Meeting the Grampies

Anyone who knows me (meaning the two friends who are reading this blog) knows I have a close relationship with my grandparents. Yes, despite my status as a middle-aged Mom both my grandparents are still alive. We never associated with my father's parents so I grew up thinking I only had one set of grandparents. I still do. And no, I'm not the oldest grandchild, in fact far from it. I just happen to come from "good stock" as my mother says, my grandfather is six months shy of his 100th birthday and my grandmother is going on 92.

On the day Eliza was born, my grandmother fell while taking down a sheet from an indoor clothing line. She was in the basement of her four story house, lying on the floor for quite a while before my grandfather realized something was up, came downstairs and I assume called 911. She broke her hip and was carried out of the house on a stretcher, not to return, where they performed surgery on her the following day. Her odds of surviving the surgery were 40/60. The doctor who did it said "I'd never operated on anyone so old." She was never expected to walk again but a month later, she was up with the help of a walker, doing laps around the old folks hospital to the applause of her fellow patients. When she went in for her surgery, now knowing she had a new granddaughter who was named after her, and was told she might not survive, her only fear was that she would not meet her new great-granddaughter. My daughter is very special to my grandmother as she is the first child born to my grandmother's family since me. My grandmother only gave birth to one child, my mother, who only gave birth to my brother and me. My grandmother's brother had one daughter who opted to not have children. Since my brother is autistic, it's unlikely he'll reproduce. So it was up to me to carry on my grandmother's family.

This past President's day weekend we strapped Eliza into her little car seat carrier and drove the 370 miles to Pittsburgh. My mother rode in the front seat while I sat in the back, staring at my daughter. C drove, ready to jump out the window as he listened to my mother and myself tell the same stories about this cousin and that aunt for the 40th time. Eliza slept the entire way, her face pitched forward and bobbing, as though some one was repeatedly wacking her on the back.

We got to my Grandfather's house, no longer my grandparents house because my grandmother no longer lives there. Upon release from the hospital, she took a small apartment in an assisted living facility. My grandfather met us at the door, snatched the baby from C's hands and told C "Move your car right up to mine. Right up to the bumper." My grandfather doesn't live in a safe neighborhood and always makes sure he allows enough space for the drug dealer next door's SUV. I wasn't keen on handing over my daughter to a 99 year old but he didn't give us a chance, simply grabbed the baby and ordered C with an authority C could only obey. Not knowing what to do, I simply followed C outside to start hauling up my mother's bags.

C muttered something about being unhappy handing the baby off and I agreed but neither one of us was about to take her from my grandfather. Later, C told me that Pap (what we call my grandfather) was very careful when he handed Eliza back to C and that the old man could hold our daughter any time.

After the bags were unloaded at the car was successfully kissing the ass of Pap's car, I noticed the house smelled like piss. And so did, I'm sorry to say, Pap. Gram had taken her chair out of the living room so the space under the window seemed oddly empty. The light in the bathroom was uncharistically dim. When I opened the refrigerator, I smelled rotting eggs and noticed several tupperware containers still marked by my Grandmother's handwriting. Remember now, Eliza is three months old now so that food had been there for three months. Eliza needed to be fed so I went into the dining room, opened up my shirt and struggled to hold her steady while she squirmed on the tiny wooden chair. I chose the dining room for privacy but Pap kept coming in to get a key or putz by the window so I'm pretty sure he got a fantastic view of my oversized tits. I was hungry and anxious to get to Gram's so my mother called the hotel C and I were staying at to find out how late their restaurant was open. I could hear C, who never gets sick, hacking from the living room. Already, this was shaping up as a stressful trip.

Done feeding my fussy, squirmy daughter, I scrapped the idea of changing her into the green velvet dress my mother was so proud to have purchased for her and decided to take her to Gram's in her pink fleece coveralls. We left my grandfather, who is always confused by the idea of anyone spending money on a hotel (remember this man lived through the depression, strapped Eliza back in the car seat and took off for my Grandmother's. Eliza chose this moment to have a complete screaming meltdown. Eliza is a fantastic baby--she rarely cries unless she's hungry, very tired or something is hurting her. This was the first time C had heard her cry for "no reason" in a while. He drove while my mother directed him. I sat in the backseat trying to console my daughter with no luck. I guess after sleeping in the car for seven hours and arriving at our destination, Eliza was trying to tell us "no more car, no more travel." And here I was, so anxious to show her off I was strapping her in for another ride. After this, we'd have to drop my mother back off at Pap's, then proceed to the hotel. Gram's apartment facility is two blocks away from the house I lived in on North Craig Street my senior year in college but I took no pleasure in this drive down memory lane as my daughter wailed beside me. I become very discombobulated when she cries like that and nothing I did, the singing (which contrary to everyone else's complaints my daughter enjoys), the toys waggling in front of her eyes, the shushing in her ear, calmed down my little one. It was terrifying as I realized we still had another stage in our journey. C made a joke about by the third kid, you really don't hear the crying and my mother laughed.

We got to Gram's apartment, parked in an enclosed parking structure and Eliza quieted down as soon as I unstrapped her from her car seat. We followed my mother, who'd been here before, to a glass door marked "residence." Mom hit a buzzer, an unseen woman said "yes" and my mom answered, "We're here to see Elizabeth Conderato." The door buzzed and we stood outside two elevators. When the elevators finally came, my daughter now burrowed and half asleep in my arms, we got on and rode up to a Mezzanine. There we signed in, were given a token for the parking garage, and got back on the elevator and hit "4." My lucky softball number, now the floor my Grandmother lived on.

"Place seems nice," C said as the elevator doors closed at it was. I know my mother doesn't like it because the other people there are far more, shall we say, gone.

As we got off on four, we passed a lit fireplace, a common room with a group of people in wheelchairs watching a movie on a big screen TV and my Grandmother's neighbor's room, marked "Madeline" something. I noticed this because Madeline is the name of C's oldest daughter. We came to the next door marked "Elizabeth Conderato" and knocked. "Come in," sounded softly from inside.

Grandma sat in the reclining chair she'd brought from home covered with a thick blanket. The room was stifling hot, like the thermostat was set at 85 degrees. Her feet were propped up, a walker sat in front of the chair, and the TV blared wheel of fortune. My grandmother turned her head towards us in slow motion. She saw me, saw Eliza and there was recognition but no light. No smile, no joy, she didn't sit up and hold out her arms. Instead, she only looked tired. I felt like crying.

We quickly shrugged off our coats and Mom and I sat across from Gram in the loveseat while C took the small wooden chair beside Gram. I bounced Eliza, now recovered from her backseat breakdown, on my lap.

"See my baby, Gram," I said. "Isn't she gorgeous."

My grandmother nodded, her eyes barely open. She stared at Eliza, seeming perplexed by our presence.

"What time did you leave?" she asked. I told her ten. "Did you stop by your grandfather's first." My mother told her we had. "How'd he look?"

I shrugged, holding the baby up higher for her to view. "Like Pap," I said.

"You eat," she asked. I lied and said we had. "See my baby?" I said again.

"What time did you leave," she asked again. I repeated my answer. Some one on Wheel of Fortune must have lost a round because that sound of bottoming out whistled from the TV. I'd pictured this moment in my life more than other girls pictured weddings, proposals, Oscar night speeches. I wasn't even sure if I'd wanted children but I'd so dreamed of holding up my baby to her and watching her face open up as she curled the baby in her arms. "My granddaughter," she'd say. "My little girl," cause in the dreams that baby was always a girl.

And now my dream had come true but this wasn't playing out how I'd wanted. Would it have been better, back at Pap's in that old house with dim lighting and the smell of urine?

Finally, she took a long look at Eliza and said, "She seems big."

"She is," I said, excited she'd noticed. "She's very long."

"How much does she weigh?" My grandmother is obsessed with people's weight. Who's gained weight, who's lost weight, who likes to puke down the toilet.

"Twelve pounds when I last checked." I said.

"What time did you leave," she asked again.

Quickly, I planned and executed our escape. It was after 8 now and none of us had eaten dinner. My grandmother didn't protest, in fact seemed relieved. Eliza was quiet as we first drove Mom to Pap's, then found our way via a circuitous route, to the William Penn Hotel. I didn't say much, what could I say? That the moment was a disappointment? Could I really say that to C who only had one surviving grandparent? What's the first question people ask when I say my grandmother's in the hospital? "How old." And when I answer there's that look, that almost smugness, that feeling of "Well they've had a good long life." And my response to that is always the same, "I know they can't live forever but that doesn't mean I don't want them to."

We checked in, went up to our spacious room. I was holding the baby while C was getting ice or something, I just remember I was alone in the room when the bellman came up with our bags and the head of housekeeping set up the pack-n-play. The two guys flirted almost, then told me their friendship went back 25 years. 25 years of working in this hotel, that's a long time. I tipped the guys with the money C left me and sat down on the bed with my daughter. She looked up at me and smiled. It was time to feed her again. I got comfortable on the bed and lifted up my shirt. C's loud cough proceeded him into the room.

"Let's order room service," he said. C hates room service, thinks it's way overpriced. "It's too dead around here to even think about going out. This town is dead."

It's true. Pittsburgh is a dying city. With no steel, it's tried to reinvent itself as a convention center, a tourist city, a city with high profile sports teams. There's a long strip mall plaza on the Monongahela where J&L Steel used to be. A corporate plaza replaced the torch at J&L near my grandparents. While in college, I wrote a short story about my grandparents and their neighborhood, called Hazelwood, which died in the sixties with the riots. One of my classmates referred to my story about the "decay of my grandparents along with their neighborhood."

Eliza sucked hungrily, a new life, full of fire.

So I hid. The next day, I spent most of the morning with C, driving around looking at gas stations. C is a real estate appraiser and managed to get a Pittsburgh based assignment to write reports on 16 gas stations in the Pittsburgh area. What we though would take two hours now looked like it would take 16. I called my grandmother who sounded too tired for my visit anyway. I cried in the backseat, upset by the fatigue, the resignation in her voice. Finally, by later afternoon, C and I headed towards Oakland, the neighborhood of my Alma Mater, now the neighborhood of my Grandmother. We stopped at some sandwich place for lunch. I don't remember what it had been when I went to Pitt. C bought my steak salad while I fed Eliza. In 16 years I'd gone from beer bongs to breastfeeding in public. A young couple beside us made it clear they disapproved of this activity while they were eating. The poor girl got an eyeful when she happened to turn in our directions just as Eliza began to spit up. As C and I got back in the car, Eliza screaming while we put her in the car seat, the couple walked by holding hands and I said something about us being an advertisement for birth control.

We got to my Gram's and I went up alone while C left to go look at more gas stations. My Mom and her cousin Carm were there. My grandmother seemed more awake, almost girlish. Already, this looked a lot better and I was happy. Eliza took a monster poop and I stripped her down to change her diaper. In the Miami like heat of the room, she seemed happy naked so I left her in her diaper. My grandmother leaned forward in her chair to watch Eliza squirm and wiggle on the changing mat. My cousin's Mike and Trish showed up with their two kids and everyone began the ceremonial gawking. It was fun as I struggled to breastfeed in relative privacy and Trish's four-year-old daughter kept barging in to say, "What's she eating?" At this point in time, I feel like most of my cousins have seen my boobs.

Then everyone left and it was just Gram, me and Eliza alone. Excited by some one-on-one time, I turned off the TV and tried to find out if Gram was happy in this place.

"What do you want?" I asked her.

"I want everyone to get along," she answered. "I don't want people arguing over where I live. I don't want your grandfather to be unhappy."

"Forget everyone else, what do you want?"

"I want harmony."

"Gram, you're not answering me, do you want to live here?"

She nodded slowly. "I like it here. They baby me and at my age I like to be babied. They clean, they change my sheets, they help me in the shower. I don't have to cook."

"Okay Gram, that's all I needed to know."

I held Eliza up for her but Gram fell asleep. Eliza was sleeping against me so I went in the bedroom and put her on the bed. Still only clad in her diaper, I covered her with my sweatshirt. I came back into the living room to find Gram snoring. I sat with her for a while and watched her sleep. Bored, I stole into the bedroom to call C, who was now on his way. Gram must have heard me talking because the TV clicked on. I came out of the bedroom and she looked up at me.

"Where's the baby?"

"She's sleeping."

She nodded, asked where C was. A few minutes later, he knocked on the door. He and she made small talk about Pittburgh. I peaked into the bedroom and looked at Eliza, still asleep, her arms stretched straight out to the sides in her little Superman position.

"Gram," I gestured. "Come look."

Gram lowered the footrest of her recliner and reached for the walker. Slowly she made her way up (this was the first time I'd seen her stand) and inched her way into the bedroom. She looked at Eliza for a long time. C stood in the doorway behind us.

"She looks like a little angel," Gram said, staring down at her. "You think she's warm enough."

I nodded. Gram reached down and covered her a bit more with the sweatshirt. Eliza stirred but didn't wake up.

C said something later, something along the lines of "you think she's in such bad shape and I saw a 91 year old woman with a broken hip, getting up with her walker when she's clearly in pain just to look at her granddaughter sleeping."

And he was right. I keep saying Gram complains too much about the loss of her hearing or how her back hurts too much when she should focus on the fact that she's still doing great for 91. I guess now it's my turn.

So many other stories from that weekend, about the little old lady with a walker who crashed our family dinner and couldn't get her bag of potato chips open. About finally showing up at my Grandmother's with Eliza in the green dress. My grandfather standing outside the door of the facility saying "I come to see my wife" into the intercom. The superslow elevator at Schenley Gardens, where you know no one's taking the stairs, to get up to the fourth floor. About the influx of my mother's sister's family, the coos of "most beautiful baby" and the little cousin who said, "she's eating you."

But let me leave you with this, the image of my grandmother, who now probably weighs less than 80 pounds, standing over my daughter in the dim light of a nighlight and looking at Eliza, her walker in front of her, her lips curled up in a slight smile.