Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Grandparents.

The other week at a school lunch function I was sitting with some ministerial students, and somehow I got talking about how my (maternal) grandmother loved to party, and even in her 70s, when she had moved in with my uncle because of aging reasons, she would stay out till all hours drinking and dancing and smoking at the local Polish Legion of American Veterans hall, and then go out for burgers at an all-night place with her friends, and then have to hurry home before my uncle got up for work, so he wouldn't know she was out partying...

She'd usually run in the door right before 6am, throw a bathrobe over her going-out clothes, spray Lysol on herself to disguise the smell of cigarette smoke, and put on coffee and sit at the kitchen table, like she had just gotten up before him and had decided to make some coffee. Then, as soon as he left, she would collapse in bed and sleep till after noon.

(My uncle didn't know she did this all the years till finally my mom told him years after my grandma was dead.)

When I shared this, one ministerial student told about how his grandfather was a hard-drinking jazz musician in Nebraska, and would travel around in small towns womanizing and playing the clarinet and drinking heavily, which contributed to an enlarged heart, from which he finally died.

Another ministerial student talked about how her husband's grandfather was a moonshiner in Florida, and used to hide stills in the Everglades. Eventually, he became a police officer.

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