“You’re calling earlier than usual. Did you not go to your game night?” Maga asked of me both times I called. I’m such a creature of habit, she just assumed it was Tuesday. It wasn’t. Once it was Wednesday. Once it was Monday. I called Wednesday because Tuesday was so busy. I called Monday because Tuesday was shaping up to be as equally busy.
“Life is not as jolly as it could be,” Maga said. In a lot of ways, yes. In a lot of other ways, no. But a granddaughter learns to pick her battles.
“Have you got any trips planned,” Maga asked, and when the details were repeated to her, she said, “I wish I wasn’t 97 and could travel with you.” I reminded her of her prior travels so she could look back fondly and promised to send postcards and take lots of pictures so she could have something to look forward to.
“I’ve got to get up and get going early which is not the way I do things. I’m a slow starter.” Maga said it in relation to an upcoming doctor’s appointment and, I suppose, her current lifestyle. I heard it in relation to my writing and, I suppose, my current lifestyle.
The parallels and perpendiculars between our conversations and our lives are too numerous for me to be anything but angry with my high school math teacher who claimed I’d need this math in the “real world.”
I hate it when other people are right, particularly math teachers.
Abigail Mumford 