Dec. 7
2:44 PM
RIP, Grandma Bullington 1919—2010
Over Thanksgiving my last living grandparent, Ulamae Knutson Bullington, passed away. Alzheimer's had taken the use of her arms and legs and her brain was swiss cheese, so her death was a relief, but still. She was the sort of battle ax that made Bea Arthur's character on the Golden Girls look like a wee little hatchet, a stout Norwegian with a razor tongue, and I adored her. She was a card player and a tale teller, and whenever we would make the long, long trip from central Pennsylvania to upstate Wisconsin I looked forward to her homemade strawberry jam, stories about trolls, and the pack of playing cards she would let me choose from her dresser drawer full of casino-punched decks. She was always incredibly encouraging of my writing, and when I started finding success with it, incredibly proud--I would write her occasionally, and would send her copies of my movie reviews when I was doing them for a local Tallahassee paper, but never sent her any of my fiction on the grounds that it wouldn't be her cup of Lipton. She understood, or seemed to.
The last time I spoke to her was last year, on her 90th birthday--we had a very pleasant conversation, and then we proceeded to have the same pleasant conversation another four times. Having worked in elder law for several years I'm well acquainted with dementia, but no matter how aware of the particulars you are encountering it in a loved one is a hard, depressing thing. Considering how disposable the elderly are in American society she's lucky to have the children she did, most of whom weren't technically hers--she married my grandfather when my dad and aunts were teenagers, but you wouldn't know it to see how they interacted, and even when she lost almost all track of time and place my father would annually travel the fifteen hundred miles from Tallahassee to visit her at the Madison center where she spent the last years of her life.
One final story about her, then. Several years ago, before the Alzheimer's but after she had moved to a retirement home in Madison, my father was visiting her and, as was their custom, driving her back upstate for a few days to visit the postage stamp town of Almena, where she and my grandfather had lived for years prior to his death and her moving back down to Madtown. To appreciate the following events you have to understand that my father, prior to his retirement last spring, was a professor of criminology for roughly forty years, and in addition to drug legalization he specialized in Native Justice. Columbus Day wasn't celebrated in my house, Thanksgiving was in only the loosest, most food-oriented fashion possible, and whenever we took our cross-country summer trips we stayed with friends of his on reservations. There were good-natured bottle rocket fights with Sioux kids in an old rodeo complex in South Dakota instead of Cowboys and Indians growing up, and Christmastime yielded Robby Bee and the Boys from the Rez instead of Public Enemy or NWA.
So anyway, yeah, my dad's driving my grandma through Wisconsin and they take a break at some greasy spoon off the interstate, coffee and pie, that kind of thing.
"What kind of pie do you have?" asks my grandma, a large old woman with short white hair seated across from her sixty-odd year old stepson.
"Blueberry and key lime," says the waitress. "The blueberry's really good."
"Ooooh, well, let's have the blueberry then," says my grandmother, giving my father a knowing look that makes him vaguely uncomfortable, he doesn't know why. He will soon enough. As the waitress is leaving with their menus my grandma leans across the booth to my father and says,
"She's pretty, isn't she?"
My father is now growing increasingly uneasy. He does not respond.
"Her hair is so dark, isn't it? And those cheeks! Do you think she's an Indian?"
"I don't know," says my father. "It's doesn't--"
"I'm going to ask her," says my grandma serenely.
"What? No!" My father lowers his voice. "Don't ask, please. It's none of our business, who cares if--"
The waitress is returning and my father goes silent. He is officially uncomfortable. He tries to change the subject as the waitress hoists the coffee pot. She is in her early twenties, and as my grandmother has noted, dark-haired and pretty, with high cheekbones. My father later confides in me that he is filled with the sort of nauseating anxiety that only one's parents are able to inflict on their children, regardless of their age. He tries to engage my grandmother about her old bridge partners as the waitress is pouring his coffee, aware that by doing so he is being rude but knowing it's the only way to prevent some mortifying scene. It seems to work, my grandma nodding, but there is something crafty in her expression, as if she is aware she is being duped but is content to go along with it for a time.
The pie arrives. It is really good. The check arrives. My father begins to stand as the waitress turns but as surely as if she has reached across the table and seized his wrist my grandmother's words arrest his motion and he freezes, half-way out of the booth.
"Excuse me, miss," says my grandmother sweetly, and the waitress turns back to face her. "I was just wondering..."
"Yes?" The waitress is smiling. My grandmother is smiling. My father must be grimacing.
"I was just wondering about your extraction," my grandmother gives my father the same knowing look she gave him about the pie. His stomach sinks. Extraction? he thinks.
"Extraction?" asks the waitress.
"We were just wondering..." my grandmother says, and at this the color has to drain from my father's face, sweat has to be beading on his pate, his mouth must be dry and sticky. We were just wondering? We?!..."do you happen to be of native extraction?" She arches an eyebrow at my father as she says this.
"Oh," says the waitress. "Yeah, my mom's Menominee."
"Well," says my grandmother, settling back down in the booth with evident satisfaction. "Well."
The waitress smiles, apparently nonplussed, but my father thinks he can see the edge of understandable annoyance poking through. His daughter, my sister, is a waitress, probably of the same age as this young woman, and she has told him all kinds of horror stories about customers. He always tips well, even when the service isn't great; he doesn't want to be a horror story. He stands the rest of the way up as the waitress straightens, the international food service signal of I'm-taking-the-check-and-cash-now-if-you-don't-need-anything-else, but there, in that instant where my father, in his haste to escape the diner, has put himself only a foot or two from the imminently retreating waitress, my grandmother speaks again:
"Watch yourself around this one, then," my grandmother nods at my father. There is a heartbeat my father shares with the young woman, sixty-odd year old professor of European "extraction" and twenty-odd year old Menominee waitress, they look at each other in the fluorescent lighting of the diner as my grandmother smiles, triumphant and terrible in her glory, and says, "He's just wild about Indians."
...
She had her faults, being human and all, but was also pretty wonderful. Goodbye, Grandma.
Baaaruuuuucccssse, That is an incredible tale of elder cunning to be sure. Your father is a master of the hidden trails to be sure.
Smooth operator on Dec. 8, 2010 at 3:14 PM