There are only a handful of board games that i’ve ever played with more than two players. In fact, of all the games that one might find in your neighborhood toy store, there are a relative few that i played before the age of 18. My mother could only be coaxed into a one on one deathmatch of Monopoly every so often, after all, and there were only so many games a boy could have with only his mother and his GI Joes to play them with.
I don’t know how i feel about other people. I spent so long only having to worry about making myself happy that i am equally torn between continuing the behavior or trying to do the same for everyone else i know. I never learned how to make some of the people happy some of the time, or to be happy with some of the people some of the time. So, now that i have people in my life, people that i see every day when i get to work or every night before bed, i have trouble deciding who comes first: me or them.
Obviously it’s not as black and white as that, and if we were to all follow the golden rule it wouldn’t matter anyway, right? Still, there are some weeks in which i will bend myself in any direction to please someone else, and days like today where i’d rather sleep than talk to anyone in a mile radius.
I’m just not very tired.
My grandmother is sick.
Even after having almost two months to think about this, i still don’t know what i think. Ten years ago all four of my grandparents were alive and as animated as ever, and five years ago two of them were in managed care facilities because they were not well enough to live at home with family members. Now i have a paternal Grandfather whose eyesight and conversation skills are slowly failing, and who i’ve seen the least out of all of my grandparents over the course of my life. And my maternal grandmother, the one i visit in Florida in December so that she can fly up to Philadelphia for Christmas, the family member who i’ve spent the most time with over the course of my life other than my own mother.
My grandmother is sick, and she may be dying.
Almost a decade ago she had colon cancer, and i didn’t know what to think at the time and by the time i decided she was in remission. When she lived in Philadelphia she used to walk a mile with a rolling shopping cart just to get twenty dollars of food at the grocery store; she has never driven, and she eschews the aid of services who cater to transporting Senior Citizens. She never completed grade school, and subsequently can read at a very low level and has trouble balancing her checkbook – at the same time, she is one of the more perceptive people i know, even if she presents her perceptions in the most basic way possible.
I am her only grandchild, and she misses me. I miss her, and wish she was still in Philadelphia so i could stop by her house to pester her every week or two, but she’s not. What she is is just a phone call away, but everyone knows how much i hate the phone. Of course, hating the phone doesn’t really matter when it comes down to talking to someone you love who might not be around for a long time.
Last month i called and had a hilarious conversation with her, like the ones i used to have with her years ago when she would interrupt my video games and put away my GI Joes before their battles were over. She asked to talk to Elise for a minute, and Elise smiled the entire time. It was a window for each of us, on either side of the phone, to look through to a different sort of time.
I haven’t called since, and today i received a rather accusatory email from my cousin Ashley, who has largely been spending her free time hanging out with my grandmother (her great aunt). She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if i can’t make the time or find the motivation to call my grandmother then i really shouldn’t bother caring at all. My grandmother is depressed, not eating, and not her usual chatty self. But she wants to hear from me.
I want to call, and i do call, leaving chirpy messages on her machine when she’s not at home in the evenings. But, i still don’t know what to think, and i guess half of my reluctance to call her once every week or two is connected to. Of course, the other half of it is that i don’t even talk to my own mother once every two weeks, but that’s something else entirely.
For how much i claim to like the internet, i seem to enjoy it when my life is unplugged from just about everyone else’s. I’ll call again tomorrow night.
September and I have never really been entirely comfortable with each other, with its end of summer, start of school, and an inevitable new birthday on which i am expected to celebrate but typically just ponder. Even worse, for the last three years i have left a home every September: in 1998 from my childhood home to my mother’s current house, in 1999 from that house to the dormitories at Drexel, in 2000 from the dormitories to my first apartment, and last year from that apartment to the one i currently share with Erika, Lindsay, Kate, and Karen. September brings in change and the beginnings of golden leaves and cooler weather, and when it is over i hardly ever know what to make of it.
And, now, in my twenty-first go through the month, somehow it has contrived to change itself. Summer never really existed for me, so it cannot end. School has ceased to be a surprise. My birthday looks as though it might be the first time i celebrate the entire day with people who i’d actually choose to spend it with. And, i am staying in the same room of our apartment for another year.
I feel as though i can dig deeper or say more, but it just comes down to this: Change happens, and sometimes changing is just staying the same. I’m just not sure how i feel about it.
Trying to decided if my sprained ankle would support a leap of the river-like puddle or if i should give up and ford it, it occurred to me that i couldn’t remember the last time i had felt rain on my toes. It’s not the sort of thing that happens too often to me, as i’m not often found frolicking in dewy fields or dancing in the rain. My toes were definitely being rained on, though, enough to make up for my length of neglect.
I leapt, as though it really made a difference. Three blocks later and i was sopping wet from head to toe, above and below my silver vinyl jacket. No one in the apartment was awake to see my soggy return, and in minutes i was day and freshly clothed – the dancing pitter patter above me on the roof the only reminder of my intrepid journey. That and the pile of soaked through clothing outside my door, and the sleepy smile on my face.