"We're going to see your grandmother this weekend," my parents would declare to a chorus of groans. "Hey, knock it off. She's getting old now. This might be the last time you ever see her."
I can't speak for the older kids, but I heard that particular speech at least two dozen times. I didn't want my grandmother to die, particularly, but I sure was getting tired of having her imminent death used against me.
She lived in a ghetto in Sharon, PA, which doesn't top anyone's list of travel destinations. Nevertheless, several times a year, we would pile out of the station wagon and trudge up the steps to see our perpetually dying grandmother.
Grandma was straight out of central casting. A Polish immigrant in the 20s, she still dressed like she had just stepped off the boat. I would peek in the window and see her in her shawl, boiling the flavor out of some kielbasa. She would peek back through her 30 year-old glasses, then exclaim something in Polish. I don't know what she said. I only know a little Polish, and it's all related to card-playing. I concluded that she was professing her gratitude for my having given up a weekend of watching cartoons.
Arrivals at Grandma's house were ritualistic. We would enter single file, by age, which made me the last of seven. Grandma would greet us with revolting, sloppy old-person kisses and an assessment of our body mass index.
"Linda!" she would say to my eldest sister. "You too skeeny! Eat, eat!"
"Mort! You too skeenny too! They don't feed you?"
"Nadine! Julie! You both too skeeny! Oh my lord, eat!"
"John! Oh so skeeny!" And then she would shove a Polish pastry in my mouth. And so it went, every time. No matter how fat one of us got—we're Slavic, after all—there was always Grandma to make us feel better.
One day when we arrived, the processional went as always. Nadine and Julie has just been pronounced emaciated waifs, and Grandma turned her attention to me.
"John!" She looked me up and down. "You look...good."
Jesus Christ! I thought. I've really let myself go! And thus did I begin the first diet of my life.