Grandmothers at War--A Holiday Reminiscence.

The older I get, the more I hate the holiday season. Whether it’s the seasonal affection disorder that acts up in cold, dark weather, an increasingly low threshold for the disgust engendered by the stress-inducing exchange of meaningless tchotchkes, or the constant torment of having to listen to an interminable chorus of “Silver Bells,” every year, I like it a little less.

And it seems appropriate, somehow, to remember my grandmothers this season, because neither of them was crazy about the holidays, either. Or, for that matter, each other.

My grandmothers cordially despised each other from, as most people’s recollections would have it, day one. I’m not exactly sure why. They had a lot in common.

Both were tiny. I don’t think either of them broke five feet. Both were Midwestern—one from St. Louis, the other from Peru, Indiana—and neither ever lived more than five miles from where she was born. Neither of them had an aesthetic sensibility that could be described as understated. They both liked over-the-top outfits with lots of sparkles and sequins, wore way too much jewelry, and had hairdos that defied both gravity and good taste.

They were both older sisters, had two children, and grew up in reasonable affluence—one’s father had a good job on the railroad; the other’s father made a very comfortable living selling auto parts—and both were married to successful businessmen. Both were of at least partial Jewish ancestry. Neither was what you’d call spiritual, although they both gave the occasional nod to the Deity in the form of sporadic attendance at religious services.

They were both reasonably intelligent. I don’t think either of them would have split the atom, but they certainly could have been more than wives, mothers, and grandmothers had they come from times and places that encouraged higher aspirations. And, inasmuch as they were both of the same generation—one born in 1914, the other in 1917—they were of an age to see feminism emerge, but too late for them to benefit from it. You’d think they would have been thick as thieves, but it didn’t work out that way. They hated each other from the get-go. Go figure why.

Neither of them was so petty as to try and enlist their grandchildren in their war on each other. They were both too intrinsically decent to do that. But every so often, their veneer of icy cordiality would crack.

My paternal grandmother once described her own grandmother as “one of those little short kikey Jews.” She meant it affectionately, and was as far from anti-Semitic as you could get. She also used the phrase “Nigger in the woodpile” with some frequency, and you would not have found a more ardent supporter of Lyndon B. Johnson and the Civil Rights omnibus bill throughout the length and breadth of the Midwest. She simply came from a time and a place where such words were descriptive, not derogatory. But I once made the mistake of asking my other grandmother, “Are you one of those little short kikey Jews?”

Bubbe Aileen almost dropped the frying pan in which she was frying eggs in bacon grease. (Short aside: she kept a jar of bacon grease—sometimes adulterated with a liberal admixture of chicken fat—under the kitchen sink. This practice seems to have been the dirty little secret of damn near all St. Louis Jewish grandmothers of that generation. I can’t tell you how many people I’ve talked to who have all confessed that their own grandmothers had the same, and kept it in the same place.)

“Where in the hell did you hear that?” she demanded in a tone that brooked no pettifogging.

“Fruh-fruh-fruh-fruh-from my Grandma Betty,” I stammered, feeling like I’d sold the old dear out. I suspect Joe Valachi felt the same when he admitted the existence of the Mafia.

“Don’t you ever let me hear language like that out of your mouth again, God damn it,” she growled, and went back to frying my breakfast, muttering darkly about, “That Indiana peasant woman and her peasant family.”

Of which I, presumably, was a part.

Once, however, my brother and I cottoned to this mutual antipathy, we learned to turn these occasional lapses in decorum to our own advantage.

“That’s a beautiful sweater, baby,” Grandma Betty once told me. “My, but that’s a beautiful sweater. Where’d you get that?”

“Oh, thanks, Grandma,” I said in an offhand manner. “My grandma in St. Louis sent me a hundred bucks the other day. I thought I’d go shopping.”

“Hundred bucks,” growled Grandma Betty in her cigarette-scorched sotto voce. “Who does she think she is. Tacky Jewish bitch. Baby,” she said, raising her voice to audible levels again, “go look in my purse. There’s two hundreds there I want you to have.”

I’m not proud, but I was in college at the time, and exploiting my grandmothers’ feud was a better option than selling plasma.

Neither of them had any tact. My maternal grandmother once barked at me that my new glasses were “Way too small for someone with a nose like yours. You should take them back and get your money back. And if they won’t do it, you should give them to someone with a smaller nose than yours.”

Brutal? Tactless? A tad harsh? Perhaps, but that’s what I miss about both of them. There was no room for namby-pambyism or mealy-mouthishness with them. Neither had the appetite for pleasantries and niceties. They were honest, and they honestly didn’t like each other. They refrained from open warfare, but they did so through gritted teeth, and they made sure everyone could see the gritting. They were both deeply compassionate women, but deeply realistic as well. And contrary to what the more sensitive among us may think, there’s no contradiction there.  

After I’d moved back to St. Louis from Pittsburgh and had been between girlfriends for a while, Aileen pulled me aside and said, “Honey, you can tell me. Are you funny?"

"Funny?" I asked. "How do you mean funny? What are you talking about?"

"You know what I mean," she said impatiently. "Queer. Are you?"

"What the hell?!" I yelled. "Did my own grandmother just ask me if I was gay? That's real nice."

"Well, it's okay if you are," she said. "I'm a very liberal grandma. You can say."

"Well, thanks, but I'm not," I said. Somewhat huffily, I'm kind of ashamed to admit.

I'm ashamed that I was appalled by the question. These days, I’d be sort of flattered. I'm also ashamed that I got angry at her. I should have taken it in the spirit in which it was offered, which was acceptance, tolerance, and unconditional love, even if it came in a somewhat tactlessly phrased wrapper.

This is the same woman who, when I told her I was getting serious about the girl whom I’d end up marrying, thought for a minute and finally said, “Well, she does have beautiful skin. Greeks have the best skin. But my God, after one or two children, her hips are going to be HUGE.”

By that time, I’d matured enough to realize that tactless doesn’t mean mean-spirited, so I just smiled and said, “Thanks for your blessing, Bubbe.”

T.S. Eliot said of John Webster that he “always saw the bones beneath the skin.” That’s a very apt description of how I feel about the holidays. Others see peace on earth, good will towards men. I see a wasteful, pointless exercise in vulgar commercialism to celebrate the birth of a guy who wasn’t who people think he was on the day that he wasn’t even born. Or to celebrate the lovingkindness of an all-powerful Deity who couldn’t be bothered to spare the chosen people Auschwitz, but who made sure they had enough oil to keep the lamps burning for eight days. It’s all lies—pretty lies, but lies nonetheless.

Maybe that’s why neither of my grandmothers liked the holidays. And maybe it’s why during the holidays I especially miss two little old ladies who detested each other, and whose strange shared combination of acerbic and compassionate I find oddly inspiring. 

All The Children Are NOT Above-Average

Disclaimer.

I am not a child psychologist, a psychiatrist, or an educator. I have no training whatsoever in child psychology barring one or two classes I took in preparation for an abortive attempt at being a schoolteacher. I am, however, a loudmouth with an exaggerated opinion of his own intelligence. This characteristic alone qualifies me to shoot my mouth off about anything about which I feel like shooting it off.

My wife and I know a couple who don't make a ton of money, and who live in a perfectly good public school district, but who spend an inordinate amount of money each year to send their kid to an elite private school because, as the wife puts it with a self-satisfied smirk, "We think he's just a little bit gifted, hee hee."

This infuriates me.

I'm not saying gifted kids don't exist. They do. But they are few and far between. In seven years of being a parent--and thus interacting rather closely with a lot of other parents and their kids--I've only seen one whom I'd call gifted.

A couple of our acquaintance--not the couple mentioned above--has a little boy whom we'll call Jake. Jake is eerily, creepily, unsettlingly, super-smart. He read the whole Harry Potter series at three. He could draw three-quarter perspective profile pictures at four. And he was fluent--I mean like translator-ability fluent--in Hebrew at five. Jake is an undeniably brilliant child. To paraphrase Oliver Wendell Holmes, "I can't define 'gifted,' but I know it when I see it"; and this little boy, Jake, is, for lack of a better word, gifted. Most kids aren't. Including mine. Including, in all probability, yours. Deal with it.

The word "gifted," in my opinion, is a euphemism for "having parents who are A) white, and B) pushy." It's a horseshit category, and by "horseshit", I mean "absolutely utterly meaningless, and worse than that, pernicious." What it means is that the parents realize that their kid is no prodigy--not a Bobby Fischer, not a Midori--but they simply cannot accept that their kid isn't better, even marginally, than all the other kids.

When parents insist that their completely normal, completely average kids are "gifted," it really isn't about the kids at all. It's about the parents and their egos.

We have a tendency to look at kids as extensions of the parents. In effect, the kids become the parents' proxies. It's a pretty natural tendency, but it's one that should be fought against nonetheless, because not only is it dangerous, it's irritating as hell, once you see what's really going on.

No one wants to hear people bragging about themselves, but it's perfectly acceptable to brag about one's kids. It's a socially acceptable way of blowing your own horn. Because, you see, when parents brag about their kids, what they're really doing is puffing their own intelligence, genetics, or superior parenting skills. They aren't kvelling about their kids, they're bragging about themselves.

Likewise, when we compliment kids, what we're really doing is complimenting the parents. It's no longer socially acceptable--hell, it's even legally actionable--to tell a woman how hot she is. But if you say, "Your children are absolutely beautiful children," that's perfectly okay.

Thus, when parents insist their kids are gifted when, all evidence to the contrary aside, they aren't really looking for the best educational opportunity for their child. They're just asserting their belief that there's no way in hell that they, THEY, with their superior genetics, intellect, or parenting skills, could have whelped a young 'un who isn't above average in SOME way.

Earlier I used the word "pernicious" to describe this phenomenon. "Pernicious" is one of my favorite words. It moves this tendency of parents insisting their kids are gifted from the "merely annoying" category into the "potentially dangerous" category. Here's why.

There is currently a raging debate in this country on the medicating of children for ADD, ADHD, and a zillion other "syndromes", "disorders", or "conditions." (My personal favorite, the one that I've been diagnosed with, is ODD--Oppositional Defiant Disorder: "an ongoing pattern of disobedient, hostile and defiant behavior toward authority figures." That's from Wikipedia, so you know it's good. Turns out I suffer from a syndrome. I have a disease. And here I thought I was just an asshole for all those years! Also, I like the acronym. I've always been odd.)


But I digress. I have a sneaking, scientifically-unverifiable suspicion that the rash in what I believe to be the overdiagnosis and overmedication of children has little to do with actual real syndromes, disorders, or diseases. Once again, I suspect it has to do with the parents' egos. 


Their kid, their unbelievably gifted Billy/Susan/Evan/Olivia, is simply not performing up to his or her parents' expectations. For some unfathomable reason, the kid ISN'T splitting the atom at seven! For some unfathomable reason, the kid talks too much in class! In fact, the kid is--gasp--acting like... like... well, like a normal kid, God forbid. A normal, gleefully rotten, poorly-behaved, not-particularly-spectacular-at-math-chess-or-music-kid. A kid like--shudder--all the other kids. Unacceptable!


But why, you can hear the parents' anguished voices asking? What, oh what, could be the reason for this? Surely my child is gifted. My superior genetics, intellect, and parenting skills guarantee THAT. There's no way a kid who originated in MY balls/ovaries is anything less than gifted. 


So there must be something in the way. There must be something keeping my child from standing out from the crowd. It must be a syndrome. Which must be medicated. So that Billy/Susan/Evan/Olivia reaches the heights to which my superior genetics, intellect, and parenting skills have destined for him or her. That must be it. My kid is brilliant, but his or her ADD is in the way! My parenting skills are superb, but my kid's ADHD is making him or her act out! 


And in order to salve our own egos, we first turn the kids into freaks. We stigmatize them by making them the victim of a psychological disorder. And then we medicate the living shit out of them, and turn them into little junkies who are unable to exist in the world without pills. 


I can't even begin to imagine the effects of this on a child's physiology or self-esteem. In order to maintain the fantasy that we, the parents, are exceptional, we tell them they're defective in some way--and then we teach them that the answer to all life's problems can be found in a pill. And then we wonder why drug use among teens is at epidemic proportions. 


As much as it pains me to admit it, my kids do not appear to be particularly gifted. Nor do they appear to be of more than average intelligence. By all accounts, they are perfectly normal, perfectly average, unapologetically rotten and ill-behaved, happy, healthy kids. Thank God. Admitting it doesn't mean I don't love them. In fact, it means I love them more than the parents who insist their kids are gifted, because it means my love for them isn't conditional. They don't have to be above average for me to love them. They just have to be mine. 


Here's a thought. The next time you're tempted to compliment a parent on his or her children, refrain from doing so. Don't feed their bloated egos. Instead, ignore the parent and compliment the kid directly. It'll do a hell of a lot more for the kid and his or her self-esteem. Plus the look on the parents' faces when you ignore them and their self-promotion is absolutely priceless. 


Of course, that's probably just the ODD talking. Ignore me.