dinner with my grandmother

Grandmothers are interesting because they generally perceive their grandchildren to be the greatest apogees of achievement. They only have the highest praise for you, even if you are less than exceptional by society's standards of exception. This leads you to question any and all of their judgments. We can’t ALL be special. Today I had dinner with my grandmother one on one. While my grandmother is like all other grandmothers in the ways I just mentioned, she is also different in that she is a trained psychologist. So not only does she have grandmother powers, she has brain insight powers too. She told me today that I am really special. She tells me this every time I see her in a passing way, the way I tell someone its hot out, like it’s common knowledge. However, this time, she elaborated. She explained why she perceives me to be special.

Bubby (jewish for grandmother):
“Lauren, you are special because you have three things going for you that most people lack. Number one, you are pretty. Number two, you have brains. Number three, you have smarts. You need to remember this, and understand just how lucky you are.”

Me: (cue eyeroll, which also works to mask my tears as I find myself suddenly on the verge of tears, not because I am particularly moved by what my grandmother is saying, but mostly because my inner self-deprecating 13 year old awkward skinny praying mantis Lauren cannot handle this many compliments that contradict all of my ideas about myself)
“I don’t believe you. Grandparents have to lie to their grandchildren. You would never tell me I was ugly and stupid if I’m actually ugly and stupid.”

Bubby:
“No, no, if you were ugly and stupid I would just sit here thinking, oh god what do I talk to her about now.”

The funny thing is that while grandmothers are the ones who make you feel so good about yourself, they simultaneously make you feel like you are the worst because it feels as if it is impossible to live up their ideas about who you are and what you are capable of.  My grandmother asked me questions tonight like “are you happy?” and “what do you want from life?” not because she wanted me to break down in tears due to my utter realization that I don’t have the answers to those questions (which happened on my walk home from dinner, by the way), but because she genuinely wanted to know how she could fix all of the things and apply her grandmother powers for good. “It’s not the same as when you were young, or even when daddy was young. It’s HARD for me,” I said in my most bratty twenty-something disillusioned way. Her response: “Just trust yourself.”

K.