The Grandma Mothership

Last night I had one of those dreams where you wake up wondering if you were sucked up by the mothership; I’m in a crowded room, where I recognize a bunch of random people from my life. I also had a dream I pulled a giant seed out of my mouth and that the after school teacher gave my kids three full-grown cats that started pooping all over our house, it was so bad, I stepped in it. Counter to what instinctively seems like a bad dream, I guess dreaming of stepping in cat poop is actually a good sign! Ask Alexa, if you doubt me.

This morning my mom and daughter were working on a baby blanket for my sister’s baby. My Grandma knew my sister was pregnant before anyone. She had a dream, and she even nailed the sex. My grandma’s got the gift, but it’s not like Sylvia Brown level. She’s more of a friends-and-family kind of psychic.

I was still recovering from being beamed back into my bed, so I laid there, listening to them talk. When I came out for coffee, my daughter had fabric scraps puzzled together in a small rectangle and commissioned me to sew it together for her to give to her new cousin. She had the scissors in her hands as she raced across the room to get a juice box, and I snapped to fully-awake mode and yelled, “Don’t run with scissors like that! That’s how people die!!”

My mom agreed with the detrimental consequences of running with scissors, but then calmly showed my daughter the proper way to hold them. The week before, Kiki came in third place in a scooter competition with her cousins. They spent days practicing, and the adults were forced to award medals, no ties were allowed. My brother decided the youngest would get first and we’d work our way to third place based on age. Fair enough, I figured. But Kiki took tremendous offense, and walked away berating herself for the fail.

I felt bad, but after giving her a sufficient pat on the back, and letting her in on how the entire thing was rigged from the start, she was still distraught, so I left her in the room with my mom.

I came back, over twenty minutes later, my mom and her were still talking on the bed, but the tears had dried. I saw my daughter stuffing dollar bills into her sequin purse, and I asked, “Where’d you get that money?”

And she said, “Mimi gave it to me. She thinks I was the best and should have won first, so she gave me five dollars.”

“That’s interesting,” was all I could say.

My mom did not have the time to sit around and console me for thirty minutes every time I crumbled in distress from what I perceived to be an earth-shattering infraction. I was a sensitive kid, so this happened a lot.

She likes to tell me about it now. She says, “You’d always steal your sister’s baby bottle. We’d find you hiding in the closet, and we’d have to rip the bottle from your hands… Nothing changes. Ha!”

We’d squeeze in our bonding time, laying opposite each other on the couch reading Mary Higgins Clark books and eating pinwheels. It’s not as cool as her handing me five bucks and telling me I’m the best, but it’s comforting.

This week I saw my Grandma for the first time in ages. We went to Chilli’s and she gave me the cutest little gold ring she got when she was a kid. She asked me to try it on my pinky, and it fit. She smiled at me and said, “We have the skinniest fingers!”

“You’re right, Grandma! We do.” Then I told her about my dreams, in life and sleep, writing and comedy. She assured me, "Oh, it’s all going so well! You're doing exactly what you should be doing."

And, I don’t even think she said it as a friends-and-family psychic, but as my grandma.