A Thanksgiving Fable

"...to Grandmother's House We'll Go..."

Today we went down to Mutti’s and Oma’s to bring them back to our house for the holiday. Lizzy swore we would never get the old lady into the car and if we couldn’t get her to go then Mutti would never go either. She was partially wrong. Oma decided that if she got into the car she would never see her home again. She told us we were after all her money and refused to get her medical care and she wouldn’t budge from her seat in the kitchen. Mutti, in a singular moment of clarity, decided to trust me and go with Lizzy upstairs to pack a bag for herself while I sat with Oma and we stared at each other. A case of an immovable object and an irresistible force.

I knew Oma trusted me. I have never given her any reason to not to. I baby-sat with her several years ago when Mutti went with the rest of the family to Texas for Jennifer’s wedding. My act of self sacrifice apparently did not go unrecognized by the old Bavarian. Lizzy always says she has nothing but good things to say about me. While she speaks not a word of English and I not a word of German we coexisted for a week in that tiny Long Island cape cod house while the rest of the family partied in Houston. We ate take-out Chinese and pizza and sat in front of the TV together in the evenings. I showed her slide shows of family pictures on my computer but she liked my photography of flowers more than the ones of people. The conversations were an exercise in sign language and intuition but somehow we got through and built a trust that she refuses to extend to her granddaughters. Why, I do not understand.

Her two granddaughters have cleaned, shopped, cooked and cared for the two old ladys in ways unseen today in modern America. They have cleaned up their basement after it flooded. They have gotten their ungrateful cat inoculated and clipped, de-flea’d and de-wormed. They have brought them both (mother and daughter) to the doctors, the lawyers, the bankers, and the priest as needed. Still the old lady thinks they are trying to kill her, steal her wealth (which is by no means extensive!) and make her suffer. She thinks they have intercepted her pension from Deutschland. She thinks they took her to the hospital to try to get her “finished off”. Apparently, when you go to the Hospital in Germany (she believes) they weigh the plusses and minuses of your age, social status, ability to pay, and cosmetic appearance and either save you or let you die. I can not speak to such theories but she thinks we have the same sort of medical vetting here in the U.S.A. So when she had a little stroke and her daughters got her into a hospital it was their intention to get rid of her. Obviously! She has never forgotten. She beat them at their own game. She lived!!! She has made it now, an additional four years, to the age of one hundred and two and one half despite them and she will never forgive them.

Once Mutti and Lizzy had a bag packed for Mutti, I instructed them to pack for Oma. When they had done that we began in earnest to get the old lady out from behind the kitchen table and into the Honda C.R.V. Usually that takes ten minutes-slowly down the kitchen porch steps and up a stool into the back seat. Today it took a half hour and was a tour de force, with the emphasis on the “force”. We pushed and pulled her out from her seat at the kitchen table. Once out from behind there she walked under her own power very slowly to the front door. But she had an ulterior motive. At the front door she let the cat out thinking we would never be able to catch it and, therefore, not be able to leave the poor creature alone and out in the elements. Wrong! We hate that cat and if it was to starve or be eaten by one of the neighbors that would be okay with us!

We proceeded to pry Oma’s hands loose of the front porch railing and maneuver her towards the car. She began to scream “police, police!” in German, of course, and Mutti, trained to be deathly afraid of authority, tried to clamp her hand over Oma’s mouth to silence her. This drove the old lady to even greater volume and determination not to let loose of the railing.

Mutti’s face was coloring purple and Lizzy was beginning to loose her resolve. I said to Mutti “don’t put your hand on her mouth. Let her scream…” but Mutti was in a mini-panic. I had to sweet talk her to get her to lighten up on Oma and just ignore her protests. Lizzy was pushing from behind the hundred and two year old battle ax and I was pulling from the front. Actually getting her down off the front porch proved to be much easier than getting her into the SUV.

We were past the point of no return and I, personally, had to succeed as I had already been put on notice by Lizzy that there was no way we would get her home. It was a matter of pride.

Once we had her to the car we literally had to pick her up and drag her into the back seat. Liz got in from the other side and pulled while I picked her up and pushed her in. Once all her feet and hands were in we slammed the door and I locked it. She sat yelling on the inside (for once I was glad I didn’t understand her) and pounded on the window glass. God help me, I thought, at that moment, of Eastern European Jews, banging on the wooden sides of the freight cars, begging for their lives. She yelled through her semi toothless mouth as though she were being sent to the camps, rather than being taken to a warm, cozy home for a week of relaxation, food, and my own soft cat on her lap.

I did get her cat into the house before we pulled away. She sat in the back seat silent while we cruised-the four of us-through the Bronx and Westchester. She muttered her suspicions (which Lizzy translated for me) that she would never see her home again and we would rob her blind.

We have been home for an hour and she is getting up right now, after her first nap on the couch in front of the warmth of the fireplace, to a homemade dinner (which Matthew cooked) and a glass of sweet wine. She is talking about the possibility of poison.