Bummin'

Day before yesterday, I sat around the table with some of the family. Just, in passing, I seem to write that a great deal...'I sat around the table with some of the family'...

After we'd eaten, and caught up on the latest news, as seems to be the fashion these days no less than four (4) of us were indulging in a post-prandial scan of our smart phones to be sure that we hadn't missed an email or the latest Facebook post when someone remarked, 'Hey, did you know it was Grandparents Day?'

No one had and except for a few rueful smiles and an apology to my Mom and Stepdad who really are Grandparents, that 'Man, if we'd known, we'd wouldn't have made you cook today!', the matter dropped.

Later, as I drove the 20+ miles home with little to occupy my thoughts but some execrable music (unlike some I haven't been able to make myself pony up for XM Satellite Radio yet) and the antics of my fellow drivers, I had the sudden thought that this was the first time in my life that I had no grandparents left to commemorate. My last surviving grandparent died last December.

As is my wont, I drifted back a bit, thinking about these four personages who gave me my DNA, my fair skin, my tendency toward stubbornness, my love of reading, my extreme dislike of the smell of cooked popcorn (my paternal grandmother), my love of bread and gravy, all of the minutiae that goes into the making of me with all of my attributes and flaws. 

It's funny, as I was driving to my Mom's that day, I'd had that sense of deja vu, remembering other Sundays, flying down the interstate in our Volare station wagon on a warm sunny Florida September afternoon to go to Grandma's for an after-church meal. They usually would have returned to Florida from their summer trek to their Ohio home by September. I remember especially loving the month of September because it meant that Grandma and Grandpa would be home. Nothing ever tasted so good as those home-made Sloppy Joe's, always served with soggy potato chips, salad and for some inexplicable reason, Jello. We always had that gelatinous mound of proto-plasm, as an adult I dislike it vehemently, but as a child, I guess I just went with the flow. We'd sit around the table for ages reminiscing and sharing news and stories. 'Yakking' my Grandma always called it. It was the stuff of life for her. Often, we'd still be sitting at that table when Sunday lunch turned to Sunday dinner. It was no problem, out came the leftovers and after that, the lemon bars, seven-layer bars, pistachio cakes, or apple crisp. Seldom, but still notable was the fact that there were a few occasions when we sat even longer and had a second dessert of cookies and heavenly hash ice cream.

I knew that when they came home all of the good stuff would return. Things like taking walks with my Grandma around the Senior Citizen complex they lived in to find petunias, although she called them, 'tunies. Nothing thrilled us more than to see those pastel color flowers with the black faces. And then there was the ritual of 'bumming at the local Mall. I'm never sure if was by accident or by design, but the complex they lived in was one large parking lot walk away from the mall. We'd scramble down the hill that led from the complex to the mall parking lot and then a few more steps to the large glass doors where we'd spend blissful hours walking the mall, bummin', which meant looking in windows, browsing the book shops, the Hallmark store where she bought her boxes of stationary, past the Tiffany Bakery with all of its intoxicating smells, the drugstore for Chicklets and Luden's cough drops, Morrow's Nut House for wax paper bags of pastel non-pariel candies, and then if I'd been good and even some times when I hadn't, I usually netted a mint chip ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins. We rarely bought anything of great value, mostly what Grandma called 'busy work', meaning a coloring book, a packet of Crayolas, a scratch pad. Sometimes I was allowed to have a packet of Starburst candies from the drugstore. Even as an adult, when I chew a Starburst candy, I'm back there, a child, in the drugstore at the mall.

The mall I used to walk with my grandmother still exists, but I rarely go there now. Once, my Mom asked me why, if I go to a mall at all, I never go to that one, "Too many ghosts", I said.  When I look across that parking lot on the west side of the mall now, the complex is gone, the pool where I learned to swim lies under the three-story parking garage that adjoins the new multi-plex movie theatre. They demolished the old Twin theater back in the late 80's. Grandma went there for .25 cent movie days on Wednesday mornings.

On occasion, when I feel overwhelmed by life or when I'm ill and broken down in some way, I mentally take that trip in my mind; I'm always amazed at the piercing clarity with which I remember it all. They were such simple pleasures. Just Grandma and I walking the mall and ferreting out treasures.

Bummin...