Remembering Gamma and Pop Tom

I've just gotten the word that my grandparents, my father's parents, otherwise known as "Gamma" and "Pop Tom," are not doing very well. Pop Tom has fallen and broken his hip, for which he is not going to undergo surgery because he can't withstand the anesthesia. This means he'll be laid up, flat on his back, for about eight weeks. It also means that things are not looking up for him. Meanwhile, Gamma spirals further into full-blown Alzheimer's and now spends her days fighting off those nasty nurses who insist on "assaulting" her by trying to do things like dress her and make her eat, and obsessing over a lost swim suit that she hasn't worn in about five years. These are the days of my late 80s/early 90s grandparents...

So I guess it's only fitting that I write a tribute to them. And on that note, I find myself caught in mixed emotions.

I was the first grandchild. The oldest. Well, at least until we found out about my half-brother, the charmer of the family, and then it was like fruit-basket turnover. But before that I was the oldest. I coined the names "Grandmama" (which got changed to "Gamma" when my next cousin couldn't pronounce the whole thing) and "Pop Tom." I think the best word to describe my relationship with my paternal grandparents is...complicated. My father, their oldest son of five children, died when I was just 18 months old. He apparently was the only person who could ever charm his way around their Southern Aristocratic Gentility (except for my brother, see comment above). I, on the other hand, never seemed to be enough for them. Not petite enough, not feminine enough, not demure enough, not polite enough, not Southern-Belle-ish enough. Just not enough. This, of course, is an accusation they would categorically deny, but that doesn't make it less real to me. And I can honestly say, after almost 35 years of vying for their approval, and receiving it only when I accomplish a "thing," never just for being the awesome person I am, I am tired. I'm tired of having to "adjust" to their version of love, especially when I am surrounded by easy, free, unconditional love. I wish things could've been different.

On the other hand, I find myself reveling in nostalgia anyway. Pop Tom taught me to play Rummy at age 4, and he never went easy on me. To this day I've never met another person who plays Rummy the way he does -- in that all-or-nothing, have-to-be-an-expert-at-remembering-cards way. But I loved it. Still do. And I loved the homemade peanut butter/black walnut milkshakes that went with those late night games. He also taught me to swim like the champion college swimmer (U of Oregon -- Go Ducks!) he was. And when my cousin Rusti, who was like a sister to me, came along, he taught her too. And we spent so many hours down at the Liberty Bell pool in Pine Mountain, GA, diving for pennies and racing from end to end -- his "little guppies." He tried to teach me golf, a love second only to Gamma, but it wasn't my cup of tea. But I still have great memories of riding the greens with him, Classic Coke (in a glass bottle) in my hand, and getting out to putt. And I'm pretty sure I get my love of crossword puzzles from him, although I still can't finish a New York Times (which he did every day) on my own.

Fond memories of Gamma are harder to come by. She was a brilliant painter (oil, acrylic, watercolor), and I always wanted to learn to paint, but whenever I asked her to teach me, she would wave me off and tell me I had to learn about perspective first (apparently from someone else). She was always hardest on me about my weight, my appearance, my lack of Emily-Post-ness. But then to others she would say how proud she was of me and my accomplishments. I still wonder if she was actually proud...and if she would've been proud if I'd never accomplished anything, if I'd just been...me. But there is one thing: her vanilla cupcakes with homemade vanilla frosting. She always made them for me when I was there, regardless of special occasion or not. Granted, she mocked them the whole time, always saying, "these silly things? They're just cupcakes for Heaven's sake! Just regular old cupcakes with 7-minute frosting." But she always made them for me. And I loved them.

In the final analysis, the most difficult thing about our relationship --the most perplexing, the most complicated -- turns out to be the simplest: I love them. Fiercely. And no matter how much water passes under the bridge, that will be the rock that remains.