Wrong Answer

My grandparents, my sister and I sat in the restaurant-booth. As we waited for the food to arrive, we conversed with a comparative ease and fluency that surprised me. My sister and I had put off setting a specific date and time for this particular dinner for weeks and weeks, both of us dreading it. You see, the great danger with my mother's parents, is that my grandmother is a monologuer - which wouldn't be so bad, if it weren't for the fact that her favorite subjects tend to be either too boring or too controversial for comfortable conversation. Dinner with her, we expected, would consist of her talking volubly while my grandfather sat sullenly, eating his meal, and we attempted to listen as politely as we could, dutifully returning the love our grandparents were attempting to lavish on us. But that was not how the evening went at all. As I said before, we conversed with comparative ease and fluency, telling stories and teasing one another. And naturally, one of the things my grandfather asked, in a joking sort of way, was what I intended to do after college. After all, he said, college, he'd been told, was the time a person is given to decide what they want to do. So I told him. I said, "Well, I'm going to teach English as a second language." and then, laughingly, "...but I only decided that two weeks ago, so don't ask too many questions yet!" To which my grandmother replied by asking where I would go to work, meaning where in the world. And I, high on having successfully both made my grandfather laugh and avoided an in-depth analysis of my Next Step in Life, replied, with another laugh in my voice, "That's the wrong question." - and immediately thought to myself, "and that was the wrong answer," because my grandmother turned from me, as if I had struck her a blow to the face. We didn't talk about my Future any more.
That wasn't the end of the night, by any means, and I hope I behaved more respectfully for the rest of it. But it made me think. This being equal with adults thing is an extremely hard balance to strike. How do you honor your father and mother, while being autonomous and an adult? What do you do with loving inquiries into matters on which you feel you're coming along just fine, thank-you-very-much? What is the best way to show your family, as an emerging adult, that you love and appreciate them? Despite my grandparents not being the funnest people to be around, I do love them dearly, and I know the feeling is mutual (if not stronger on their part). I was truly privileged tonight to hear many new and different stories from their lives that I had never heard before, and to hear the echoes of the years they have spent together; years spent with my mother and her sisters, my family. I was touched, once again, by their generosity, and how they crave the affection of their grandchildren, and how they want to take care of us, and make sure we will be provided for. They showered us in demonstrations of love. They made great effort to get us to agree to go to dinner with them, to take us out to a nice restaurant, to clean their kitchen; my grandmother even tried making a new kind of cake! They were so kind and generous, and of all the emotions I find within myself after this amazing blessing of a meeting, I am surprised and upset to find shame. Have I loved them well? I don't know that I can satisfactorily answer yes. But I don't want to be that grandchild. You know. The thankless one. I am thankful. But those words are not enough. What to do? Sigh. With this mash of mixed emotions (though mostly grateful ones), I shall go to sleep. Because you can't decide anything properly at one in the morning.
TBC.
PP.