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<p>My daughter&#8217;s wedding is not yet upon us, yet everyone has already leapfrogged over that milestone and has landed upon the grandchild square on The Hopscotch Board of Life. Whoa. Let&#8217;s pump the brakes, people! I haven&#8217;t even been able to zip-up my mother-of the-bride gown yet and we&#8217;re talking offspring?!</p><p>And yet &#8230;</p><p>I do think about it. A child&#8217;s life can forever be molded by the relationship they have with their grandparents, good or bad.</p><p>For example, my paternal grandmother didn&#8217;t enjoy me in the least. I have to admit, my memories of her are less warm and fuzzy and more barbed and unpleasant.</p><p>When I was four months pregnant, I recall visiting her. As she ushered me into her living room and I sat upon her Saran-wrapped, faux Queen Anne sofa, I immediately asked for pepper cookies, my favorite. She scolded: &#8220;You should think about losing a couple of pounds, like your sister here.&#8221;</p><p>Astonished, I clarified: &#8220;Gramma! I&#8217;m pregnant!&#8221;</p><p>She looked me up and down and said: &#8220;You look just like your mother!&#8221; as she turned on her heel to get the cookies for my sister and probably, a Slim Fast and a crust of bread for me.</p><p>And therein lies the crux of her discontent. I did look like my mother and they had a rather cantankerous relationship; a grinding of the gears on both their parts which I&#8217;m assuming began when her little Sicilian boy from Pittston married a little Polish girl from Parsons. I gathered she would have preferred he marry a woman more in sync with his ethnicity and less in sync with pierogies. This was a twisted dynamic that would never right itself in my grandmother&#8217;s lifetime.</p><p>My maternal grandmother, Helen, however, was a quintessential grandmother: a tough old Polish broad who concocted her own keilbasi as well as her own brand of discipline, which included a wooden spoon. We adored her. She is all the good memories I have of a grandmother. When my sister, Jennifer, and I stayed at her house, we had a strict schedule of events. Hard labor first. She would send us &#8220;up the hill&#8221; with pails, not to collect water, but coal. We&#8217;d be gone for hours. I only understood later &#8211; she bought herself endless moments of solitude by sending us on this fool&#8217;s errand of coal-picking. We&#8217;d drag those pails back down the mountain, empty them out into her coal cellar, and heaved sighs of disappointment when we realized our combined offerings wouldn&#8217;t heat her house for four minutes.</p><p>After the coal-fetching, we had to bathe and make clothes for our paper dolls. Then, she&#8217;d &#8220;set our hair in rags.&#8221; We&#8217;d endure hours of rags spiraling around our head, pulled so tight, I probably lost most of the elasticity in my temples and I have her to thank for the crinkles I see there now. But rags produced baloney curls the likes of which no curling iron could manufacture.</p><p>After rags, we all played gin rummy, and we&#8217;d pray for the phone to ring. Because when the phone rang, Gramma would slip into the next room to answer it as my sister and I would slip her highball down our throats. Naturally, this would ensure a very early bedtime. Savvy Helen.</p><p>I think of them both often, but in dramatically different ways. I want to be the kind of grandmother my Helen was to me. Nurturing, fun, slightly strict and able to wrap strips of rags around hanks of hair in a single bound. Would I make my grandchildren pick coal? Probably not. But how young is too young to mix a cocktail for Grandma? I&#8217;m asking for my sister.</p><style>
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<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Maria Jiunta Heck</p><p>Life Deconstructed</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Maria Jiunta Heck of West Pittston is a mother of three and a business owner who lives to dissect the minutiae of life. Send Maria an email at mariajh40@msn.com.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Life Deconstructed: Grammies are a gift. Usually.