Thoughts of a Grandchild

Visiting my grandparents I wonder if I’m too serious. Like my grandpa. What I really mean is I’d like to make my grandma laugh. She laughs when I’m there but mostly at her own jokes and stories. Like the one where she comes back from Germany with her parents, 10 years old, speaking German, and fat from eating cake instead of the dark German bread.

It occurs to me later that I made my grandpa laugh by eating a big bite of apple pie. “That would take me at least three bites,” he says while I try to mentally divide my piece into three while thinking I could accommodate a lot more. This is apple pie. The bite was slightly ungainly, but quite doable even with my sticky jaw joints that don’t like opening all the way. Did they?

I don’t remember if my jaw did or not. I do remember clearing away plates and cleaning and putting away the card table they used for a visit from my grandpa’s sister and her husband. I remember talking with my grandparents. I remember feeling as I left that I wanted to make my grandma laugh. Not the way she nervously laughs when I carry her up and down the stairs at my parent’s, but by being playful and precocious as she nears 92.

And now I’m thinking about what I can give my grandma. The woman who started teaching me how to read. The woman who attached buttons to knotted string in ketchup bottles to make toys, who fired the best omelets over a blue gas flame, who embarrasses and delights me by telling jokes to strangers. I can adjust her mattress when it slips, shovel her driveway, take out the trash, trim the weeds growing up in the sidewalk cracks, and other chores. And maybe after a hard lifetime of chores, that’s what she needs.

I’d also love to get my mother a maid to end her lifetime of chores, but I know she’d prefer travel. She’d prefer exploring Thailand or Vietnam with me to not having to cook and clean in an increasingly vacant home. She’d also prefer to provide wants to needs. I remember finding her after one of my dad’s “let’s show Mom how much we love her” programs. Mom was down. Everyone had mentioned how much she did for them which left her feeling, ‘is that all?’

Needs and wants. The first seems boring, the latter exciting as evidenced by the maid versus world travel scenario or mattress adjusting versus jokemeister-G. Am I bothered by being a boring need fulfiller rather than a want provider? A source of comfort instead of excitement?

Or am I a perpetual discontent? When I was young, I was smart and good, but I wanted to be fun and popular. Then I was fun, but I missed being thoughtful. So I contemplated more but wanted surety. I’m helpful in ways to my grandma. I want to be good to her, but why is the role I seem to fulfill at the moment one that is not good for what it is, but lacking for what it isn’t? Her favorite granddaughter brings her dinners and plays skipbo with her. A relief because she hates cooking—hates—and a delight because she loves games.

So I worry about giving people what they need but not what they want even though it’s not true. For one, I’m not even that good at providing needs. I help only rarely my mother or my grandma. Plus, I’ve told grandma some zingers. When taking her to visit my grandpa in the hospital, she asked why the orange went to the doctor. I guessed, “He had a naval infection?” The alternate punch line stopped her. She cooed, ‘ooh, that’s good,’ before going on to say, “He wasn’t peeling well,” with a naughty smile. Every nurse, receptionist and visitor we passed heard the joke with both punch lines, my grandma graciously crediting me with the one I had come up with.

So embarrassing.