A few days ago, my grandmother was supposed to be released from the hospital after being treated for medication-induced acidosis. That's when the acid in your blood is so high that you are basically poisoned by it. She was doing well after an extensive detox/fluid regimen and being given a better medication cocktail, but then she developed pneumonia and now she is in a bad state. Pneumonia you catch in the hospital is notorious for kicking people over the edge and into the grave. So, needless to say, I am panicked, worried, sickened and afraid. I booked a flight to Germany for tonight, so I can be by her bedside tomorrow. She's a little better today and I hope she pulls through, maybe with the help of some positive, happy energy, which I shall muster up and bring along.
My grandmother is eighty years old. She was thirty-nine when I was born in 1968. Thirty-nine. Two years younger than I am now. It's hard to envision her so young, especially because I remember her as a "grandmother", the somewhat matronly caretaker of mine, who changed my diapers and made me mashed potatoes and fish sticks. There was nothing particularly young about her. Compared to my flashy, early-twenties mother in her Courrèges outfits, my grandmother looked middle-aged. She was a no-nonsense housewife, she held the reigns and she did so with a certain fierceness that became part of her persona, I'm convinced, during her poor childhood as the illegitimate child of a servant mother in 1930s Hungary. My grandmother was always taking care of things; cooking, cleaning, organizing, shopping, dropping me and my cousin off at kindergarden or school. Nothing could ever stop her, until she became old.
When she was forty-four, I once pitched a fit and didn't want to stay with her, because, as I cried, "she was old and would die soon!" I remember her laughing about my foolish fantasy. She told me she was actually still quite young and she wasn't going anywhere, anytime soon. I believed her, because she wouldn't allow me not to, and I stayed the night, trying to figure out how forty-four could be NOT old. It seemed so ancient to me when I was five. I didn't know then that she would live so much longer and would be present at many of my life's crossroads. It was one of the first times that I can remember when I was scared of death — and particularly her death.
My grandmother means the world to me. She was the one who was present every day and showered me with the kind of matter-of-fact attention that was so typical in parenting back then. She didn't make too big of a fuss, she was strict about sticking to the rules. But she cooked my favorite foods, gave me my toys, let me watch TV and put me down for a nap with a stuffed animal and a kiss. She made me feel important and wanted without having to say so. She seemed to never think twice about how to raise me. She just did. My mother was present during those years, but she worked, every day. So as it was normal in small German towns of the sixties, Oma and Opa stepped in and became the ersatz parents during the day. It felt great to me. I had two mothers, effectively, and I loved them both.
So as I travel home tonight I will be thinking about the decades gone by, how fast they went and how hard it is to watch them take their toll. Tomorrow, hopefully, I will find her in her bed, smiling and in a better state, ready to survive and give me a few more years of her affection. She made life feel secure for me back then, wielding her magic with mashed potatoes and fish sticks. She connects me to a time and place that was safe and warm and fun, and I'm not ready to let go.
