So I had the oil changed on my car this morning. I usually wait until that little dashboard light sets to nagging me – 15% oil life left…10%…5%. It was in negative numbers before I got to it this time. I have a little Honda that’s very forgiving.
Of course, when I got to Tires Plus, they sold me the $14.99 inspection package (check the filters, top off the liquids, yada, yada), because God knows how long it’s been since any of that was done. And of course, the filters were filthy and my tires have about 40 percent tread left. I had the filters changed.
While I was sitting there filing my nails and waiting for them to finish, it occurred to me that the Hello Kitty phone some grandchild thought they wanted and then abandoned in the back seat might be driving the mechanic crazy. It’s an annoying little toy, very loud and very touchy. Driving over a bump sets it off. Waiting at a stoplight doing nothing sets it off. If it gets jammed next to something like the ice scraper, it never shuts up. This is its full repertoire of phrases:
Hello!
I’m a Hello Kitty!
You’re fun!
How are you?
(garble, garble, garble)!
Bye bye!
For some reason, I have let this nonsense continue for several months, when obviously I could have retrieved it from the floor in back at any time. That’s okay. I was out of there in less than an hour.
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Sept. 8, 2006
Maria started first grade on Tuesday. It was her first time riding the school bus, which should have been largely uneventful, except that she fell asleep on the way home, and instead of being the first one off the bus she was the last one off. By the time she got there, her mother was barely coherent and her two aunts (the first-day welcoming committee) were ready to call the chief of police. You might think this would be a little traumatic for a 6-year-old, but apparently it wasn’t. She said she had a great day.
Dec. 13, 2006
Hoping to find someone with an extra Baby Alive they’d like to sell. The sad scenario:
• I did not buy Baby Alive at Target when I had a chance, even though I helped another grandma find one on the shelves.
• My 6-year-old granddaughter expects Santa to deliver a pooping doll.
• Target and everyone else is OUT of Baby Alive, although it is available on e-bay for roughly the cost of a new sofa.
[Epilogue: Yes, I bought one on e-bay. Of course I did.]
Jan. 28, 2009
Had Maria over to spend the night last week, and she wrote a story about me. I especially liked the title (“A Woman and Her City”) and the ending (“She loves us anyway.”)
May 15, 2009
I was talking to Maria on Mother’s Day (on Mother’s Day, mind you) and she was telling me about the plans for her 9th birthday, which is two months away, but why wait? She said she is having two parties: a Friends party at the beach, which I am not allowed to attend, and a Family party, which will be held at my house. Excuse me?
“Are you saying I’m an embarrassment to you?” I asked her. She said yes, I was. Well, I can understand that. I tease her a lot, which amuses her when it’s just us but could be tiresome when your friends are around. (“That’s my Grandma. She tells lame jokes.”)
So I asked, “How about if I don’t talk? Can I come to the Friends party if I don’t talk?” She said I’m an embarrassment even when I don’t talk. “Okay,” I said. “Maybe I won’t get you a birthday present this year then.” Right. She would not deign to respond to such a ridiculous threat.
This reminds me of the elderly gentleman who, when asked how winning the lottery had changed his life, said, “Well, the grandkids come around a lot more now.” I’ll bet.
[Epilogue: When the Friends party rolled around, Maria expected me to be there. “Oh, Grandma,” she said, “I was only kidding.”]
Jan. 28, 2011
Went to see Tangled with Maria last weekend. I used a couple of free movie tickets I got for doing a rip-roaring, outstanding job on something at work, I forget what. Then I spent $10 on one small popcorn and one small Sprite. That is correct – ONE popcorn, ONE pop, TEN bucks. Lord help me if I’m starting to sound old, but $10, for cripes sake.
Anyway, we liked Tangled a lot. I asked Maria what her favorite part was, and she said the part where Rapunzel hit the hero over the head with the frying pan. Repeatedly. She’s growing up.
This is my very first grandchild, Maria. Isn’t she beautiful? She’s ten now. Everything I needed to know about being a grandma, I pretty much learned from her. Not in any big “Aha!” moment, but in a lot of little moments until, finally, she owned me.
When she was about two, Maria and her mother came over one day unannounced. I was kneeling on the floor in my room going through some clothes, when I heard her little feet on the stairs. She ran in and hugged me hard around the neck. “Grandma,” she said, “Grandma.” As if I’d just pulled her back from the abyss.
And that is how they tighten the rope around your heart.
Another time, when she was still too little to know better, she introduced me to a woman who happened to be washing her hands in the same public restroom. “This is my grandma,” she told the woman, as if it was something the general public needed to know.
And that is how they pull on the rope and rip out your heart and lock it away in a box somewhere.
Then sometimes (when it was still just the two of us – no Christian, Grace, Cosette or Baby Bret) out of the blue she would say, “You’re my grandma,” and I had to reply, “I am your grandma.”
And that is how they take the box with your heart in it and drop it in the bottom of the Forever Ocean, never to be seen again.
Dec. 20, 2006
If I hadn’t had to work yesterday, I wouldn’t have been exhausted at my granddaughter’s Christmas program, even if it did go on and on…and on. Because why settle for one rendition of “Jingle Bells” when there are three? And if you’re paying good money for trombone and cymbal lessons, I suppose you want to hear the school band play 10 or 20 tunes with a general holiday flavor. Anyway, it was worth it to hear the kindergartners get through “Elfie the Elf.” Maria was the elf with her hat on backwards, so she was easy to spot. I have no complaints.
Dec. 21, 2007
Went to the always surprising school Christmas program last night. You may remember last year’s event, when the school band played no less than three versions of “Jingle Bells” and Maria distinguished herself by wearing her elf hat backwards with the bell dangling in front. This year I’m happy to report that the band was restricted to playing the overture and Maria not only sang but also attempted to keep the boy next to her on task despite vigorous resistance. This year’s program had a soccer theme – kind of a stretch, I thought, but having the advantage of minimal costuming, since jerseys and shorts took care of almost the entire cast.
So the evening should have been, and probably would have been, straightforward were it not for my other grandchildren – three under the age of four now, and all with no sense whatever of acceptable audience behavior. Christian ate all the candy meant to sustain them for the night in the first five minutes, while Grace never lost her fascination with flip-up auditorium seating. And you might think a three-month-old child somewhat limited – they sleep, they lie there, they cry. Not so. Cosette sings. Infant singing is a sort of unearthly sound that’s hard to describe, but it’s loud and won’t be deterred by some stupid pacifier.
All in all, an entertaining evening, and no more than I expected.
Dec. 29, 2008
Made it through the annual Christmas programs again. The elementary school put on a play about the true meaning of Christmas, which I’m sure inspired every parent and grandparent to rush home and return all those toys in the closet. It took me a long time to figure out what the girl in the bell costume was supposed to be. Until she started ding-donging, I was pretty sure she was a lampshade, but if you think about it, that makes no sense. Maria was in the choir. She is an excellent choir member.
Being an equal-opportunity grandma, I also went to the preschool Christmas program, where you can always count on seeing three- and four-year-olds not follow the script. There’s always one little girl who knows the words and motions to every song, a bunch of little ones who give it a half-hearted try, and a kid who won’t do a thing. I was pretty sure that kid would be Christian, but I was wrong. He sang and he didn’t fall off the steps.
When Christian first started preschool, my daughter Jill was a little alarmed by what you might call his anti-social behavior (I wouldn’t call it that but no one ever sides with me). Anyway, we were all happy when Christian made a friend. Elliot wears glasses and comes about to Christian’s chin. Elliot was the kid who wouldn’t do anything. Not one word, not one finger twitch. Elliot was a statue. I like Elliot.
Dec. 18, 2009
This year’s preschool Christmas program lived up to every expectation, largely due to the boys in the Teddy Bear class, who are three and four years old and have no attention span worth mentioning. My favorite kid this year was the boy who had his back to us for the entire concert. I suppose if you don’t plan on singing anyway, why look at your parents (and grandparents who came all the way from Burnsville) sitting hopefully in the audience?
Then about midway through “Building up a Temple,” another Teddy Bear, who apparently found just being there exhausting, decided to sit down on the step. This caught on quickly, of course, and pretty soon the boys on either side of him were sitting on the step too…until one of them decided to climb the steps to see how the boy who wouldn’t face the audience was doing. At this point Mrs. Olsen, the Teddy Bear teacher and no dummy, went on stage and restored order.
Meanwhile, the girls kept singing. My granddaughter Grace, who has a very small speaking voice, sings really loud, so we had no trouble at all hearing her. She had every word and gesture down too, and after the program Mrs. Olsen very kindly called her “our star,” which I think is pretty much what Gracie sees when she looks into the future.
After the Teddy Bears sat down, it was time for the Frog class to sing. Most of them are five and have been down this road before, so while the girls still carried the load, the boys endured. There was the kid who kept us up to date with announcements between each song (“This is the last one!”), but at least nobody gave up and sat down. Christian is big now. I waved at him like a lunatic and got half a smile. I still gave him lots of kisses afterward and told him how great he did. He didn’t care.
So that was it, and I don’t think you could spend a more enjoyable hour during the holiday season.
December 22, 2010
I went to Maria and Christian’s school Christmas program last night, which is usually one of the happier things I do during the holidays. This year’s performance had everything you’d expect and then some. You haven’t really heard “Jolly Old St. Nicholas” until you’ve heard it played on the recorder by a bunch of fourth graders. And the school band was in fine form, although the lack of a bass drum player meant one of the female flutists had to take over that instrument for “Here Comes Santa Claus.” The girl’s utter disdain for the bass drum was truly impressive. She could barely get out of her folding chair and drag herself over to it. And then you’d think the mallet weighed 50 pounds. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard “Here Comes Santa Claus” played more mournfully.
The bell ringers went on a little too long (four holiday tunes with no verses omitted), but I am loathe to criticize them lest Maria have bell-ringing in her future.
Christian’s kindergarten class did a commendable job, particularly on “Jingle Bells,” where they got to ring the little bells hanging around their necks at all the jingly spots. As they had to wait for their turn a good long while sitting on stage, the bells became objects of great fascination – first you examine your own bell, then you study your neighbor’s bell, then you hang the bell from your ears.
In the finale, the fourth graders sang. That’s Maria’s class, and while most of the classes looked more resigned than merry, the fourth-grade girls were almost bouncy. They smiled, they knew all the words and they sang loud. I concluded that fourth-grade girls are a good way to wrap up a Christmas program.
It’s snowing and blowing again. The weatherfolks say this storm could be as bad or worse than the Halloween snowstorm of 1991, which has become our yardstick for all storms thereafter. No worries about a white Christmas, just whether there’s enough milk, bread and liquor for the duration.
Went to Maria and Grace’s dance recital last Saturday. It was packed. When little kids perform, you can count on family to be there – tired parents, little sisters, big brothers, cheerful grandparents, loyal aunts, bored uncles, clueless cousins – by golly, we show up! And that’s to see your little Ginger Rogers on stage for approximately two minutes of a one-and-a-half-hour show, because there are a lot of classes in that dance school and every one of them gets their moment.
From what I saw, my own granddaughters, who are exceedingly graceful and light on their feet, could have had extra time – solos perhaps – but that’s just my opinion.
I sat next to Christian for most of the performance. He had seen his sisters dance, so his attention wasn’t exactly riveted on the stage. I gave him a stick of gum, which amused him for a while. I looked over once and the gum was hanging from his nose. I looked over again and it was hanging from one eyelid. Finally his mother, sitting behind us, leaned over and told him to put the gum in his mouth and keep it there. Which he largely ignored.
Last night was the second annual manicure/pedicure party in honor of my friend Julie who died in 2009. Julie liked having her nails done, so a bunch of us who loved her started gathering at the nail salon on her birthday to do the same. The organizer, of course, was Barbara, who could have organized the settling of the West and done it with half the covered wagons and happier Indians. We bring our daughters and granddaughters, food and wine, and catch up.
So I’m snowed in for the time being. But I do have soft feet, copper-colored toenails, and enough leftover deviled eggs to last till the snowplow comes through.
My grandson Christian, who is six, came over to spend the night last Saturday. I like to have the grandkids over individually now and then in order to study them more closely. So far I’ve learned that I have next to no control over my own actions let alone theirs. There appears to be some force within them that saps my will. I think it’s situated behind their eyes somewhere, as that is usually what does me in.
It is not my intention to spoil the grandkids. It just works out that way. Thinking frugally, I took Christian to the cheap-seat theater, where two tickets to Despicable Me cost just $5. Then I paid $18.50 for two small popcorn, two small drinks and a box of Dots. He didn’t touch the popcorn and ate about three Dots, although when we were standing at the concession stand, Dots had been indispensable to his happiness. We now know he doesn’t like Dots. Then you can’t escape the theater without passing the videogames in the lobby, where weak people will pay $3 in quarters for two rubber bands shaped like familiar household objects.
Nevertheless, I was grateful Christian didn’t suggest going to Chuck E Cheese, because I would have had to take him. Chuck E Cheese should be avoided at all times but especially on Saturday afternoons, when the children run free like animals on the Serengeti. You lose track of what you’re spending at Chuck E’s, because you have to change your cash dollars into Chucky coinage, which is all the arcade games will eat and faster than you can say Vegas slot machine.
The next morning I had to drop Christian off at church, so on the way we stopped at Target to buy a toy. Because that is what we do. I was thinking something from the $1 Spot. Christian was thinking giant LEGO Star Wars set for $99.99. Negotiations ensued, as they always do, and we settled on one “big” toy for $19.99 and one “small” toy for $9.99. Also four toys from the $1 Spot, two for each sister. Can’t forget them.
Got lost on the way to church, which happens sometimes when you drive to St. Paul. People from Minneapolis can wander for days over there searching for a freeway entrance. So we were at least a half-hour late for church, where my son-in-law Lynn was waiting unruffled on the steps. He’s pretty easy-going about things like that. Also, he likes me.
Christian and I had a good time. He was happy, I was happy, money is replaceable. Next up, Maria. She doesn’t come cheap.
My granddaughter Cosette celebrated her third birthday last month with a party in their backyard attended by eight kids, two infants and twelve adults. You need extra adults. Like everything else, Cosette has her own ideas about birthdays. She likes the cake and the singing part but has surprisingly little interest in opening presents. There we were, twenty-odd people gathered in common cause, people who had thought long and hard about what a three-year-old who never stops moving might like, had shopped and wrapped and picked just the right greeting card, people waiting to see the expression of joy on her little face when she opened their gifts, and all she wanted to do was hit a plastic ball off a plastic tee. Her father finally put the tee in the garage. It helped a little. Not much.
My assignment for the birthday party was to put on a puppet show. This is an excellent example of the things my children don’t mind asking me to do. I have never expressed any interest whatsoever in puppetry. I am simply available and not likely to refuse. So I went on the Internet to learn about puppet stuff.
There is no shortage of politically correct puppet show scripts online. There is a shortage of funny puppet show scripts online. I finally found an old Punch & Judy script. If you’re old enough to remember Howdy Doody, you probably remember Punch & Judy. They’ve been around for about 300 years and never in that time had a problem with family violence. Besides beating each other with sticks, they (baby)sat on the baby, put the baby in the oven to dry and perpetrated a number of other abuses against the baby. Naturally, I had to take all that stuff out (I also had to change their names, as my daughter didn’t want a puppet named Punch and I didn’t want one named Judy), but it was still a pretty funny script.
Punch & Judy, before puppets were cute, bland and PC
I went shopping for hand puppets. Nothing fancy. One boy, one girl. Apparently puppets are not the hot toy this holiday season, because I couldn’t find one in the seven-county metro area. Back to the Internet. Lots of puppets – dogs, cats, cows, bears, bees, mice. Humans? Not so much. I tried making sock puppets, paper bag puppets, even dish towel puppets. In the end, I ripped the heads off two old dolls in the basement, added some fabric, and voila! Two puppets who couldn’t hold their heads up.
Show time. Puppet theater set up on the grass. Little people lined up in front, big people in back – a group, fortunately, with few or no expectations. And despite several theatrical mishaps, such as props rolling off the stage into the audience, the show received rave reviews. This is what I learned: 1) try to have at least one dress rehearsal, lest the puppets go out there and forget their lines; 2) don’t use anything that’s round or has wheels as a prop; 3) it’s okay if you forget #1 and #2, because the kids don’t care anyway – just make a lot of noise and send enough objects flying through the air and they’ll think it’s hilarious.
I’m thinking I’d better introduce you to the grandkids, so you’ll have a better understanding of what I’m facing. I love them, of course, and I think they love me. You would love me too if I bought you things and let you do anything you want and constantly told you how perfect you are. That’s because every one of them is indeed perfect, a mysterious thing since their parents clearly were not.
My oldest grandchild, Maria, now ten, inherited the family sarcasm gene and then elevated it to an art. It’s a little disconcerting. As it is, I can’t tell when she’s joking, and now along comes pre-puberty with the inevitable eye-rolling and withering looks. It was just the two of us for quite a while, so Maria is special and knows it and appears to simply tolerate the others as inconveniences that won’t go away. Her brother, Christian, is the bane of her existence.
At six, Christian is all boy all the time. From the time he was able to pick up a stick, he’s been brandishing something, which is how I learned to play pirates and robots. I don’t know what I’m doing, can’t make the right sounds or fight properly, but it doesn’t matter since my role is always the same – I am the hapless chump who dies. Christian can surprise you though. Like when his little sister Grace is sleeping and he brushes back the hair on her forehead to kiss her. It’s enough to make you weep.
Five-year-old Grace is basically uninhibited, sometimes shy, terminally cute. Her fashion signature is tutu with jeans, and she will smile for a camera at the drop of a hint. Grace has a soft little voice but sings very LOUD, and after last year’s Christmas concert, her pre-school teacher kindly called her “our star,” which I think is pretty much what Gracie sees when she looks into the future.
Then along came Cosette, one of those bright first-born children who starts talking early and then it’s off to the races. I feel a little sorry for her parents. She misses nothing and I don’t imagine it will be long before she knows more than they do. In the past year she’s told her father, “Calm down, Dad,” and her mother, “Focus, Mom.” She turned three this month. Cosette likes to tell people what to do, which usually means just me and their dog and sometimes just me.
And finally there’s Cosette’s baby brother, Bret Jr., just two months old. The only trouble he’s caused so far is that no one knows what to call him. This happens with juniors. Usually the parents have a nickname in mind, but these two did not. How long can we call him Baby Bret? Eventually it will be Toddler Bret, then Boy Bret, and I refuse to go any further than Boy Bret. Even that’s too far. “Oh, well,” his mother says, “Something will work out” – a rather cavalier attitude, if you ask me, but nobody ever does.
And that’s them. I have a life apart from being a grandmother, of course, and some time I’ll tell you about it.
Grandchild behavior can be interesting to say the least and sometimes makes me wonder what awaits them if they continue down this path. A few years ago, for example, when the family was over one day, I didn’t think much of it when I saw 8-year-old Maria cutting up a grapefruit in the kitchen. After everyone left, I sat down to read, and a few hours later headed for bed. I went upstairs, turned on the bedroom light and found hanging there a chunk of pink grapefruit stuck on the wall with a hat pin. Which probably wouldn’t have been a big deal except that I had just been reading The Killing Floor by Lee Child, which is exactly what it sounds like, and at first glance the piece of grapefruit looked remarkably like a piece of human flesh to me and it took about ten minutes for the hysteria to subside. I ask you, what would possess a child to pin grapefruit to her grandmother’s bedroom wall? Truly, it is troubling to me.
Grandma Kissed A Sailor 