September 26, 2009
My grandpa died sixteen years ago leaving my grandma alone. Since that day, I've watched my grandma desperately staring at his photo as if her penetrating eye contact would bring her true love back to life. I've listened to grandma's insistent rants about much better things would be if only he was alive. Despite the fact that she is now a 92-year old woman living in a retirement home, her intense longing for the husband she had for almost fifty years seemed to me romantic, heart-wrenching and completely normal even for, well, a very old, wrinkled and gray lady.
Even when my grandma developed a teenage-like crush on Tony Bennett, I accepted it. When we don't have love in our lives, don't we all like to fill the void with unattainable crushes? I devoted my junior high years to C. Thomas Howell so who was I to judge? I could definitely relate to my grandma's attachment to "her Tony." In fact, I aided her in the infatuation, ordering CDs and videos off of amazon and collecting articles and interviews from the internet so she could devour facts and stories about her amor. I even ventured out with her (walker and all) to the Greek Theater where we sat front row center at one of Tony's concerts. When she started talking to him (a little, well, a lot too loudly), I had to remind her that she didn't actually know him. But at her age, she didn't seem to care. I let this go as a sign of deep lonliness and promised my mother I would never show grandma how to use google (we didn't want a stalker on our hands).
But then something happened and we crossed the boundary of the granddaughter/grandmother relationship. It wasn't pretty. My mom had given Grandma the gift of Direct TV so she could see movies and feel part of pop-culture. But when her first bill came, it was way over the monthly amount. So I called the company ready to fight for what was clearly their mistake. They informed me that someone had ordered twenty or so extra pay-per-view movies. What? That couldn't be. My grandma didn't even know how to use the remote. It must have been one of the workers at "the home." How dare they take advantage of this little old lady. I called my grandma to vent my frustration but she didn't get it. It seems she had ordered movies. "It was easy," she informed me, "you just hit select." After a little talk with grams about staying within a budget, I called back Direct TV to give them my credit card and admit defeat. On a whim, I asked them about the movie titles ordered. Because this is a family site, I won't repeat the titles I heard that day but, well, it seems Grandma was getting all hot and bothered in her little corner room at the end of the hall. She was apparently over rom coms and, instead, way into Triple X. Of course, all the grandkids got a good laugh out of this including me but truly, I was surprised. Afterall, this was my grandmother--my mondelbread-baking, Go Fish-playing grandmother.
Since the great cable bill reveal, my grandma is not shy about getting her needs met. She devours Harlequin novels and scoffs when I bring her books from my own library. Just yesterday, she told me my Amy Tan book was horrible and she couldn't get through the first page of that Curtis Sittenfeld book I recommended. Instead, she handed me her newest obsession--a book by Anna Leigh Keaton entitled, One Night in Paradise (which by the way, she had borrowed from another resident). She "adored" this author and wanted other books. I typed in the name on my computer and could hardly muster shock when a site appeared with the warning:
Please be advised this site is intended for mature visitors
who are 18-years old and older only
The self-proclaimed "sensual romance" novels with such titles as, Desiring Dixie and Pursuing Penelope offered up a fantasy escape and for me, the final realization that my grandma wasn't just a grandma or a great-grandma or even a mother. She was a woman with wants, needs, passions and a jones for Fabio-looking guys. A little too much information? Yes. But sometimes the truth hurts.
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