paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- reflecting on my relationship with my grandmother I had a quiet weekend. Quinn and I worked on the great binder project. We have now assembled 225 binders with 1,800 tabs and inserts; 3,245 sheet protector inserts, 135 cd-roms, 45 floppy disks, and countless sheets of paper. And yet the binder project both continues and promises to be an incredible burden on the 45 unsuspecting directors of early learning centers who will receive them. We are both feeling more encouraged than we felt Saturday morning now that we have our toes over the half-way mark. Aside from developing a severe case of �binder neck,� making an incredibly delicious pot of chili and an apple pie, and working on a poem for the Alchera project (perhaps I�ll finish it tonight?), my thoughts belong to my grandmother. She is in intensive care at the hospital after emergency surgery on Friday. Her husband took her in after she thought she was having a heart attack. Instead, the doctors discovered a tumor in her stomach and that her colon was cancerous. Two years ago, she had one of her kidneys removed and had chemotherapy, but her cancer is back. Friday she had her colon entirely removed. My grandmother ran the branch office of the American Cancer Society in the city where she lived for many, many years. I think I learned my love of offices from going to work with her when I visited in the summers. I ran the ditto machine, answered the phones, talked to the endless numbers of women who stopped by to visit with my grandmother. My mother jokes that I am my grandmother all over again and thinks that I am her favorite grandchild. To mother, it is because I am bossy and often take charge of situations and tell people what to do. I can�t help it. I have this personality where I want to make everything okay for as many people as possible. But my take on it is different because so much dread, fear and anxiety is rolled up in my memories of my grandmother that I don�t know whether I am her favorite or whether she is just relieved that I turned out to be a productive citizen. Sometimes I wish I had just been able to have a regular relationship with my grandmother. After being sexually molested by her husband on many occasions over a number of years, and upon getting the courage to tell my mother discovering that �he is European, they are touchy,� despite my instance that that time in the car on the way to the dump when I was 11 left all sorts of marks that warm-blooded people do not leave on their grand-daughters. It was more the sort of thing that grandfathers, even step-grandfathers, clasp their fists tight and take action over, rather than do, to young girls. My response to my mother was to stop trusting people. I folded myself up like a detailed map of a foreign country and didn�t let anyone past the first hinge fold, with the picture of the governor and the official greeting. Especially not anyone related to me. I never told my grandmother, but someone did. Four years ago my grandmother told me that she wished she had known, because if she had, she would have left him. But now, so old and in poor health, with him so old and in poor health, there is nothing she can do about it. It is bitterly ironic how my grandmother, who lived many years of her life for women�s health, must face this sort of problem in her family. I feel badly for her because her husband hurt her terribly, brought so much sadness into her old age when she should be looking back triumphantly. I am very sweet to my grandmother and put up with that sick old man. I sit with my grandmother when she is in town and talk to her. I e-mail her. I ask her questions about her life and our family, about her mother and her mother�s life. But it is too hard to visit her, although I know I should. And it has been too hard for Quinn and my previous partners to be around the sick old man. Because even though he is old and deaf and shrinking, he still has a way of making everything about himself and his needs. Sometimes I fear that my tolerance of being in the same room with him because of my grandmother could be interpreted as a silent form of forgiveness. Sometimes I just want to make him squirm by being really strong and really cold. But I�m afraid when I was a teen I was really scared and used to just handle being around him by being drunk or stoned. Because I felt so much shame that I just couldn�t be sober and have to break bread with him. To have to let him hug me and smell his horrible Old Spice after shave, which he had worn for years. And that stubble on his cheeks. Without being drunk I would get reduced to tears and have to hear from the Major or my mother about how moody, immature and selfish I was to put a damper on the evening by crying and running into the other room. Somehow my behavior was conveniently blamed on being 13, 14, 15, 16, � Somewhere when I was about 17, I got really strong and could stare him down with the word bastard written all over my otherwise completely sweet and innocent face. I�ve watched my cousins have such natural relationships with my grandmother. They are so close that sometimes I am actually jealous and resent them, because in my mind, it used to be me learning the warning signs for cancer, memorizing lectures about the evils of smoking, playing Scrabble or Kings in the Corner, cooking, baking pies, or knitting. It used to me running from one kitchen to the other kitchen in search of just the right utensil or pan (my grandmother had two kitchens and one set of kitchen items.) It used to be me singing while she played the piano on Saturday nights, making home recordings. I was the one she bragged about at Thursday Wives meetings and she always kept my school photos in her wallet. �Marlene,� she would say to my mother, �she�s just a kid. Let her�..� or �giver her a break, just this once.� And then it wasn�t. Somehow, nothing was the same after I realized what was going on at night that made me so full of shame. Sometimes I catch myself laughing over her weird ways. The way she barges into the bathroom and says �it�s only grandma,� which has everyone in the family learn to barricade the door or develop quick foot action. Her insistence on monitoring everyone�s bowel habits who is around her for more than a day. �Dear, I think you need to eat some fiber,� she once said to the Major�s sister Beth, who, a little shocked, obeyed her. At this moment, I am glad that I have been able to be as strong as I am. Facing the fact that she may die very soon, I do not have to spend too much energy feeling badly about having run away from a relationship with her. Instead I think about her weird ways and how much I have been missing them since her health has been in decline. I can spend my energy hoping she recovers from her emergency surgery to a state that is not too painful or too difficult to endure. She is a brave and courageous woman. This is her favorite story about her grandfather. Grandpa B. (my maternal great-great grandfather) was a farmer most of his life and had only received an education to the seventh grade. His greatest passion was reading, and at times in his life, the only thing he had to keep himself going was his ability to read. His passion for reading began by reading the bible as a young boy. When he was ten, his mother ran off with another man, and his father placed him with family friends to raise. Even though he was very sad, and had to do a lot of farm chores for his keep, he kept reading. He slept in a room in the barn on a cot, had a blanket, a change of clothes, and his mother�s bible. He kept reading the bible every day for comfort and for inspiration. For six years he stayed with this family and never saw his parents again. Grandpa B. was a self-educated gentleman and knew a little about every subject. He introduced my grandmother to reading at an early age. Grandpa B. had a modest library, of which he was very proud. In our family, Grandpa B.�s books are something we all cherish, even though the collection has been dispersed among the readers of the family. I keep all of mine together on a shelf in the bookcase in the living room. Grandpa B. also taught himself to play the violin and the cello, and taught himself oil painting. He was very kind to my grandmother when she was a girl, and taught her the importance of reading and studying and going to school at a time when that was not encouraged for girls in the lower classes. He taught my mother and uncle to play the violin when they were young. Grandpa B. died in 1955, but we all talk about him as though he will come out west to visit any day. These are the lessons we learn in our family from Grandpa B.: a) Reading is the most worthwhile way to learn things about the world you otherwise would never know; b) reading is the way to better yourself, get a better job, earn an education, and be a productive citizen; c) reading lets you go places you never could go otherwise. 10:44 p.m. - 2002-10-27 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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