This is Getting Old by Susan Moon

Author:Susan Moon
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

Grandmother Mind

WHEN MY SON NOAH was about four and I was a harried single mother, he told me he wasn’t going to have children. It was time for me to take him to nursery school, and he refused to wear anything but his Superman costume, which was in the washing machine, clean but wet. I exploded in irritation, and he announced, “I’m never going to have kids. It’s too much trouble!”

I was chastened. “It’s worth it, sweetie,” I said. “It’s definitely worth it!”

As he grew up, I watched him cuddle pets and babies, but he held to the plan of not having children into adulthood. My younger son, Sandy, likes kids but is presently single, and I was beginning to fear I might never become a grandmother. A person can take certain actions to make it more likely that she’ll become a parent, but there’s not much a person can do to produce grandchildren. So even when Noah got married, I tried to keep my mouth shut. I reminded myself that he didn’t come into the world for the express purpose of giving me grandchildren. It was his and Arcelia’s business. They had their careers to think of, along with the economic challenge of parenting, and concerns about the imperiled planet. Still, I did mention that I would be glad to babysit.

I was well loved by both of my grandmothers, in their different ways. “Grandma” took me to Quaker meeting, wrote out her favorite prayers for me in a little notebook, and took me down the lane to her sculpture studio, where she gave me clay to play with while she sculpted. I was her first grandchild, and when I climbed into bed with her in the morning, she’d take off the strange black sleep mask that made her look like the Lone Ranger and hang it on the bedpost. She’d reach out to me and I’d curl up beside her, loving the feel of the cool soft flesh that hung from her upper arms, and she’d say, “Good morning, my number one grandchild!”

My other grandmother, known as “Ma,” kept lemon drops in a white glass chicken on her dresser, and if you wanted one all you had to do was cough a little fake cough and she’d say, “My dear, you must have something for your throat.” Whenever we children visited, there were fresh-baked chocolate cupcakes with vanilla frosting on a blue tin plate in the kitchen, and you were allowed to help yourself whenever you wanted to. She always smelled delicious, of a certain perfume that nobody else ever smelled of, and she wore a gold chain bracelet with a tiny gold airplane dangling from it. I asked her why, and she told me it was a replica of the air force plane her youngest son, my uncle Morton, was piloting when he was shot down over Japan, and she wore it so she would never forget his courage. It had the exact serial number engraved on the wing, so small you couldn’t even read it.

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