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Section: Life & Leisure

GRANDPARENT'S VIEW
Patsy Cline Said It Best
By Susan Hannen

I’ve been knitting the same sweater for seventeen years. It sounds preposterous and I can hardly believe it myself, but it’s true. My daughter has taken up knitting; and in the spirit of camaraderie I sat down next to her on the couch and, trying to impress, I pulled my needles and yarn from my cozy looking knitting bag. “I didn’t know that you knew how to knit, Mom,” she said, with some amazement. “Oh, sure, I’ve been knitting for years.” “Really?” Her voice slid skeptically all over the word. “Who is, was, rather, the sweater for?” I had no idea. The pattern is called “Portugese Fisherman” and that should give me some clue, but honestly, I’m at a loss.

This exchange is a perfect gem of an example of why my kids have begun to treat me like I’m a crazy old lady. I can’t protest. The once beautiful heather gray Scottish yarn is desiccated. Never was that word more appropriately applied. It literally decays in my hands. It’s downright creepy. But what’s even creepier is the fact that I refuse to accept the physical evidence sitting in my own lap. I swear it seems I just bought this yarn a year or two ago. I’m outraged because I paid a fortune for it, and I distinctly remember my conversation with the yarn lady about the Scottish sheep that were shorn for it.

I remember my sisters and I stifling laughter when our grandmother would set out a plate of moldy fudge. How could she not see, with her own eyes, that it was covered with white fur? She too, with the evidence right in front of her, would insist that we were out of our minds. “That is perfectly good fudge!” she’d say. “You kids are nuts. I just made it the other day.” It turns out “the other day” was an aeon ago when she made it for my aunt’s bridal shower. By the time she daintily offered us the fudge my aunt was divorced and dating again.

This was the day we began to notice that Gram wasn’t quite right in the head. She started forgetting our names or calling us by each other’s name. She refused to believe that we were as old as we said. “How old are you now, Susie?” “I’m fourteen, Gram.” “You are not!” she’d say, defying the numbers, defying reality.“ You were just five years old last year. You can’t possibly be a teenager.” My sisters and I would roll our eyes, mouth the word “Crazeeeee,” and make the international sign for “loco” by pointing to our heads and making little circles.

I see my own children doing this behind my back. Where has the time gone? When did I start to act peculiar? Now, instead of asking myself, “When did I start to act like my mother?” I’m asking, “When did I start to act like Gramma Florence?” The thing that really scares me about this new mutation is: what about the weird stuff I do that I don’t know about, that nobody calls attention to?”

There were so many kooky things Gram started to do that she wasn’t aware of. I’m talking about things like her penchant for wearing faux leopard and dying her hair coal black. Last year my hair dye of choice was called “Pomegranate.” Oh dear. And I can’t seem to stop buying clothing made of lime green polar fleece. And worst of all: I fear my once short, edgy, punked-out haircut makes me look like a seriously over-medicated mental patient. The upside of this seemingly sad and pathetic turn of events is that Gram never lost her sense of humor, never held a grudge, and never stopped believing that she was always right, and always beautiful. Crazy? Yeah, sure...crazy like a fox.


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