I don't know if Tiffany really was her name, but I'm sure it was something trendy like that. Tiffany's grandmother was sitting about 18 inches awy from our table at breakfast. It was impossble to avoid hearing the conversation she was having with a friend.
Grandma may have been a little confused. Based on her conversation she clearly thought Tiffany was her own child, not her grandchild. And all the other grandchildren, too. She seemed to want to control every aspect of her daughter's life, and she felt herself in competition with the other set of grandparents. The daughter and son-in-law had to spend all of their holidays with her. Her iPad was full of pictures of "her kids," little girls in tutus. "They are always happy if they can dress up, of course." I'm sure she had a husband, but he wasn't mentioned in the discussion.
Bite my tongue, bite my tongue. Not all little girls are happy to dress up. Why should they be expected to conform to society's parameters for how women should look and act? This Grandma wasn't any older than I am. She should know better. And why can't grandma and grandpa, who are retired, go to California to visit the daughter and grandchildren? Why must their daughter's whole family schlep to New Jersey and spend their limited vacation time all the time to visit Grandma?
Why am I reacting so strongly? Let me think. Oh, yeah. When I was growing up we made the long, boring drive to New Jersey at least twice a year to visit Grandma and Grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins. It was really boring and tense. Years later I found out that my mother enjoyed these visits less then I did, but as a child I was not really able to tune into the undercurrents. To the best of my recollection, my grandparents were not particularly interested in their grandchildren, or in any children. My brother and I had to entertain ourselves. I remember trying to play solitaire with a pinochle deck. I have no memories of special times with my grandparents. They certainly did nothing to make me feel special or valued. Many, many years later my father told me, privately, that he regretted not taking our family on real vacations. I don't know if he was speaking for my mother. She never said anything to me like that.
Fast forward one generation. I bring my kids to see Grandma and Grandpa. It's pretty much the same story. Grandma and Grandpa want to "see" them, but after 5 minutes they are done. It is pretty clear that they don't particularly like kids. We only spend a couple of days with my parents, and then we fly south and go to Disney World.
When our son was born my parents did come to Alaska. At this time I still believed that it was possible for them to build some kind of relationship with our daughter. I suggeested they take her to a children's museum. I thought that would be a great way for them to interact. We dropped them off and arranged to meet them at the museum an hour or so later. When we returned, my parents were sitting on a bench in the entryway and our daughter was running around inside the museum not bonding with them.
Well, this blog has not gone where I expected it to go when I started writing, but I have a lot that I need to process. If I become a grandmother some day, I want to be able to achieve a good balance between apathy and micromanagement (with none of either).
After _________ at breakfast, we had a very pleasant day. (I am looking for a word that is the opposite of eavesdropping. A word for listening to someone else's conversation even though you don't want to. Overhearing?)
The weather was perfect and the seas were calm. We spent a lot of time sitting on our balcony reading.
Ken went to a lecture: Midget Submarines and the Attack on the Tripitz. (Tripitz might be a great name for a website. "Plan your next vacation on Tripitz.com." Actually, I think there is a site called "Tripit.") I went to Cruise Critic meeting for people interested in going to New Zealand. One woman there lived in New Zealand, and several people had been there and came to share their experiences. It was not what I woul call an informative meeting.
Before dinner we went to see the production show, What a Swell Party. I really like all the costumes and choreography in this show, even though the music predates me a little. At dinner we were taken to a table occupied by three older people who pretty much ignored us and each other. It was like going to a funeral. After a few minutes we decided not to endure another awkward, strained dinner with people we who didn't get the point of sharing a table. We have never walked out on a dinner table before, and it's a little awkward (and probably rude), but it's our vacation and we have suffered through enough tedious dinners already. We were going to go upstairs to a different dining room, but the hostess snagged us on the way out and said she would give us a different table. I hope the first table didn't see us going to the second table. The second table turned out to be very nice. We had a very lively conversation with nice people.
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