My childhood was fine; I have little reason to complain: my parents were together and did their best for us, we felt loved, safe and secure. But there are some bad memories of dumb stuff I did that haunt me. I suppose some people can just shrug the dumb stuff off, and maybe that’s what I’m attempting now.
One dumb thing was something I said to my grandmother. We were latchkey kids, and there was a time when I got home first, before my brothers, and was alone in the house. My mother had asked Grandma to call our house each day to check on me.
Grandma, who was born in the Slovak region of the Hapsburg Empire, spoke English with a heavy accent. “Mikush,” she’d say. “You’re home? You’re okay?”
“Yeah, Grandma. Everything’s fine.”
“How was school?”
“It was fine, Grandma.” Already, I was bored, and wanted to get off the phone. For whatever reason, I didn’t want to chat after school.
One day, I said, “Grandma, you don’t have to call every day.”
“Oh,” she said. “Okay.”
That night, my mother called Grandma, and they spoke in Slovak, as they always did. When she hung up, Mom had a few choice words for me because I’d hurt Grandma’s feelings. Mom hadn’t asked Grandma to call me because she was worried about me. She wanted to give Grandma something to do, and I had ruined it.
Grandma had a not-so-easy time of it, with immigrant problems, money problems, and family problems. Her brother died fighting in The Great War. She’d struggled all through the Great Depression trying to feed her family and somehow keep it all together, and finally had a nervous breakdown. A few years after that, Grampa died. She spent the rest of her days mostly home-bound, watching television, and listening to baseball games on the radio when she could.
The only time I saw Grandma not sitting down was when she was baking or cooking, or on her way to another chair. That’s the enduring picture in my mind of her: sitting at the end of the couch, leaning towards the radio.
When I was very little, it was great because you could snuggle on her lap, and it was heaven for us to be there with her, eating the desserts she’d made by hand.
So she stopped calling me every day, and no matter how much I apologized, the magic was gone.
Now, I’m not saying I ruined the rest of her life. My Uncle Steve and Aunt Olga lived with her, and they traveled to visit us and the rest of the family. My mother stopped there on her way home from work multiple times a week. Everybody loved her, and she loved us all right back.
No, I didn’t ruin a big part of her life–I ruined a part of my life I shared with my Grandma. I began calling her when I got home from school, but it never was quite the same.
I’d sure love to hear her voice on the phone again. “Mikush, you’re home? You’re okay?”
Meanwhile, at My Writing Desk…
I’m putting words to paper on the new novel, and revising the shit out of the psychological thriller. I’ve probably mentioned this, but writing novels is a big project, and it’s hard to shake the nagging self-doubt that the story just won’t be as engaging and compelling as I hope it to be.
There’s no easy answer to this. I’ve gotten some good reviews and the two books from last year (*ahem* if you’ve read them, a few more reviews would help) so I know I did it in the past. Writing a book is like walking across the ocean: you take a step and come up for air, then take another step…so you just have to keep going.
Maybe You’d Like
I’m promoting the work of two fellow authors, and I hope you’ll give them a look:
This is a suspenseful story, and anything involving air travel these days seems like it could hit some nerves and make us squirm. Heck, I start sweating if I feel I have to travel on Spirit Airlines.
This is a short romance in the style of she-said, he-said, and if romance is your thing, I hope you’ll try it out.
Romance should really be a part of all of our lives, even if it’s done vicariously through reading or watching The Bachelor. If that’s your choice, go with reading, because it makes better use of the imagination.
Recommended Reading
Next Picayune
This was the Picayune wherein I was going to finish the story about my neighbor, Joe, from childhood, but the story about Grandma caught me and wouldn’t let me go. So next time, for sure…
Thanks for reading the Mickey Picayune!
All the best,
–mickey
P.S. Hey if you still need something to read, there’s always my own HIVE to check out.