Pauline

I’m home, and you know what I missed most on this trip? My toilet. Does that sound weird? Yeah, it does, but really, it’s not so weird. Let me explain: My great-grandmother doesn’t like to sit on a cold toilet seat, so she has this fuzzy toilet seat cover. And it’s gross. It stinks. I was very happy to get home and use my own toilet that doesn’t have a stinky, fuzzy cover.

That said, it was a good trip. I can’t say that it was fun. It wasn’t really meant to be fun and I didn’t really expect to have fun. But it was good…time well spent. It was necessary, I think. I’m still processing it all, and it helps me to process if I write it, so bear with me. I promise there will be some humor in the processing. My family is kind of crazy.

I’ve seen my great grandparents maybe five times in my entire life, and one of those was this last week. Even though I’ve spent so little time with them, I can see so much of Grandma in myself. I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing. I love my grandmother, but the woman is a loon. Sure, some of that is old age and some of it is probably due to a lack of proper oxygenation. (Mom said that her oxygenation levels were so low when we got there it was a miracle Grandma hadn’t had a heart attack…as of last Wednesday she’s now on oxygen 24 hours a day, and she’s hating every minute of it.) But most of it is just the way Grandma is and always has been. (Keep in mind the fuzzy toilet seat cover.)

She has a stubborn streak bigger than Texas, which apparently runs in the family. She’s a Lux, and everyone in Springville, New York, knows that all the Luxes are hard-headed. And on top of that she’s unbelievably independent. The woman would rather die than ask anyone for help. Another Lux Family trait, I’m told, and four generations later, it hasn’t been watered down any, at least not in me. Mom jokes that my first full sentence was, “I can do it myself.” It may not have been my first full sentence, but it was certainly one I said a lot, and still do. I think that independence is a good thing, but it can be not so good in excess. My great-grandmother is excessively independent. I hope that when I’m her age, I’m able to accept my limitations and ask for help. I hope that no matter what my age, I’m able to accept my limitations and ask for help when I need it.

Okay…enough introspection; here’s a funny story. One night last week I was alone with Grandma for about twenty to thirty minutes and she told a story about going to a dance with some girlfriends of hers. On the way home, they had a flat tire. Grandma was driving, it was late, and they were only a few blocks from the house, so she kept going. And she got pulled over by the sheriff. He accused her of drunk driving, but she swore she only had a couple of very small cups of beer and told him that if she were any younger, she knew he’d be taking her over into the bushes to take advantage of her, she knew how he was, she’d heard stories, yes sir. A few weeks later she had to appear in court and lucky for her, the judge was an old family friend who told the sheriff that he better not ever mess with Pauline again.

While she was telling me this, I was picturing a younger Grandma, a Pauline in her late teens before she got married, or maybe in her twenties after my grandmother was born and she had divorced her first husband. So I asked Grandma how old she was when this happened. “Oh…about sixty.”

I don’t know how much of this story is true. Grandma has a tendency to exaggerate a bit, but the essence of Grandma is there…her brashness, spunk, sass, independence…. I couldn’t dream up a character like her if I spent my whole life trying.