Grandma’s House

Well, I was trying to wait out the pandemic before posting another blog entry. But I think it’s now safe to say it’s not ending anytime real soon, so here goes.

It’s my grandma’s birthday! Esther Knickerbocker would have been 121 today.

Born in 1899, Grandma was a short, squat German woman who shook the pictures on the wall as she bustled through her big house. She and Grandpa had a farm, which was quickly becoming surrounded by sprawling suburban tract homes. My family lived across the street in a tiny house, which had been the “hired hand’s house” until Mom and Dad bought it.

Growing up, my whole world centered around “Grandma’s House.” Catching frogs in the pond, building hay bale forts, jumping in the leaves, eating all the homemade cookies in her pantry…it made for an idyllic childhood. And it truly would have been an idyllic childhood, if my own house hadn’t been in utter chaos.

At our house—well, the term “shit show” hadn’t yet been invented, but that’s what we were dealing with in the late 1970s. My brother had developed full-blown paranoid schizophrenia, my sister had run away with a truck driver, Mom was a raging alcoholic, and Dad was trying to keep it all quiet so no one would find out.

At home, I was pretty isolated. Due to my brother Paul being so ill, we couldn’t have visitors—and he didn’t like it when I went to my friends’ houses. So I looked forward to my one permitted weekly social occasion: Grandma’s “Friday Night Club”.

Every Friday, Grandma would entertain my cousin Alex and me for hours on end. This woman was pushing 80 at the time, but you’d never know it. So much energy! We’d play countless board games like Parcheesi, Chinese Checkers and Flinch; she’d teach us card games like Kings on the Corner and Euchre; then we’d retire to the living room to watch the Muppet Show, Donny and Marie, and Chico and the Man. I looked forward to every Friday like it was Christmas.

When I was in sixth grade, Grandma told me I could have a Halloween sleepover at her house. I was thrilled! However, when the party began, I was horrified to discover that Grandma—always the quintessential hostess—had arranged a number of “entertaining” activities for my preteen friends. Activities that may have been appealing in the 1910s, that is. With every round of “Row Row Row Your Boat,” I could feel my already shaky popularity sinking fast.

But despite Grandma’s attempted hijacking of the party—or perhaps because of it—all the girls had a blast. And for the first time in a long time, I felt relaxed. No looking over my shoulder, no bracing to get hit again, no waiting for the next bad thing to happen. For a while, I was a normal kid, in a normal house, with normal people.

Looking back now, I realize that I never—ever—felt safe at home. But I always felt safe at Grandma’s.

Oddly, Grandma never asked me what was going on at my house. I figured she must have known something was wrong. My brother ended up hiding in his room for four years as his insidious illness took away the person he used to be.

One day I came across Grandma’s diary. Most entries were about the weather or the gardening club, but then I saw that interspersed with the news of the day, she had often lamented, “Why won’t they do something about Paul?”

Later, when asked how I survived my childhood, I would always answer, Well, I don’t really know.

But I just realized something today. I survived because of Grandma.

Thank you, Grandma. And—Happy Birthday.

P.S. Grandma, it’s time for me to finally confess. Remember how you baked cookies every day but they kept mysteriously disappearing from the pantry? And you asked me if I knew what happened to them and I told you Alex ate them? It was me. It was always me. But I think you already knew that!