I was walking today, listening to a talk I'd downloaded onto my MP3 player. The discussion was about the ego and how full of it we are. There was a comment made, comparing us to our parents and/or grandparents, suggesting that we take a moment to ponder the differences between their lives and the lives of us narcissistic baby boomers. While I didn't do much pondering over that, the comment did make me realize something that I'd never considered before - how I'd never had a "normal" set of grandparents.
First there was my dad's mom who, as near as I could tell, never had a husband. Over the years there were hints made of one but the impression I got was that he was a useless, shiftless excuse for a man whom grandma either divorced or killed. I never really knew which but some part of me could imagine the later, especially given Grandma's wild, Irish tempter that would flair and curse and throw things. Of course, none of that was ever directed toward us grandkids. But the mere mention of dad's dad and sparks would fly from Grandma's eyeballs and all us grandkids would scramble for cover. I never did find out what happened to him, but, as I grew older, I found myself wondering how the man ever got close enough for Grandma to have born him three children.
Then there was my mom's mom who stirred that same question in me. But Chub (which is what everyone called her - don't ask me why), unlike Grandma, did not limit her wrath to just her ex husband (grandpa Pop who I'll get to in a minute). Nope, Chub believed that all men were created equal and none of them were good for anything. There's not much else I remember about Chub, other than the fact that I managed to become her favorite grandkid. Maybe it was my own devil-may-care, hell-bent-for-trouble attitude that she could identify with. Whatever reason, she would always have a gift waiting for me whenever I'd go for a visit - odd things like a lace shawl that was so out of style all I could do was love if for its beauty and then hang it in my closet with other things I never wore. Or a set of silverware with three pronged forks that reminded me of mini pitchforks. If QVC were a thing back then, I'm sure Grandma Chub would have been all over it.
I felt bad for her when health forced her into my parents' home. She took my old bedroom, which obviously meant I'd moved out by then. And she stayed tucked away in it as much as possible, far from my father - the man. Chub died right there in my room, in the chair in the corner by the window.
Grandpa Pop, her ex, might have been the reason for her deep seeded hatred of men. He went on to marry five more times after their divorce. This in spite of the fact that he was paralyzed from the waist down and was "useless as a eunuch" as my uncle used to say. But Pop never let a small thing like paraplegia stop him. He'd had his accident at 34 when a motor boat he'd been fixing up slid off its braces and toppled onto him, crushing his pelvic area. He lived out the rest of his 29 years in a wheelchair that me and the rest of the grandkids thought was wonderful. We'd wait 'till he was out of it and then push each other up and down the ramps that peppered his customized house.
His car was a cool thing too. He'd heft himself up into it and then lean out far enough to fold up his chair. Then he'd muscle it into the car behind him and off he'd go. Of course without the use of his legs, he'd had to have the car modified so that, instead of a brake peddle, there was a hand brake up by the steering wheel. Pop drove himself everywhere he needed to go.
His favorite thing to do was to travel. And collect wives. I remember once, when I was about eight, he went to Mexico on a fishing trip. Came home with a boatload of different kinds of fish that my mom cooked up and we ate on for weeks. He also came home with a wife named Maria who was younger than my mom. Maria's two kids were younger than I was too and for a while there, my older sister had an uncle and an aunt who she got to babysit. Then there was Junga and Shumbay from Korea. Don't ask me how Pop ended up married to a Korean woman. All I remember are their names. And the time Shumbay tricked me into sticking my finger in a light socket, the mean little jerk.
I can't remember the rest of Pop's miscellaneous wives but it sure seemed like there were enough of them. Even so, between my five step-grams and four biological ones, I never once had a normal sense of grandparentcy. Don't get me wrong, I loved them all (the biological ones at least). And I have to admit, they had a collective spice to them that kept life interesting.
I wonder now whether that's the kind of pondering the guy on my MP3 player was thinking of. But I kind of don't think so.
