What a fulfilling day I had!! I had my document reviewed by two groups this week, and came out of it alive! whew! On top of that, I received an e-mail thanking me for a good job from my boss and he cc'd all of the managers, and our director. It was gratifying to get that kind of recognition from him, because my job has been pretty rough and thankless lately. I hope he knows how much that kind of thank you really helps keep people motivated. It's really nice.
I thought about my grandmother today. My father's mother. She lived in a house by herself for many many years. She was a very unhappy person. She came to this country when she was a young woman -- maybe late teens or early 20's, yet she never learned how to speak English. She spent her days sitting in a chair in front of a TV set, watching soap operas. Even though she didn't understand English, she was a soap opera fanatic. When we visited her, she would tell us all about the good guys and the bad guys and who was doing what to whom. Her house smelled like old people. I don't know what causes that smell, so I can't describe it. Her bathroom always smelled like Lysol.
She was a fantastic cook, and sometimes would cook us amazing meals. I remember she had a china cabinet filled with collectibles, colorful glass figurines. And she had a book case with medical books which belonged to my grandfather. On her coffee table, there was a glass container which always had lemon drops. Never any other kind of candy, just lemon drops. Usually there was a copy of Prevention Magazine somewhere.
We would drive for hours to visit her. It was a drive I hated with a passion. My brothers hated it too. Sometimes the drive would take 3-4 hours as we sat in traffic. We never knew what we would encounter when we finally arrived. Sometimes we'd sit in silence while she ranted at my father. She'd be furious at something or someone, or offended at something someone did. Sometimes it had something to do with our family, and sometimes it didn't. We children didn't understand exactly what the problems were. 10-15 minutes later, we'd get up and leave.
Other times, when she was in a better mood, we'd sit for a couple of hours, unable to really communicate with her, unable to do anything else. My father was very strict, and he'd have a set of rules we had to live by, so it was out of the question for us to take games to play or activities to do. We'd just sit there and try to think of stuff to ask her about her soap operas and try to act interested.
I never really thought about my grandmother as someone you kissed. She had hard, angry lines in her face which, even when she was smiling, which was rarely, made her look bitter. You gave her a peck on the cheek because Dad would say "give grandma a kiss". You basically kissed her because you had to. She was cold, and distant, and lived in her own world of mistrust of all the world.
Now that I'm older and able to look back and think about my Grandmother, I realize she must have been seriously mentally ill. I never understood it at the time, and I know that my family never recognized it. But to this day, I've never met anyone who had the capacity to be so paranoid about everyone. She alienated everyone more and more until, at the time that she died, she had alienated everyone. When she died in Hawaii, my father had her body shipped to California and buried there. No one came to watch.
If my grandmother were alive today, I wonder if I'd visit her and try to understand her. Or would years and years of ingrained aversion to her prevent me from having any desire to do that.
9:24:33 PM 
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