The Grimace Only A Grandmother Can Deny

Here's the necessary caveat: I love my mother dearly.

But she is delusional.

She contradicts me when I say Number Two is surly.

"He is not," says she.

"Is too," says I.

"He's always smiling when he's around me." She's positively preening.

"So I'm a bad mother, then. Because he's surly to me."

She shrugs. "I guess so." The easy acquiescence must be her attempt at levity.

I fall for the bait, choking back a snort that emerges snort-ish anyway. "I've been around both of you all day, and he was not smiling the whole time. I've got the pictures to prove it."

"No, you don't."

Oh, don't I?


Still, nobody's denying he has his moments.


You've got a cute grandkid, mom. I'll give you that.

Comments

  1. HeatherDecember 29, 2008 at 11:32 PM

    They are very cute photos. At first I thought my Baby was rather somber, but she's really not that somber (as long as mom is holding her or very, very nearby!)

    ReplyDelete
  2. BozDecember 30, 2008 at 7:19 AM

    Awwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LaurenDecember 30, 2008 at 4:09 PM

    He's just thinking.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Shannanb aka Mommy BitsDecember 30, 2008 at 4:22 PM

    What a cutie. My Mom loves to say, "he's not like that with me" about my youngest. It drives me crazy!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Shiny Happy People

I have a friend who reads this blog and is, understandably, surprised by the community of commenters that many mutha bloggas elicit. "You've got some enthusiastic supporters out there, huh?" Boz mentioned over lunch this past weekend. "Um, yeah, I guess you could say that. That's how we mommybloggers are. Supportive. Enthusiastic. Yup." And so I got to thinking, not just about my own blog, but about this momosphere in general; and how sunshine, in the form of bright rays of light being continuously blown up people's asses, can get to be cloying. You must know what I mean. Those long rows of comments all praising the hilarity, or the eloquence, or the heart-wrenchinging-ness, or the yes-yes-that's-exactly-the-way-I-feelingness of a given post in a given blog. I've written my fair share of those comments, don't get me wrong. In those cases, that's the only way I can convey how powerfully someone else's words affected me. With some blog
Read more

Three Hours

It was the same damn sky. I left the driveway in my car as a fusion of Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World came on the satellite radio. The overall effect of high blue and a gentle warble atop the ukulele should've inspired something like contentment, but instead I listened closely to the lyrics for a meaning I could relate to. It was right there. I didn't have to wait long. The wonderful world over the rainbow is a dream. Before I got into the car I watched a ceremony and fed the baby. Then I drove to book club, where a group of us sat for two hours discussing things like organic food, the ubiquitousness of corn , and too many roosters in my friend's coop. Afterward I tooled over to the gas station to put $55 onto my credit card for transmittal to the Gulf. Soon after my day began--at home, while the baby ate, at ten till nine--a young woman was reading the As on the alphabetical list of victims from the Twin Towers. Z did not come till I returned home, ten minut
Read more

It's a Boy

Image
Topher's minutes-old fingers were scaly-white and wizened. As I held him for the first time, I marveled at the similarity between those hands and the wrinkled ones of my grandparents, of my great aunts and uncles. I touched the creases. He was my little old man in a hospital room that buzzed with being born. Two days later, on the morning of our departure, I held my son in my lap while The Partner showered in the bathroom. I had given birth on the very same bed, in the very same room, but now it seemed a different place in the sun and the silence. I saw the brightness of Topher's finger flakes and thought again about how old his new parts shone. I cried then, not just with a hormonal surge, but with the pressure of an entire lifetime laid out on a tiny pair of hands. I sobbed so loud and long that The Partner heard me from behind the heavy institutional door. He emerged from the bathroom to ask what I was crying about. "Nothing," I said. "Nothing." Christoph
Read more