it from happening.  In the end, I’m the one who literally has to pay for it when the electric bill comes.

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Thirteen Dysfunctional Family Secrets, 4th

Thirteen Things about J. Lynne My great-great-grandmother divorced my great great-grandfather because he wanted to move out of Georgia. (Imagine the scandal of a divorce back then.) Even though he moved to Florida and remarried, he was buried next to her in Georgia. My great-grandmother was divorced twice herself. In fact, so was my grandmother. They were both married 3 times, though my grandmother married my grandfather twice. I guess she had to be sure. My mother is the first woman on her side of the family in four generations to never be divorced. My grandmother appears on the 1930’s census twice because my great-grandmother and my great-grandfather shared custody and they both marked her down as living with them. According to my grandmother, my great-grandfather, a rather strict man, “kidnapped” my grandmother and took her to live in Georgia when she was a child after the divorce from my great-grandmother. My grandmother never forgave my great-grandmother for not “coming to get her” and accused her of being too much of a party girl. My great-grandmother’s version of the story was that she didn’t have the money to go to Georgia (from Florida) to go get her and bring her back. Who’s telling the truth? It’s impossible to know. Perhaps there’s truth in both versions. My grandmother did go to live with my great-grandmother when she was sixteen. My mother’s and my father’s brothers’ have the same first name. I am not on speaking terms with either. My parents both have siblings but all of the siblings have only one child as offspring. I suspect this is because as siblings they drove each other crazy and didn’t want to make their own children suffer the same. One Christmas, which was also my father’s brother’s 40th birthday, my dad’s sister stood up during dinner and announced that she was in therapy because my uncle was born. Apparently there had been some psychological trauma as a result of waking up on Christmas morning to find she’d been abandoned by her parents and left to the mercy of my father, who was not the nicest older brother. That was the last time we were all together as an extended family. My father and his brother have always tried to call each other when they know the other is not home so that the other one would be forced to call back and have the long distance call on the other’s “dime”. This continues to this day even though they both have those unlimited long distance services. My mother’s father, diagnosed with lung cancer, would smoke cigarettes while hooked up to his oxygen tank. My mother’s step-mother was Vietnamese. She was outrageous with fluffy fake zebra fur on her car seats and plastic covers on her house furniture. She watched Bruce Lee in Chinese and kept fish heads in some weird liquid in a jar under a rock in the backyard (to cook with). She supposedly met my pilot grandfather while involved in the real “Air America” in the war and was a loan shark in her later days here in America. She was sadly brutally murdered in her home, apparently by some sort of Asia mafia, adding to her mystique. My mother’s mother and step-father had a refrigerator for their keg and it was in the living room. All my friends growing up used to think I had the coolest grandparents ever. My mother’s step-father used to dye his hair, including his mustache, green every St. Patrick’s day. He kind of looked like a leprechaun anyway. He was always big into getting into the spirit of the holiday, whatever the holiday — especially if there was drinking involved. However, one year, he accidentally didn’t use temporary hair color and much to his chagrin, he had to live with that green hair for quite a while afterward. He just laughed it off and I’m sure he joked about it with everyone he met. He was just that kind of guy. Links to other Thursday Thirteens! Wacky Mommy Damozel amy Nancy Liedel Nancy Bond Joanne KC Trina Jessica The Rock Chick Robin L-Squared PRACTiCAL CHiCK Kuanyin Jenny Angela at mommy bytes (you could be next!)

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