I'm sure to some degree it goes without saying for everyone, after all age just accentuates what we already are. My grandparents were Russian Jews, they came here before WW2, luckily, but they still had many hardships. From a clinical point of view my grandmother shouldn't have even been functional, so we shouldn't complain, yet try telling that to my poor father (more on that subject on a later date) MY grandmother moved two blocks away from me one year after my first daughter was born, a convenient striking distance, she had this uncanny ability to show up exactly when I finally got to take a nap, or when the house was at it's dirtiest. Otherwise I visited her almost every afternoon, she quickly had developed a new greeting for me. You have to imagine a very strong, very wrinkled OLD woman with plenty of hut-spa and a thick Russian Jewish accent, or it doesn't really work. I would knock on the door and she would pretend not to know who could possibly be there. "I vonder who dat can be, who is dat at my door, my my, who's dere?" "Bubbie it's me," Bubbie means grandmother in Yiddish btw, "me who, who could dat be at my door," "Bubbie it's Robin." "Oh my, what a surprise," she would always wheeze when she laughed from ages of smoking. She would open the door, and with a surprised look she would exclaim with a one hand waving, "You're Fat! Tell me dear are you pregnant again?" "No Bubbie I'm just fat." Well you are fat I mein idt, come on ein, hav an eskimo pie," "I don't want one Bubbie, you just told me I'm FAT! "Well have a one anyways." I knew it was futile to even bother arguing, feeding was her sole purpose in life, her second purpose was cleaning. If you weren't well fed and well scrubbed you were in for a losing battle. When I was baby I loved to eat, my appetite was insatiable, she loved to bake and cook and feed, so naturally we had a perfect relationship. Now that she lived at Grey Gables and she smuggled food from the smelly old peoples dining room, things were different. Yes I did say smuggled, you weren't supposed to take the food home, which technically made it stealing, her third purpose in life. I'm not kidding, she was a communist, so to her it wasn't really stealing, it was her right, she was so cheap she would collect all these coupons and spend all day driving around to different grocery stores. My mother would say she would spend ten dollars in gas to save a buck. I once asked my Bubbie why all her towels had hotel names on them. She would wave that hand the way a priest does his blessing, only it was a scolding. Watsa matter wit you, we were poor Martin(my grandfather) had to travel for work! She always answered a question with what's the matter with you, and she was always yelling. "Really Bubbie," I said with raised eyebrows, I was nine, but I was onto the old broad, "really, the Hilton Bubbie," she was the reason they started nailing down the television sets in hotel rooms I'm sure.
Back to the subject of Eskimo pies. First of all they smelled like old people and were sugar free with artificial ingredients, and if that's not bad enough they had also defrosted, fell apart and were refrozen, also they tasted like freezer burn and cigarettes. Often she would forget about twenty minutes in and force me to eat another, sometimes she would go for round three which always send me over the edge and sweet little Robin would have no more of it, which is what I should have done with everyone in the first place before I too went crazy(but that's another story)
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