While I was there, I picked up a pocket calendar. I don't know why I bought it. After all, they are pretty much obsolete these days. Who digs out a paper calendar from their purse, opens it to the correct month, then searches for a pen, all to write down their next dentist appointment? Most people would just enter the date and time on their phone calendar, or at least take the business card with the date and time sticker on it, and stuff into their wallet. Using one of those plastic coated paper calendars the size of a checkbook seems kind of archaic.
I'm no stranger to the pocket calendar having bought many with cute kittens or flowers on them in the '80's and 90's. When I worked part-time in retail or restaurants, they were excellent for keeping track of my shifts, but once I became a grown up and had a real job, whose schedule did not change, I had no need for the pocket calendar anymore. To tell the truth, I don't have a need for it now either. But I saw it, I wanted it, and it was $2.50, so I bought it.
Looking at the calendar reminded me of my grandmother. Every year, my grandma would fly up to Michigan from Tennessee to visit us for Christmas. She spent nearly a month divided between my house and my uncle's. Every year, upon arriving, she would open up her yellow leather suitcase and pull out a bag from Hallmark. Inside she would have a pocket calendar for each of us that she had gotten for free from the card shop. Even though I had no important dates to record in them, I adored those calendars and reading the inspirational quotes at the top of each month.
Like any kid, I loved the month of December because it meant Christmas and Christmas vacation. I had two other reasons for looking forward to it. My birthday fell at the beginning of the month, and December meant my grandma coming to stay. I enjoyed her visits almost as much as I enjoyed going to visit her in the summer in Tennessee. During the holiday break, she would make my sister and I oatmeal for breakfast, and we would watch The Price Is Right. She always had time to talk and listen, she was never impatient or annoyed, and she was never in a rush. I adored her.
One thing I never understood, and will never understand to this day, was how she was treated by my mother. My mother was wonderful in many respects, but not in respect to her own mother. My mother required and received respect from her own children. I remember once getting suddenly slapped across the face without warning for "having a tone". Despite her strong opinions on her own children showing respect for their elders, this was not a philosophy she felt pertained to her.
Every word my grandma said, including and most especially the way she pronounced them, was up for ridicule. Although no words like "stupid" or "dumb" were actually spoken, they were implied with each snort of derision, and verbal challenge. My mother was not alone in this. It seemed to be a family sport to pick on Grandma. (I must mention that although for whatever reason, my dad never particularly felt comfortable around Grandma, he never once engaged in the verbal put downs to my knowledge.) No one ever put a stop to it, and honestly, Grandma never seemed to be the least bit troubled by it. I suppose that was just their family dynamic.
The first time that it became glaringly obvious to me was one Christmas Eve when family members kept trying to get her to say particular words so that they could laugh at her pronunciations. Instead of saying, "Where is my camera?", she would say, "Where is my Koh-DAK?" That word alone would just send them into fits of giggles. That was the first time that it hit me that it was wrong. I felt it in the pit of my stomach.
One summer, sometime after that Christmas, we were down in Tennessee visiting Grandma. We were all outside one evening, enjoying the breeze, and waiting for the lightning bugs, when some neighbors stopped by and decided to sit a spell. They were a younger couple. The woman just gushed about Grandma. How they just LOVED her! She was just so funny, and they enjoyed her company so much. I had never heard anyone say such wonderful things about her. I had only heard her be a source of ridicule before, not someone to be admired.
The fact is, she should have been admired. As a teen, she spent her summers working in a cannery. She decided at some point the she wanted to leave her home and family and head north to become a nurse. Her bags were packed, but just before she left for New York, her future husband proposed. Her parents were against the match and felt her intended's family was not good enough, but she went against them and married him anyway. A massive heart attack took him when their kids were in their teens. Grandma had kids to support, so she went to work. She lived on her own for several years on Detroit's eastside, before retiring and moving back to Tennessee on her own and building herself a rather large house on some property she owned out in the country. She got involved in her community, rejoined her former church, made friends, and even had a few boyfriends along the way. I can't imagine the courage she had to stand up to her parents, to single handedly support her family, and then to later to start a whole new life all on her own. She was a pretty amazing woman, and I regret that my mother was somehow stuck in that ignorant adolescent mindset of thinking that her mother was less than the courageous, intelligent, and kindhearted woman that she truly was.
Yes, I know, I rambled. I got off topic. I broke my personal rule about not speaking ill of family members, but these are my experiences, my observations, and my feelings. They are not things I can bring up in a casual conversation, but I can put them here and get them off my chest.
