Castle on the Third Floor

The Boxer / Simon & Garfunkle

I was six years old and it was Christmas.  There wasn’t any snow on the ground which was stark contrast to the ground the day we had moved into the house.  I remember it being pleasantly warm but seeing as how this was winter in utah this could in fact, be a misplaced memory, or the absolute truth.

I was pushing a fake plastic shopping cart up the sidewalk and walking fast, faster than my youngest sister, Beth, who was ambling at the pace of a toddler who had been walking for a while clutching the outstretched finger of my grandmother.  I remember turning around and watching them move slowly past in front of the cute little neighbor boy’s house but it would be years before I would wonder if he was home or what he was doing.

My grandmother had the look on her face that I grew up thinking was just a look until I was older and realized that it was associated with my mother’s children, her only granddaughters.  She had no joy in her eyes one would associate with a grandmother witnessing her youngest granddaughter walking.  She had a dull look of one who had suffered some type of pain and just didn’t care anymore.

all of her visits were littered with similar memories.  she always slept in my bed because through some alignment of the stars i had been saddled with a queen sized bed in my own room.  so while she was visiting I slept with beth on the bottom bunk of her bunk beds.  She had a night light, slept with the door open and talked in her sleep.  When Grandma left my room reeked of her perfume and a scent i later learned was what it smells like to sweat gin from your pores.

usually by day two of her visits grandma was sick of us.  she complained loudly about how spoiled we all were, how we fought too much, and how the boys never acted like that.  ”the boys” were our cousins, my mother’s sister’s children.  it wasn’t until much later when i learned about sarcasm and other such things that i realized that almost everything out of her mouth was either a compliment backhanded in nature, a criticism, or condescending.

by the time we hit high school her visits became less frequent and after beth graduated they stopped altogether.  she would call us each out of the blue, never in the same month, to “remind” us that if we ever wanted to visit her – alone – that she would pick up the tab.  none of us ever allowed her to.  later she began complaining that if we were just too busy to fly out and visit her, well, she understood.  the reward for listening to her drone on in her singsong voice about my aunt, my cousins, and how i was screwing up my life was usually an expensive card filled with an empty sentiment, a signature and a check for $50.

she didn’t come to my college graduation – she sent more money.  i realized looking at that last check, that i had seen her maybe 25 times in my whole life once a year give or take, and that money was sent only to assuage her guilt.  i was supposed to love this person and she was supposed to love me but just because you are supposed to doesn’t mean you do.

i had grown up past the point of thinking it was anything i had or hadn’t done.  i had grown into an acceptance that some people have grandparents and some people’s grandparents are dead but i didn’t feel i fit into one category.  i had a grandmother who knew me just as well as the people i visited at the old folk’s home and played checkers and gin rummy with every few weeks for two years in high school for christian community service.

maybe not… after all, they could remember what parts i played in the musicals, what sports i sat on the bench during, and that i liked dark chocolate.  to my mother’s mother?  i was just one of four big disappointments.  why waste her time remembering such trivial aspects of my life?