Word of the Week

Victory

Definition: a success or triumph over an enemy in battle or war

Consider this...

My grandmother’s 83rd birthday was last night. My mother asked me to call her, and I immediately felt uncomfortable with the thought. I’m not close with my father’s side of the family, and I hadn’t spoken with my grandmother in at least five or six years.

Still, I knew that she was experiencing more health problems and that she had recently been moved into an assisted living facility. I decided to suck it up and call her. After all, how bad could it be?

The conversation started innocently enough. She asked me how I was doing and then launched into her own litany of complaints, musings and thoughts. But then, out of the blue, she hit me with a big one:

“How much do you weigh now, sweetie?”

And then I remembered why I hated talking to her in the first place. As a chubby child, my grandmother always questioned me about my weight, my eating habits, and not-so-subtly chided that, at least in her eyes, marriageability was inversely correlated with how much one weighed.

As if I was concerned about my “marriageability” when I was 10.

I have to admit that my first reaction to my grandmother’s rude question was indignation, but soon it morphed into embarrassment and sadness. I felt mortified about my weight and angry that one of my grandmother’s most pressing questions about my life was a stupid irrelevant number on a scale.

Still, I recognize that my grandmother is a product of a different time. She did not have an education, never engaged in hobbies or activities of her own, and completely devoted her life to catering to her husband and three children. To her, a woman’s worth is in her ability to be a good wife and mother - both of which depended on her getting married, which, she reasoned, depended on her physical attractiveness.

Of course I don’t agree with her, and I am working on letting her ignorance roll off of me like water. I admit that it is extremely difficult, but I do smugly take great comfort in one thing.

Next year, I’m just sending a card… if she’s lucky.