When one is naturally platinum, AND a mental nomad, one is
not always aware that time is passing.
Of course, a feeble mind is better than none, I suppose. It’s September. I’m perplexed, and wondering where the
summer went. I can account for
each day of it, but not the whole of it.
The grandchildren are all back in school. So far there have been few problems
that can’t be explained by
aggravated puberty.
It seems so quiet.
School started earlier than usual this year. The annual ritual of delivering
children on the first day sun-browned and solar-bleached to their classrooms
never seems to get easier, especially for grandmas whose hearts are collateral
damage to the education system. I
guess I’ll always be reluctant to share custody. I’m a veteran by-stander to hard moments.
Because school started earlier, so did autumn, proving that
fall is not regulated by the calendar.
I love the harvest season, even though it forces me to adjust my
circadian rhythm from vacation standard time.
Our family took a road trip to Washington state in July. Talk
about malfeasance in grandparenthood! But it seemed like a good idea at the
time. Being cocooned in an enclosed container traveling at 80 m.p.h. down a
freeway with pre-pubescent adolescents for extended periods of time makes me wonder
just why we don’t eat our young. It
actually affects the lungs, like a suck of immense force and duration. But any
grandparent who braves such an adventure and survives, learns a lot. It’s predatory knowledge. I’ve become a living proverb. Learn from me.
So the following is my essay on “Things I Learned This
Summer.”
1. Facial Coding. I
learned very quickly that when the kids begin to look bored, it is only a
matter of minutes before they are fighting like Philistines. Now, I’m not averse to the shedding of
a little blood now and then, but not in my new Lexus.
2.
Possible Solutions to Sibling Carnage:
a.
Hurl empty threats that have lain fallow since our last
family trip, without the remotest possibility of exacting consequences. My
personal and most impotent favorite:
NON-SURGICAL LOBOTOMIES FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY! However, as every grandparent knows, empty threats are the
prized conduit of faux authority.
b.
Point out that the aforementioned culprits have
all just bartered away their birthrights-their dreams of an inheritance…peat
moss! (Note to self: Skyrocket the eyebrows while issuing
threat.)
c.
Appeal to the better angels of their nature by
reminding them we are a “forever family” and then bleating vulgarisms at
decibels greater than their tantrums.
The cosmos completely absolves any matriarch who mutters harsh language
on family excursions.
d.
Blow vuvuzelas till my eyeballs are bulging,
veined and cavernous, hoping the annoyance
threshold sends them insane, and they are forced to seek silence in compliance.
(FYI: My new favorite word: “persevere.”)
Speaking of facial coding, we have all learned from
experience that when Beckham goes red, then white, then blue in rapid
succession, he is not being patriotic, he’s nauseous. So we pull over, grab the emergency emisis
bucket and pray the projectile actually hits the intended basin.
I also learned a lot about music. It has been said that music calms the savage beast. I say, it depends on the music.
After extensive periods of time listening to the current
hits, I am now very well acquainted with Pink, One Direction, Imagine Dragons,
Katy Perry, and Lady Antebellum. I like today’s artists. But a steady diet of “We’re never,
ever, ever, ever, ever getting back together,” can actually produce polyps. Really. Hippocrates declared that fact an immutable law of anatomy
hundreds of years ago. He was a grandparent at the time.
So, knowing that music can be therapeutic in treating mental
illness, enhance mood and calm agitation, I suggested some old-fashioned rock
‘n roll, maybe even something mellow like Simon and Garfunkel or James Taylor, or
Barry Manilow, or how about The Beatles.
The ensuing protests were louder than a Donald Trump rant. The kids were making exaggerated gagging
gestures in hunched bundles, and putting garlic around the windows of the car
to ward off evil. They feared a
protracted discussion of “the good old days,” and the accompanying stroll down
memory lane. Then they’d text comatose emojis to the cousin sitting next to
them and sarcastically remark that they were “feelin’ groovy.” There seemed to
be something going unsaid here.
I tried my own
facial coding, but a smirk looks absurd in the adult species.
We all worked
to establish token distance.
I had the distinct impression they could look at my face and
calculate the half-life of plutonium simply by counting the wrinkles and
dividing by my bra size. They
looked at me like I was primal woman squinting at extinction. I’m sure they were expecting death
rigors at any moment.
It was the classic clash of generations. I could barely refrain from
shrieking…”Back in the day…” Job
has nothing up on a grandma on a roadtrip!
Learning absolutely nothing from Washington, and in a state
of moronic optimism, I took the gang to Cedar City for the annual Shakespeare
Festival. My biggest challenge was convincing my tribe that
Shakespeare and I
were not classmates.
We had seats on the front row, and I prayed the grandkids
wouldn’t pick any orifice on their faces, belch the National Anthem with their
hands cupped over their armpits while making simulated
flatulent noises, and make me fear my internal organs would drop to my shoes…
or do anything to cause me to wish for a retroactive contraceptive pill.
Astonishingly, they did not do anything that was socially
unacceptable, or couldn’t be explained away by an undeveloped frontal cortex.
It was all good.
And now it’s fall. The offspring have returned to class, and I, the eternal platinum prodigal, am singing, “I
am the eye of the tiger, and you’re gonna hear me roooaaaarrrrrr.” It enhances my mood, calms my agitation, and helps me keep from missing the younger generation too much.
