Italy has the most exciting men. Survey says so.
I haven’t watched Family Feud since the other guy was the host.Not Richard Dawson.The other one,the one who killed himself. The volume is so loud I have to shout to hear myself but Grandma can’t hear it otherwise.As it is, she has to keep asking,”What was the question?” “What’d he say.”.
TV rots your brain,studies show. Studies say, Watching game shows might actually improve your brain power,lessen the chances of memory loss. It opens pathways in the brain that otherwise get blocked and muddled because they aren’t used, like a Seasonal Use Only road.
Studies,surveys,blah blah blah. The problem is,studies are soulless and the problem with surveys is that sometimes they ask stupid people that don’t know the right answers. Any idiot knows, the most exciting men on earth live inside my head.
The kids raid the fridge as I spill the pills into my hand. A pink,a red,a blue, a white. Cylinder,sphere,circle,oval. God,if I ever need to take this many fucking pills, just shoot me,I think.My daughter peers into my hand and asks,”What are all those for.”
“I have no idea anymore,” weighing the question along with the pills in my palm. What good are they doing? Keeping her body going while her mind fades until she remembers nothing and no one. Useless,useless.
It’s stifling hot in the tiny apartment.The air smells acrid and bitter. She left the coffee pot on again and it congealed into a tarry sludge at the bottom of the pot. Every day,I turn the coffee pot off because she forgot. Every day,I open the windows. Grandma,leave the windows open.Let some fresh air in here.
“I’m cold.It’s cold in here”, Huddled under a blanket in the blue recliner that used to be Grandpa’s…that still is Grandpa’s,even though he’s dead…..in weather 88 degrees. Take these, I hand her the pills,then water in a glass that’s been around since my childhood.
“My Keys? Well, I don’t know where my keys are.”
No no no….TAKE THESE. Take these pills.
“I don’t want to take them”, but she takes them anyway,like an obedient child.
“Do you like tomatoes? Look out the window! My tomato plant has tomatoes almost ready!”She speaks like a little one seeing the wonder of ripening tomatoes for the very first time. I lean out the window,satisfying her. One blushed tomato dangles expectantly on the vine.
“Nice”, I say.She says she can’t wait until it’s ripe.She loves fresh tomatoes,right off the vine.
I searched my memory,sure there was something there about tomatoes and my Grandma.I remember my Grandfather bringing tomatoes in from the garden,using his shirttail as a sling for transporting them inside.In the kitchen, he’d let them gently roll across the speckled Formica and my Grandma would rinse them in the big milk white ceramic sink. At dinnertime,there would be slices of fresh tomato in a fancy dish,with cucumber spears alongside them. My Grandfather would spear them with his fork,laying them on his plate and marveling out loud with a “mmm.mmm…look at them.They turned out nice this year.”
5 minutes later,she asks me,”Do you like tomatoes?I have one almost ripe on the tomato plant someone gave me”. Then she wrinkles her nose as if she smelled something vile and says,”I don’t like tomatoes.Blech!I never have.”
When the tomatoes are ripe, I’ll take them home with me.
