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I don’t like to talk about sad things. In fact, I usually tend to avoid sad situations. I wouldn’t say that I’m a sociopath with no feelings, or that I am too afraid to live because I don’t experience the sad side of life. Because I do, believe me, I’ve shed my share of tears. But as I grow older, it’s easier for me to tuck the tears away, and find the happiness that came before that inevitable sadness. For example, my grandmother just passed away. A close grandmother, one that I would say had a major role on my childhood. I cried, and even though it was a long time coming, I still grieved. Yet, after a few tears I turned my thoughts to the joy that she had brought my life, and the little shits that my sister and I were to her. It made me laugh. I laughed because it was more cathartic than crying, and frankly, less exhausting. And so this is not a sad story about my grandmother, this is a happy story about my grandmother, the fond memories of the years that were my childhood.
I say my sister and I were little shits because we were. I remember a lot of my childhood, but getting back in to the four, fix, six year-old years of my life, things are a little spotty. The summers that my sister and I spent at our Baba and Abuelo’s house, however, are still very fresh in my memory.
Growing up, living in Park City, my parents used to send my sister and I to our grandparent’s house in Los Angeles. Baba and Abuelo are my mom’s mother and father. Baba was short for Babushka, the Russian word for grandmother, and Abuelo the Spanish word for grandfather. Naturally, because Baba was from Russia and my Abuelo was from Venezuela. My sister and I were very young and couldn’t say Babushka, so we called her Baba. Well, we were supposed to call her Baba.
I remember the mornings, my sister and I would wake up, and Baba would usually be in the kitchen or the living room. If she was in either of these two places, she would get up and make a pillow and blanket fort in the living room for us, make us hot Ovaltine and turn on Dumbo’s Circus. If she wasn’t in either of these places, then she was outside in the garage smoking. Most well behaved children of five and six would be patient and occupy themselves until their grandmother came back into the house. Not my sister and I. We would hang out the back door yelling on the top of our lungs:
“BABOON!! BABOON!! MAKE US OVALTINE!”
Or we’d change it up a bit and yell: “BABOON! CAN WE GIVE DACO AND POOPIE TREATS??” (Daco and Poopie were their black dogs).
Or: “BABOON! STOP SMOKING! BABOOOOOON!”.
You read that right, we did not call her Baba, we called baboon across the yard at the wee hours of the morning. This isn’t all we did. Since Baba was from Russia, her English wasn’t very good. There were some words that she just didn’t pronounce correctly. My smart-ass sister and I took it upon ourselves to “teach” Baba how to speak proper English. We would deliberately ask her the words she said incorrectly, and then patronizingly say it back to her. Like so:
“Baba, say ‘towel’.”
“Tower”.
“No, Baba. It’s T O W E L. L L L L L”.
Now think about if this were your kid, you’d smack the shit out them, right? I would smack the shit out my five year old me. I can’t believe we did this. It gets better.
My sister and I were never in need of anything any time growing up. We always had new clothes for school, all the newest school supplies, enough toys that we were content but not that spoiled, selfish kid that had everything. We were occasionally in want because, let’s face it, what kid really has everything? We never really asked for anything… until we got to Baba’s house. Going to Baba’s house meant a trip to Target. A trip to Target meant getting the hottest new toy. The hottest new toy meant a summer of playing with flashy new Barbies, awesome Littlest Pet Shop kitties, the newest Treasure Troll, the list goes on. It was like Christmas in July for my sister and I.
We’d sit there and actually make a list of the things we were going to make her buy us at Target the next day. Abuelo would gently try to tell us that Baba didn’t work and we’d nonchalantly brush off his comments and advise him that Baba was rich. Baba didn’t deny this. And the next day the three of us would walk, (Baba didn’t ever have a driver’s license), to Target and get our flashy new toy. How’s that for little shits?
There are far too many memories of this woman to encapsulate in one, short essay. She was what any child would want in a grandmother. My parents later explained the weeks after getting home from their house as the “debriefing” period. They would basically have to re-train us to not be spoiled little monsters. So, like I said, she was everything you could ever want in a grandma.
Afternoon naps were the best part of the day, with the hot afternoons, we’d strip down to our underwear and wait on the crisp sheets for Baba to come fan the top sheet over us, creating a little cocoon of coolness, up and down. The way she’d cool down our Ovaltine by pouring it from mug to mug over the sink. The potato pancakes she’d make for us with mounds of sour cream, the way she’d make Cream of Wheat to be so smooth and silky that even the creator of Cream of Wheat would salivate. The way she tricked us into thinking veal was actually chicken so we’d eat it. Yes, I grew up eating baby cow, calling it chicken. Spam. Fried Spam. Her love of Elvis and I Love Lucy. I’m fairly certain I have seen every single episode of Lucy. The way she’d chase my sister and I around the back yard on this motorized little, yellow ATV.
She gave my sister and I a childhood that most kids can only dream of, and thinking back on it now, it seems almost like a fantasy. She developed dementia several years ago, so it’s difficult to say if she knew how we all felt about her, and how special she was to all of us. I can only hope that she did, and I hope that I can some day be the kind of memory in someone else’s life that she was on mine.
Unihorn of Steel 