I had Thanksgiving lunch with my parents and grandmother today at a restaurant. It seems every Thanksgiving the number of people around the table grows smaller and smaller. I remember as a child we'd have 15 or so family members crammed into my parents house. And as I grew up my cousins and I moved away, had families of our own, and celebrated with them.
I read this article about video conferencing between grandparents and their grandchildren in the
New York Times today and it left me feeling sad and sort of empty.
Some grandparent enthusiasts say this latest form of virtual communication makes the actual separation harder. Others are so sustained by Web cam visits with services like Skype and iChat that they visit less in person. And no one quite knows what it means to a generation of 2-year-olds to have slightly pixelated versions of their grandparents as regular fixtures in their lives.
I consider myself a lucky girl. I grew up in the same town as my grandparents. On my father's side there was sweet Pepiere and on my mother's side was Grandma and Pet-Pet, an affectionate name created by yours truly. My Pepiere was a simple man whose wife, my Grammie Geneva, died when I was just a baby. He had worked in the local textile mill his whole life. He smoked constantly, wore wing tip shoes, ployester pants, and Hanes T-shirts on a daily basis. He was bald on top and in the winter he grew a beard. He had a big belly and wore glasses. Every day he would hang out at Pat's, a local diner, with his buddies and was constantly shoving money at my sister and I. He suffered a stoke and died about a month later in the hospital.
Both Pepiere and Pet-Pet loved to hear me play the piano, which was located in my parent's basement which is the only place inside where they were permitted to smoke. Pet-Pet died rather suddenly in the summer of 2006 of lung and liver cancer. I was in NYC at the time in grad school and missed his passing by one hour. His last words to me over the phone were "I love you to, Pet." He was a constant presence in my life. I spent a lot of weekends at their house as a child - the same house my mother grew up in. He came to all my field hockey games in high school even though he didn't understand the rules and choked up after every visit home from college. He wore the Towson University sweatshirt I got him one Christmas all the time.
Grandma is left. And she has aged considerably in the 2 years since Pet-Pet died. It's been odd watching my spunky, independent grandmother turn into a child. I still see flashes of her sense of humor now and then and that makes me happier than I can tell you. My chihuahua, Miles, adores grandma and accosts her with love whenever he sees her.
The point of all this is that I know my grandparents. They were a consistent presence in my life from before I have memories. And I am so thankful. To think that Skype and iChat may be keeping grandparents from visiting their grand kids and parents from taking their children to see their grandparents is the saddest thing I have heard in a long time. If I had to talk to my grandmother over the computer I wouldn't get the chance to hug her, to smell her smell, to see if her fingernails are painted, and see the sparkle in her eye. I would have missed the Saturday red hot dogs at Grandma and Pet-Pet's, watching Grandma sew me a dress, playing with the old records Pepiere owned, and countless other experiences.
I guess what I'm saying is that video conferencing is nice, but it doesn't hold a candle to a hug from grandma.
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