Groundhog Day

I do know that I am losing major Karma points with writing about my grandmother. It is not like she is going to get me back, as I am fairly sure Henry will when he is older. I am convinced he will, either by blaming me for all his ills in his Therapists office, or as an author who in true Disney form knocks off the mother at the beginning of each story.

So I write with a slight amount of guilt…yeah, not quite enough though to make me not write!

So as you know I help take care of my 93 year old grandmother, who for all intensive purposes is in better health than I am; however a team of Doctors numbering in the hundreds would never be able to convince her of that. That said…her mind is, well, not as sharp as it once was.

(I say this with the full knowledge that at the rate my brain is deteriorating I will be a drooling carrot by the age of 50.)

So I drive my grandmother to one of her Dr in NH that she didn’t want to give up when she moved. It is an hour long scenic drive, that we have driven oh…about 1 million times, and that isn’t counting when she drove it herself every weekend when I was a kid coming to see us from Bath.

We drive down the road and it is the same exact road it always has been…very few new houses, very few new businesses, very few improvements….the very same comments at the same places every time.

It is kind of like that movie Ground Hog Day where the same day keeps happening over and over and over.

Gran: “Look how much this has built up; look at that new golf course”

Me: “MmmHmmm, remember that is where I had my prom”

Gran: “Oh really? It has been there that long? Look at that…that was just a road side stand and now it is a big business…”

The one that kills me however, is the "oh, look at all that beautiful farm land" to which my response is always "yeah we really want a farm someday," and gran says "Yeah me too."

OK so the thing that is so funny about that, is that my grandmother hates being outside. Part of why she looks younger than me at 93, is, well... she is very well preserved. Being an active person in nature is her personal hell. It is funny to watch her outside, it is as if the fresh air hurts....So I kind of entertain myself for the next few miles picturing my grandmother working outside in a field...

The running commentary makes me giggle. I have it down to the mile marker what is going to be said…the exact words…and my responses are always the same.

But there is always the one moment of solidarity where we flip off (yes even my grandmother) Alexanders, a restaurant that pissed off my Dad and now there are generations of our family flipping them off and never eating there…It makes me happy that she always remembers to lift that extra special finger at that moment every time.

I am sure that we will all lose our memory…and as I said, some of use sooner than others! But my dad has a good way to look at it.

When your memory is that bad, “you wake up in a new place, and meet new people everyday” Until then, I will just nod and give my standard responses to all the “new” things on our way to NH.