24 November 2001 ~ Generations, or, "do you know what YOUR kids are playing with?"...

My grandfather is sick, and it's got me a little worried. Of course, he's almost eighty, so it's not surprising for him to have health problems, plus, he was a smoker for thirty or forty years, and a diabetic, but from what my grandmother told me, this is pretty bad.

...that is to say, one's blood sugar isn't SUPPOSED to be over three hundred.

My grandmother seems so calm about everything, despite her graphic descriptions of her husband's failing health. I guess I'm not really surprised. I suppose, in many ways, she's the sort of person who could have a loved one pass away and not BELIEVE they were really dead, and go on acting as if they were still alive. She's got a good sense of denial in her, and a 50-something year-old marriage with my grandfather, so I doubt the idea of serious illness or death has even entered her mind.

My grandfather and I have never been SUPER close, at least not since I was a kid. He used to tell me stories about the farm he grew up on in Minnesota, and the dumb horse he took care of, and so on. (My grandparents are both native Minnesotans; if you've ever seen The Golden Girls and you recall Rose Nyland's "when I was a girl in Minnesota" stories, you're WELL aware of the kind of stories I heard all throughout my childhood...) We've got vastly different temperaments; he's very solemn and thoughtful, a lot like my brother, and you can't break his concentration with ANYTHING, so he'll often break into a conversation with some completely irrelevent topic that had already ended twenty minutes ago. (That's just him, and he's always been like that; its not, like, an aging thing...) I'm bubbly and adaptable; he's quiet and contemplative. Really, he reminds me a lot of my brother, who is also nothing like me. And it's not that I don't get along with my grandfather, although I suspect we both sort of think the other is a little bit of a kook; it's just that we're very different people.

My paternal grandfather died when I was fifteen. I wasn't sad until I saw his brother, my great-uncle, crying a little. This tough old man from New Jersey, weeping softly over his brother's casket. That was sad, and maybe a little scary. But I couldn't cry. I hadn't known him that well. He didn't really like kids much, I don't think. He never bothered to ask my brothers or me what we were learning in school, or what we liked to do, or what toys we played with, or anything. He was just never really interested much. That was okay, I suppose. We respectfully avoided each other, because we freaked each other out. The most wonderful memory I have of him was the postcards he'd send me. One, sometimes two a week. None of them said anything except "Thought you'd like this postcard. Love, Grandpa Joe." I kept them all anyway; they're still in a box next to my bed. Most of them have famous paintings on them. I have my own postcard collection now. Someday, when I am old, I'll send them all, one by one, to some little seven year old, with nothing written on the back except "Thought you'd like this postcard. Love, [Aunt/Grandma/Whatever] Helena."

But my mom's father, while he's not exactly the roly-poly jolly-grandpa type, was ALWAYS interested in what I was learning in school, and how straight my retainer was making my teeth, and so on. I've never really thought about what I'd do if he became very ill or died. He's EIGHTY, you know? In a way, it seems like the fact that he's eighty might make it easy to think, "ah, he's an old man, he'll probably croak soon," but on the other hand, the fact that he's eighty, and has lived ALL these years, makes it seem LESS LIKELY that he'll ever die. Dumb, but I've never even thought about it.

And now that I AM thinking about it? I simply have no idea what TO think. I STILL can't really imagine it.

* * * * * * * * * * *

I was looking at the sky the other day and thinking about my childhood. I was thinking that there are so many things I'd love to share with a child-sort-of-person. My parents weren't perfect, and they did fuck up a lot, but certain VERY good times still remain steadfast in my memory. I'd love to erase the bad parts and be the kind of parent that my parents were during those good times.

When I was a kid, my parents weren't rich: just a newly-married (well, not THAT newly-married) couple with their first kid, trying to make it in the world. Since they didn't have a lot of money, they invented all these methods of entertainment for me that didn't cost much. They'd take me to the Oakdale Mall at night. After a certain time, they used to close down the fountain in the center of the mall, and put a huge round cover over it. My parents would take me to the mall, and tell me to run around on top of the fountain. It was dumb, but I loved it. Up until the day they tore down that stupid fountain, I'd see toddlers running around on that thing, screeching their bloody lungs out, singing, or just running in circles. And for the most part, the parents would say, "come on now, honey, get off that thing and follow mommy." I don't understand -- anymore -- what the hell was the fascination with that stupid fountain, because there wasn't any water to look at when the lid was on: it was just this ugly brown circular platform. But kids loved it, and my parents were enlightened -- and poor -- enough to indulge me.

Somebody -- I think it was my grandparents, actually -- gave me an old beat-up white mailbox when I was a kid. It was one of my favorite toys. Forget about Barbies and Carebears and Rainbow Brite and all that shit; I liked my mailbox best. So my parents indulged that stupid little joy, too. They'd give me their mail after they'd read it; I got all the old ads and things. I'd pretend I was a mailman. I sorted the mail, I pretended to send it to people, and if I remember right, I'd leave the flag up sometimes, and my mom would sneak in when I wasn't around, and take the "outgoing" mail out, and throw it away, and claim the mailman stopped by to pick it up. Mailboxes are cheaper than Fisher Price toys, and provide a lot more room for creativity anyway. Plus, my mailbox seemed so REAL, so adult -- not like a "baby toy" at all. Of course, twelve years later, I was working in a college post office, and loving it with all my heart and soul, and fifteen years later, I've got a few dozen penpals and I go to the "real" post office like, twice a week, so I guess it really does pay to let your kids be freaks if they want to be freaks. Kids who play with dolls end up being housewives. Kids who play with trucks end up driving forklifts around warehouses. But kids who play with mailboxes will end up being the next generation of novelists and serial killers: I'll let you guess which one I'm still aspiring to be...

My dad used to take my brothers and I to the airport, maybe once a week. That sounds pretty dumb, huh? None of us ever flew anywhere, of course, because who wants to bring three crying kids onto a plane? And who's got the money for that, anyway? But we'd go to the airport anyway. It cost a few dollars to park the car in the lot, but we'd all rush into the airport and spend a few hours playing. The Binghamton Regional Airport, then called the Edwin A Link airport (and nobody knows who Edwin is or was, so don't bother asking...), used to be entirely carpeted with this hideous seventies multi-colored carpet. The bannisters on the ramps were carpeted. Parts of the walls were carpeted. It was dark and ugly and a blatant insult to the eye. Of course, kids love that shit. My brothers and I would run up and down the ramps, getting rugburn on our hands. We'd stare for HOURS at the stupid luggage conveyor belt. Kids have great imaginations, and my brothers and I were not stupid kids, but we never could really figure out where the luggage WENT when it passed out of view. It was one of those great mysteries in life. Really, when I was five or so, the mystery of where the luggage on the conveyor belt went was at LEAST as important and baffling as the mysteries of ghosts and UFO's and things... And THEN, there were those great moments when a plane would take off or land. I had poor eyesight, even then, so I could never properly see the planes coming in. But when my dad pointed them out, I'd squint until they came into view, and it was this glorious rush. Every time I've been on a plane, I've experienced that rush all over again at take-off, and it's wonderful.

...And of course, the books... My mom taught me my letters before I could even speak. She'd sing me the alphabet song every time she walked up the stairs, because there was this dumb felt wall-hanging of the alphabet at the base of the stairs. And every night, she'd read a few paragraphs of "The Hobbit" to me. Then it was "Alice in Wonderland." I rarely went to bed without hearing a story. Often, my mom was a real bitch in those days, and I often thought she didn't love me. She'd yell at me a lot, or forget to pick me up at pre-school or after-school religious-education, but she almost NEVER failed to read to me before bed. I've always equated books with love. And look where THAT got me...

It's thinking about stuff like that that really makes me want to have kids someday. Maybe just one kid. Actually, I'm really certain I will be a mother someday. It's not a "wish," as such, but a sort of pleased knowledge that it WILL happen eventually. It's a knowledge I've always had, I think, because I've made preparations here and there for when that day arrives... I have names picked out. I have a brightly-colored baby quilt, made out of scraps from "Wizard of Oz" costumes. I saved two of my favorite books from childhood: a book of fairy-tales, and a book called "A Hole is to Dig," which is very bizarre, but the drawings are adorable. I'm not actively PLANNING on imminently having children or anything, but it will happen eventually, and I'll be as prepared as possible. And I suspect that when I'm a parent, I'll be one of those freaky mothers who lets their kids run around stupid platforms in malls. I'll buy my kids a mailbox to play with, and insist that their grandmother send them pretty postcards and things. I'll pass on all the really awesome stuff from my own childhood, and then let it loose and see where it goes.

So I was looking at the sky the other night with my mom -- there was this AMAZING sunset, with all these streaks from planes all lit up and sort of bluish. And I had this little déjà vu of watching planes at the airport when I was a kid, and this unbearable melancholy came over me. I said to my mom: "You know what really sucks about all this terrorism stuff? When I have kids, I won't be able to take them to the airport and bring them into the area where you can see the planes taking off... What with all the security and everything, my kids will never know what it's like to spend an evening watching planes at the airport."

My mom suddenly got really sentimental, and for a second, I thought she was going to cry. It must be amazing to hear your child fondly reminisce about something dumb their parents did for them when they were little. Then, for a second, I thought *I* was going to cry. There was something infinite and circular and beautiful in talking about children and future generations with my mom. She said: "Gahd, I never even thought of that! But you know, you'll find a way, somehow. You'll find some little back road near the airport and watch the planes from there or something." Then she was silent. I said: "It was the FIRST thing I thought of when they started talking about all this airport-security shit." But then I was quiet too, and we looked at the sunset for a few more minutes.

~Helena*