Becoming Grandma’s House

It was a glorious day, but I wasn’t feeling glorious.

I’d caught Adrienne’s head cold over the weekend, and I was now in the getting-over-it stage: no cough, no fever for over 24 hours, just exhaustion and a headache. I was lying on the couch, scrolling on my phone, cursing myself for having a head too foggy to write. I’d thought of how long it was since I was able to go to church and wondered if God hated me for my panic attacks. I’d mentally gone over the money and the shopping list and tried to make the two numbers match. I’d hated and reviled myself for getting sick so often this summer. I’d had my daily panic attack about what we were going to do if we couldn’t replace that horrible lemon of a car quickly. And I was just about ready to cry, when I heard a low knock at the door.

It was Jimmy’s boy, of course, in a pair of galoshes that went up to his knees. He wanted to know if I’d seen the skinny boy who swiped that pumpkin— let’s call him the Artful Dodger.

I hadn’t, but we went out to the garden to look. I lifted the lid of Adrienne’s old sandbox to make sure he wasn’t crouching underneath– the Artful Dodger has won at games of Hide and Seek that way before. But there was nothing in there but sand. And then, of course, Jimmy’s boy wanted a tour of the garden. I sat on the concrete steps to point out the sights and sounds. The cardinals were not holding an audience, but the goldfinch chirped at us from an electrical wire. The watermelon vine has produced nothing at all, but I’m still harvesting tomatoes. The lettuce hadn’t come up for Autumn yet, but there were two wizened little cucumbers to pick. Jimmy’s boy wants me to plant eggplant next year. He’s excited at my plans for blackberry bushes.

As we were coming back around the house, Adrienne got home from school and the Artful Dodger wandered in from hiding in somebody else’s yard. Suddenly I had three children in the house. Adrienne reminded me of my promise to make sugar cookies for an after school snack, and of course the little boys decided they’d better stick around for that.

“All right,” I said. “But I’m really tired. Adrienne will have to make the dough, and I’ll talk you through it.”

Next thing I knew, my almost-thirteen-year-old was in the kitchen like a grownup, running back and forth to get measuring cups. Somewhere along the line we were mixed up; she ended up creaming the butter and the flour-baking powder mixture instead of the butter and sugar. But sugar cookies are forgiving cookies. I got the electric mixer and made the dough behave, and then I collapsed on the couch to rest while the cookies went into the oven.

Meanwhile, the boys found Adrienne’s old Legos and made themselves at home. We used to buy Legos every time they went on clearance: Star Wars Legos, Hello Kitty Legos, Ninjago Legos, X-Men Legos. They were all jumbled up in a big set of plastic drawers in the dining room. I hadn’t had the heart to store them away upstairs, even though Adrienne is too grown up for toys now. The boys were thrilled. They kept bringing me the gadgets they made to show off– particularly Jimmy’s boy, whose father is such an accomplished mechanic. He had brilliant ideas for making helicopters and speed boats with spinning propellers.

When the oven timer went off, they peered in the kitchen longingly. And when I finally declared the cookies cool enough to eat, they converged like locusts.

“Don’t spoil your dinner!” I found myself saying, and aged about twenty years in my mind’s eye.

“These taste like grandma cookies,” said the Artful Dodger, smiling to show it was a compliment, and I aged a decade more.

The boys went back to their Legos until it was time for the Artful Dodger to go home. Then Jimmy’s boy pointed out that my cut sunflowers were all drooping in the vase.

“Would you like to help me cut a fresh bouquet?”

Next thing I knew, we were back out in the garden– Jimmy’s boy pointing out which ones would make the best display, me brushing the ants off and cutting the stems. I knew he had a mechanic’s eye, but I didn’t know that he was also an artist. He kept pointing out the most perfectly formed flowers with nice long stems.

“What car are you getting?” he asked, as we passed the poor dead Nissan going in.

“I don’t know. I desperately wanted that blue car we saw last month. How would you get a thousand dollars or two, if you didn’t have it?”

Jimmy’s boy asked me how I usually earned my living. I explained about newspapers, books, content creation, publishing companies, patrons and pay per thousand clicks, while he followed me inside to arrange those sunflowers. I think he was surprised that I’m an author. Last week the Artful Dodger had assumed I was a farmer who sold my garden produce at Kroger.

Thinking of that put me in mind of the time that I had a tantrum, when I was a little bit younger than Jimmy’s boy, because I was told that my beloved grandfather was a doctor. I had been to his house, on a triple lot with an orchard and a big vegetable patch, and he showed me all the things he grew.  I assumed that my grandfather was a farmer. I’d been shocked to know that that was his hobby and not his profession.

I felt old, for the second time today.

“You should be a babysitter and watch kids in your house for a job,” said Jimmy’s boy. “You have a fun house.”

I realized that my house had become something like a Grandma’s house, for the neighborhood children, and I’d become something like a grandma at not quite forty. The thought wasn’t a sad one. I’d failed at being a graduate student. I’d failed at being a good Catholic. I’d failed at being that righteous grand-multipara homeschooling mother I so desperately wanted to be. But I might like being a grandma.

I put most of the flowers in the big vase at the table, and one in the small vase in that dusty icon corner where I haven’t prayed lately. I slid it under the icon I painted of the Archangel Gabriel holding the Theotokos. I remembered my nightmare about the Virgin Mary smashing the car and trying to break in the house. And I prayed that, as long as she was kind instead of terrifying as I’d feared, she would come into the house and set things right.

Jimmy came searching for his boy just then, and the two went home for dinner. I went back to lying on the sofa, worrying.

Not worrying nearly as much, though.

One day I’ll get used to being happy.