About Grandma
Grandma has been very sad lately. She feels unneeded, purposeless, alone.
The apartment that used to be noisy and crowded at all times is suddenly always empty. A thin layer of dust covers a tidiness that is not her merit anymore, because there is nobody there to untidy it.
Four children, eleven grandchildren. So much pride. They are all smart, all healthy, all ‘good looking like grandma’.
They can do anything, she thinks to herself. That thought comforts her slightly, but not quite, when she wakes up in the middle of the night worried sick, her old little heart racing against her will. She thinks of the grownups and their jobs, of the children and their grades, and of the teenagers out and about in town, phones always in hand — except when she calls.
She calls each of them every night. The family calls it The Patrol.
The family laughs at The Patrol.
The family tells her the only reason she thinks they’re the most important people in the world is because they came out of her. The family calls her a narcissist and a control freak. The family tells her she needs hobbies and exercise. Her children, the grownups, tell her she should focus less on them, that they’re doing fine. Plus, they’re just regular people, not that smart, not that good, not worthy of that much attention.
The family talks of how much drama she makes.
She’s not convinced. Sometimes, when she’s too tired to argue, she’ll agree, jokingly, just to make them stop talking, ‘yes, of course, I’ve raised you bad, haven’t I?’
Knowing how good they are, because she saw the children they were, and that they are not acting on it, is what hurts her when they are not that good to her.
They don’t seem to like her company very much anymore. Not even the children, who used to beg for stories and games. Now they’re always looking at those damn phones with insanely small letters and giggling to themselves after each blip.
Still, when she looks at their giggly faces she sees only Beauty.
Her frail heart turns and aches everyday with how much she misses being needed and wanted by those amazing little beings she pulled out of her guts.
