A Reflection

Before I went home for Thanksgiving, I called my grandparents to try to coordinate a time to visit. (Read: to find out whether they were having Thanksgiving dinner so that I had a reason to get out of my house, where my mother's husband's family would be invading.) Unfortunately my grandmother was not cooking a big meal on Thanksgiving because my uncles were going to Kentucky to see their wives' families and my mom was having her husband's family over. As noted previously though, I managed quite well on Thanksgiving day.

My mother woke me on Sunday around two in the afternoon to tell me that she was headed to my grandparents' for lunch and that one of my uncles and his sons would be there. In my half-asleep stupor, I told her I might come over on my way out of town but that I didn't know, so she told me that my grandma had sent my birthday present over just in case. When I stumbled out of my room and ventured upstairs, I saw the gift sitting on the table.

Now, I'm an adult, right? I'm turning twenty. No longer a teenager. But I'm turning twenty in mid-December. . . and as a mature adult, I should be able to wait to open my present, right? No. I blame it on being half-awake. I haven't been in the mood to assign personal responsibility to myself lately, as I'm sure you noted when reading about the spumante incident.

Anyway, I opened the gift and it turned out to be two matching pieces of jewelry--a necklace and bracelet. I can't really describe them other than to say that they resembled the Silpada jewelry my mom was ordering for me. They're chunky and weird and empowering. I don't own anything like them, but I like them. And I was a bit touched. Now before you laugh, let me explain.

My grandma is a bit predictable. She's been an Avon lady since my mother was a teenager, and so we know that Christmas and birthday gifts will always be Avon, but it works out nicely. I absolutely love gift baskets that are full of makeup and jewelry. Okay, so, the reason I was "touched" by this present: it was thoughtful. I'm almost certain she asked my mom what I would like. One year she gave me real pearl earrings on sterling silver posts because she knows I'm allergic to everything else. She's also given me a sterling silver watch, and one of her old silver necklaces.

Why am I rambling about this?

Because I neglect my family. And I realized it this Sunday as I sat at my grandmother's table. I looked around: my uncle and my mother's husband watching football, my little brother and little cousins playing in the next room, my crazy aunt wandering around looking for a cookbook so she could share some gluten-free vegetarian recipes with me, and around the table: my greatgrandfather, my greatgrandmother, my grandma, my mom, and me--four generations of women at the same table.

I seldom reflect on how rare that is. And I don't remember often enough the time that I spent the day at an Avon demo show with my grandma. (Shut up. This has a point.) I went in my mom's place, and my grandma introduced me to her district managers and such as we walked around. Then, at the end of the day, as I was hugging her goodbye, she made a remark that hit me like a brick wall: "This has been fun. I never thought all those years ago that you and your sister would be my only granddaughters."

A bit of context: I have an uncle who was really my grandparents' foster kid as a teen, and he just kinda stuck around as an adult because he liked us more than his biological family. Anyway, he has two daughters, and I've always just considered them a part of the family. I forget that older generations have certain hangups about blood relation that I just fail to understand. So when my grandma made that comment, I had a rush of remorse for not being closer to her. More context: my grandma has cancer. When I was in elementary school, she went through radiation treatment and the cancer went into remission for five years, but it came back while I was in high school, and she was told she had ten years to live when she turned down chemotherapy.

So as I sat around a table handcrafted by my grandfather, looking at my greatgrandparents, in their nineties, and at my grandmother, a woman with a definitive deadline, and my mother, to whom I've never been especially close, it just kinda hit me. Family only lasts so long. And you might get annoyed with the crazy aunt who insists on telling you everything she's eaten for the past week and all of the allergies she's imagined since the last time you saw her, as well as all of the herbs she's taking to help cure the nonexistent allergies, but there's something special when you have four generations around the same table. And there's something special about the look in a parent's or grandparent's eye when they hold a child for the first time. I'll never forget the look on my grandpa's face when he first held my little brother, and I cried when my mother held my brother for the first time after the delivery.

Perhaps I'm getting sappy with old age, but it's finally sinking in that these people aren't going to be around forever, and I can't keep pretending I'll have time to spend with them later. I don't want to mourn relationships I never had.