And if it wasn't for Grandma's birthday, I wouldn't have been concerned this year, either. My maternal grandma, now in her nineties, was at an age when each birthday could (realistically) be her last.
Mine is a small family. None of my aunts and uncles are married, or have children. Myself, Jimmy, and our sister, Jean, have no cousins. Grandma is our last grandparent left. She's our only elderly relative. Her own family was large, with many siblings, aunts, and uncles. She was born in the northern tip of Scotland in the room above the corner store where her mother worked. Her family moved to Canada when she was two years old. They settled in Winnipeg. Her dad, a baker in Scotland, found work as a school custodian in Canada.
Her parents, her siblings have all died, most of them before what we would now consider old age. I think one of her sisters died in childbirth. George, her husband of almost fifty years, died in his eighties. That was more than fifteen years ago. Grandma is the last of her generation.
Growing up, we saw a lot of Grandma. It was impossible for her to visit the farm without edible treats, usually in the form of doughnuts. If the school bus dropped me off and I saw her car, my usual slow stroll up the lane became an energy-expending gallop. She knew each of our favourites, and there was always a vanilla-sprinkle waiting for me in the dozen.
She would regularly host family dinner parties where Grandpa would make Campari-infused cocktails for the adults and Grandma would construct unrestrained spreads involving “nibblies,” appetizers, roasted meat, veggies, potatoes, salads, wines, and always a dessert. Even at lunch, Grandma always had a homemade sweet. Grandpa had a sweet tooth. So did Grandma. Her cookies were thin and crispy masterworks. Of all her scratch-made pies and tarts, I liked her lemon meringue, with its tall and curly peaks, the best.
It was Grandma who would organize games before supper, most of which she had invented. One of her best concoctions was the aptly named “Funny Walks,” where each participant had to stroll across the room in such an unorthodox/unique/funny way as to make the others laugh. The more creative and absurd, the better. Grandma was the creator and Funny Walks master.
Grandma was always delicately cheerful. She seemed to be laughing a lot but almost more to herself, never garishly, like she knew a deeper (and funnier) meaning to jokes and stories. I didn't associate her with discipline or having a temper, but I was aware she was strict, and she would tell us if we'd stepped out of line. She was silly and sweet, but she was no pushover. She had a quiet toughness. Everything about her seemed steady and consistent, including that she was old.
Oldness wasn't a negative. It was just a verity I was aware of. I didn't fear or resent it. Whatever my impression of old was, either you were old or you were young, and eldership included Grandma. It had to. She
was
my measuring stick for old. As I grew up, both physically and intellectually, moving from adolescent to teenager to adult, from student to professional, Grandma stayed old. We still saw each other, but less frequently. I left Ottawa for school and then work.
I hadn't been seeing much of her this past decade. Jimmy and I had been discussing her a lot. We'd get together and be talking about all the usual things, like sports, music, our work, or the 1970s
BBC
soap opera
Upstairs, Downstairs
, and before long we'd be passing our thoughts about Grandma back and forth like a cigarette. She was on the cusp of ninety-two. Ninety-two! Considering that cusp, she was in incredible shape, mentally and physically. Grandma was the LeBron James of old ladies born pre-Depression.
She played golf in the summer, every Wednesday, with a group of seniors. She still actively followed professional hockey and cultural affairs and politics. She might be the only ninety-year-old in existence able to offer updated stats on the fourth-line centre for the Ottawa Senators and provide professional details about the provincial leader of the
NDP
.
She still loved getting outside and poking around in her flower garden. I'm not sure why, but I knew that nasturtiums (and maybe daisies) were her favourite. She was still living in her own two-storey red-brick house, the same one she'd raised her children in. She still enjoyed going for strolls around the block. I could go on and on. She had even carried the Olympic torch when it came through town. She ran with it in one hand held up over her head, waving to the crowd with the other. It's more like LeBron James is the
NBA
's version of Grandma.
Jimmy and I always enjoy talking about these accomplishments, her joie de vivre, and the good genes we've hopefully inherited. But this year we'd noticed a few changes. Grandma was becoming a little more forgetful. She would sometimes repeat a story. She was confusing dates and mixing up times. She would forget the odd meeting. She seemed a little more tired, taking naps most afternoons. She was, in her words, “getting dottled.”
She also refused to do little things like ignore the phone or hang up on assholes, and sometimes would get caught talking to telemarketers for forty minutes at a time. She'd been scammed on the phone and at her door by dodgy salesmen and frauds. She had a hard time declining invitations to play cards, especially bridge (even though she didn't love it), or invites to lunch. She was attempting to carry on as she always had. But the world was changing at an unfair pace. Time's performance eventually becomes ineluctable.
Physically, she was still an anomaly, but she also seemed maybe an inch shorter and a little more hunched, like there were invisible weights cinched to each wrist. She couldn't be much over five feet now. Her walking pace had slowed. Against her best efforts, she might even have developed a slight limp from a sore knee. She had more sun spots on her arms, hands, and face. We agreed these changes weren't huge, but they were present. We'd noticed. At some point, Grandma had gone from old to older.
“I gotta think of something better this year, nothing practical or cheesy, just something that she'd really like,” I said again, wiping some sweat from just above my nose with my index finger. Whenever I wore this sweater, my body found new places to release perspiration. “But what do you get a ninety-two-year-old? It's a question as tricky as the nature of infinity.”
“I got her a painting,” said Jimmy. “She's always loved art.”
Oh, fuck you, Jimmy. “I asked that question rhetorically.”
“Well, think about it. What do you have that you could offer?”
While I thought about this, Jimmy ordered two more beers with a nod of his head.
I finally answered when our refills arrived. “I'm curious, is the point of this to try and think of a gift I can give Grandma, or just to make me feel like shit?”
“Ideally both,” said Jimmy.
“It's working.”
“Really, though,” he said, “the answer's easy. It's time. Just time.”
“Time?” I repeated neutrally, having not yet decided if I was insulted or intrigued. I'd spent the last ten years working a variety of odd jobs, from journalism to putting up drywall. One of those years, I was forced to move home to live with my parents on their farm. For the last while I'd mostly just been writing. So I worked mainly from my apartment. I didn't have an office to go to, or any co-workers, or work trips to go on, like Jimmy.
“I know you're working on your writing, but you can also take time off. Time that you could then spend with Grandma. No one else in the family can do that as easily. So maybe I can afford to buy her a painting, but you could spend time with her.” And then, “Actually, you could take her on a trip.”
That was it. That's where the whole trip thing started. One sip into our second beer.
“What?” I said.
“Seriously, you guys should go on a trip.”
“Jimmy, I'm not even sure I can realistically afford that plastic tablecloth. How's a trip going to work?”
“Well, you can ask her to pay for it.”
It was morally uplifting to me that I'd never considered this before â convincing the receiver of my gift to pay for it. It somehow seemed â oh, I don't know â appalling.
“So you think for my gift to my ninety-two-year-old grandma I should offer to take her on a trip. And then tell her she's paying for it?”
“Exactly. The gift isn't about the money but, like I said, the time.”
“What kind of trip are we talking about?”
“Well, I don't know. You could go somewhere warm.”
“Like a spring breakâtype thing?”
He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Not exactly.”
“Does Grandma even like warm?” I asked. Personally I'd always hated heat, sun, and beach vacations. With my fair skin and bony thighs that can't fill in the tightest spandex, I'm as physically suited to those trips as I am to giving birth.
“I know what you're thinking, it's you who hates the idea of going somewhere warm.”
“How dare you! Don't assume.”
“You could fly out to Winnipeg. She could show you around where she grew up.”
“Winnipeg? You think she'd like that?” Whoa, Winnipeg!
Hold on, sir! I didn't want beach, but I didn't want the complete lack of
any
warmth, either. Plus I haven't taken a trip anywhere in years, and now I've ended up in a city with one of the country's highest crime rates and the nation's largest mosquitoes? Really?
“She'd probably love it. It's you who'd hate it.”
“But what about flying? Do you think she wants to go in an airplane?” I've never loved flying.
Jimmy rolled his eyes.
“Seriously, you think it would be okay, just the two of us?”
“Why not?”
“I don't know, I've never spent any time with Grandma alone before. What would we do every day? She'd be forced out of her routine.”
“It's not Grandma and her routine I'd be worried about.”
“I know, I know. But â”
“Stop worrying for three seconds of your life. Get out of your own head.”
“But, I mean, I'm used to being alone all the time. And she'll be ninety-two!”
“Yeah, so? You're, what, twenty-eight. It would be great. You could use the company for a few days.”
“Well, do ninety-two-year-olds go on trips?”
“She's old, she's not unportable.”
“But she's slowing down a bit.”
“She's fine. She's great.”
“I know, I know.”
I was thinking about the previous August. Grandma had been at a nearby mall, getting her hair done at a generic salon. She still liked to get it done every week. It was a muggy day and she'd been sitting in the stylist's chair for three-quarters of an hour. The stylist had been chatting the entire time, asking her questions and saying she couldn't believe Grandma was in her nineties. She wished her own mother was looking as good. She kept talking about her hair too, how beautifully white it was, just like snow. I'm sure Grandma was bashfully shrugging off these compliments the way I've seen her do countless times.
After she paid, she walked out into the mall. She was feeling good and, as always, liked her new cut. Several steps outside the stylists' she fell, inexplicably. When a little old lady with a head of freshly coiffed white hair falls in plain view, dropping her purse, a commotion will ensue. And it did.
That was the worst part for her. She didn't care about the fall or the sharp pain in her knee. She was embarrassed. She hated attention and fuss more than anything. Although she never mentioned it, the knee that likely caused the fall was still bothering her. It was probably getting worse.
“I think she's fully recovered,” said Jimmy.
“That's what she says, but I think her knee still bothers her. You just never know, because it's physically impossible for her mouth to form a complaint.”
“And that's why it'll be such a good match, because you always complain. It'll balance out on the trip.”
“I don't know. I'm still thinking about that tablecloth. You really have to see it.”
But by the time we'd finished our third beer, the trip was verging on becoming an interesting possibility. It was still only a possibility. But it was the
only
possibility. And as much as I didn't want to admit it, a ninety-two-year-old travelling companion was actually right in my wheelhouse. Lots of strolls, time for reading, cups of tea, ten hours of sleep per night, not too much direct sunlight, three square meals a day. It would be my kind of pace. It would be my kind of trip.
“So how are things in Kingston?” wondered Jimmy. “You doing all right these days? Anything new?”
The past few months, I've experienced a growing weariness. A tedium with where I live, with how I make a living, with my routine. I'm growing tired of my city, tired of my street, the trees, the sidewalks. I'm fatigued by the gravel covering my driveway, by the droning fridge in my apartment.
“Kingston? Oh, well, I'm fine,” I said, picking up my empty glass, bringing it to my mouth before setting it back down. “Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know. I'm okay.”
1:32 p.m.
IT FEELS AS
if the scene has been eerily duplicated from this morning, from my street. Grandma's neighbours, a mother with two children, stroll by as we pack the car. They wave first and we reciprocate.
“Where are you off to?” the mother calls. “Looks like you're going on a trip.”
“Yes, I am. With my grandson.”
“Sounds like fun,” she says. “I could use a trip.”
One of the kids sits down on the curb. He's holding a stick in his left hand and tracing something hieroglyphic on the pavement.
“I know. I'm lucky, all right. It is going to be fun. I haven't been on a trip in a while.”