fearlesstemp | grandpa anecdotally

All I write about in this LJ lately is career angst and my wacky grandfather. This entry is about the latter:

My brother is home from school, so the family is at full strength, as my father likes to put it. Jimmy was barely home two days before he was put back into Grandpa rotation, drafted to go down and help my grandfather with dinner Sunday night. I went along as a courtesy, since it's always good to have backup in such situations.

Definitely a good decision! At first, it was a typical visit: we were greeted by a note on the front door from one of my aunts who had been there earlier today and had left the laundry half-done for us to finish, and found my grandfather grandfather sitting in the kitchen watching TV. The notable aspect of the TV-watching was that it was not PBS, Fox News, or the Eternal Word Television Network he was watching – no, he was watching Where the Heart Is (based on the Oprah book club selection) on the Oxygen network. He tried to act like he wasn't watching it ("Oh, no, it's just...on for some reason," he said, "I'm not watching it at all"), but was so glued to the TV that we couldn't carry on a conversation with him.

We were halfway through preparing his meal when he announced he needed mayonnaise with his dinner.

"Oh, that's fine, we can get that," I said, in the confident voice of One Who Will Not Be Doing the Deed. "Jimmy, go to the store and get some."

"I don't have any –"

"It's in my purse," I said, and with that little conversation, I took another giant step in my journey to become exactly like my mother.

"Grandpa," I said just before Jimmy was going to head out the door. "Do you need anything else?"

"No," he said.

So my brother ran to the store. He came back with the mayonnaise, which I put in front of my grandfather along with the rest of his dinner, which included a twice-baked potato I'd warmed up for him.

"Oh," he said, staring at the potato. "I need butter."

"Okay," I said, and then looked in the fridge. "There is no butter."

"I know, we're fresh out," my grandfather said.

"I am not going back to that store," my brother said. "[Female elementary school acquaintance] is working there, and when I went in there just now she talked to me for ten minutes about her kid."

"[Female elementary school acquaintance] has a kid?! You're kidding. Anyway, grandpa," I said, feeling evil for even asking. "Do you really need the butter right now? The potato already has butter in it. Do you need more?"

My grandfather did not speak; his puppy dog eyes said it all.

"All right, I'll be right back," I said, grabbing my purse.

Came back, butter in hand, to see my grandfather had eaten the potato on its own. Sighed inwardly and put the butter in the fridge, and then set about the task of folding my grandfather's laundry while I waited for my grandfather to be ready for his dessert.

Just when I thought he was ready for that course and we would be able to sneak out of there, he turned away from his food and announced, loudly and with authority, "I need to use the bathroom."

Now, this may not seem like a noteworthy event, but when you are eighty-seven, anything that involves getting out of one's seat is a major event. And so my brother and I both knew that we'd be there a while longer. He got to his walker and to the bathroom without much trouble, if a bit slow. My brother and I stood in the kitchen gossiping about the girl Jimmy had gone to elementary school with (Nineteen and having her second child! But she seemed happy, so who are we to judge, I guess), pretending not to hear the audio effects coming from the bathroom just off the kitchen. My grandfather has taken to Just Not Caring about many things, one of them being bathroom etiquette, and so he leaves the bathroom open at all times now. It's generally okay as long as one remembers to take alternate routes through the hallway by the kitchen when he's in there.

We were arguing over who would wash the dishes when we heard my grandfather say, "Jimmy!"

My brother got the most horrified, terrified look on his face; I was never more glad to be a girl.

"Coming," he said, and then disappeared into the hallway for a minute. He came back and announced, "He needs more diapers."

"Now?"

"Now," he said.

Okay!" I said, and grabbed my purse again. "Be right back!"

Which is how I ended up at the big local grocery store, standing at the register with two huge packages of adult diapers and an assortment of other old men accessories (purchased for the heck of it, because I was most definitely not going back out the store again), with a group of cute boys from a local college fraternity in line behind me. Awesome.

Have I talked about my grandfather's car before? I think I have. We call it the anti-abortionmobile (generally, the abortionmobile for short). It's at 1992 Honda Accord plastered with anti-abortion, pro-life bumper stickers that he's driven since I was in middle school. Last month he announced that he was going to give up the car and he wanted my brother to have it.

"Oh, thank you!" my collective family unit said, for my brother with a car meant less of us having to cart him around, and then we just left it at that, since my brother was at school and the car wasn't exactly going anywhere.

After two days without the car being removed from his property, he called us up all irate. "Why is the car still here! I want it gone! I don't want to be paying this insurance! Rabble rabble rabble!"

And then we explained the whole Jimmy-not-being-home thing, and that we'd get it in a week or two when Jimmy came home. For we are a lazy family, and to do something before the last possible minute is not our way. When Jimmy did get home on Friday, he and my father scooted right over there the next day and got the car out of his driveway. My grandfather didn't say anything about it at the time or the next night, when my brother and I were visiting him.

Monday my brother came down to find a message on the answering machine chock full o' fury from the Grampster. "I wanted to give you the car!" he grumbled. "Not to have you take it! Rabble rabble rabble!"

My father once said, and I've repeated it here before but it's true – the male brain shrinks until the only emotion left is pissed off. My grandfather is a living example of that.

The Honda Accord is a sweet ride, still running okay even though it hasn't been driven, well, anywhere in ages. My brother turned on the car and found that one of the vents was tilted shut, and leaned over to open it only to be hit in the face by a rush of stale air, dirt, and dust. The car is littered with religious bookmarks and pro-life pamphlets, and there's got to be over a thousand dollars of damage to the body of the car. There are dents on just about every square foot (the front left headlight has a section of it that hangs all askew, which is kind of cute in the way it mirrors my car and its hole in the front bumper from my father backing into it), and I can't help wondering just how they got there, and whether my grandfather was so out of it driving that he didn't realize he'd caused the dents, or if he Just Didn't Care. When on the topic of my grandfather, cars, and accidents, I am obligated to mention the time he took me and my brother to church, drove too fast and rear-ended the car in front of us which contained – and I am not making this up – two nuns.

There are other car-related grandpa stories (the time in the sixties when he drove the wrong car home from work, for example, only realizing his mistake when my grandmother went out and showed him that the interior was the wrong color – it seems unbelievable to me, but several independent family sources have verified it), but it is very late and I must go to bed.