I am not that anyone can call himself a grandfather unless he has a long list of stories to share with those grandchildren trailing after him.
Most of the stories are fascinating. Life’s experiences change so rapidly these days that what our grandparents lived through when they were younger bears little resemblance to what is going on in the lives of their grandchildren. Things are different and that is what makes their stories of the past so interesting.
Sometimes the stories become old and boring. They have been told too many times. They would rather not hear the story again, but they will, and likely as not, they will hear it a few more times before they can find an excuse to slip out of the kitchen and into the back yard.
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If you listen carefully, you will discover that often the stories change each time they are told. The changes are small, but they are there, and in fact the changes signal to the listener that something important is happening.
The little changes tell us that the storyteller is using these moments of recitation to do more than entertain us. He is telling us that he is working out something within the story for himself, and that the story he is telling us is more for his own benefit than it is for ours. He is trying to understand something that happened in his life years ago, something he never did quite figure out. Let me tell you.
She sat, crouched in her wheelchair, somewhat obese, quiet and withdrawn, but always aware of everything that was going on around her. She could tell you what each of the other residents in the home had for breakfast that day, and just to make the point that she still had her wits about her, she seldom lost when the activity director organized one of the weekly bingo games. Her story was the same, or so it seemed, and she told it to me without fail during our weekly visits.
Her daughter, who is now also close to retirement herself, had been offered a huge raise to continue working for the small company that hired her years ago. The company’s manager had such confidence in the daughter that he was willing to invest time, money and responsibility if she would stick around a bit longer. The details of what the manager offered to the daughter changed each time Grandma told the story, but you would only notice those changes if you listened intently to what the old woman was saying.
What Grandma never did tell in the story was that long ago, before her daughter was hired into the job, she and the old woman had a serious falling out. No one is certain how long they kept their distances, but for years neither one made any attempt to call the other. It was years before one of them picked up the phone to make that important call, and I am not certain which one did it, but somewhere along the way they reconciled their relationship.
It is always a puzzle to the old woman. She is not certain how it was that this girl who had caused her so much grief had been as successful as she was elsewhere in her life. So she tells the story, over and over again. Every time she does so, she comes that much closer to appreciating that she might have made a mistake when she asked the girl to leave the family home.
Perhaps one day she will understand it, and maybe then she will not have to feel quite so guilty. Until then, she tells the story, not to entertain the listener, but so that she will one day benefit from understanding it.
Jacklin Andrews is a family counsellor, living and working in west-central Saskatchewan who has taught social work for two universities. Mail correspondence in care of Western Producer, Box 2500, Saskatoon, Sask., S7K 2C4 or e-mail jandrews@producer.com
