Backstory
When my granddaughter read this story, she was disappointed. She usually likes my stories. But in this muse, she felt I was accusing grandkids of choosing not to spend time with me. I was not. My story wondered how they would choose to spend their time under Grandma’s roof.
Grandmotherly Visits
I remember riding on the train – backward. It made me dizzy. My grandmother would pick me up in Brooklyn and we’d take the train to her home in Northeast Pennsylvania. She would keep me for a couple of weeks, or a month and then take me back to my parents.
I loved those visits.
I expected I’d be doing the same thing with my grandkids when the time came. But that’s never happened. They’re far away. They’re busy. They have plans. I have plans. And somehow, the opportunity never presents itself.
My granddaughters have never poked through my jewelry box or worn my opera-length pearls. They have not ransacked my hat boxes and posed in my old Easter bonnets or waddled about in my high-heeled shoes.
I wonder what it would take for me to get one of them under my roof for a few weeks. Nothing short of kidnapping, I think.
Would they like it? Would they have wanted to hear the story of how an Asian craftsman took years to carve this ivory tusk? Would they serve tea in the same teacups from which their great-grandparents sipped? Would they enjoy looking through old photos and learning about relatives they have never met?
Or would they sit in my parlor playing video games or texting friends at home? Would the visit show how much I love them? Or bore them to tears?
Guess I’ll never know.
P.S. Those of us who seek to recreate happy events from the past might instead craft new memorable events in the present.
[Show #446]
