\u201cBelieve in her, dad. Believe in Grandma Evie.\u201d My daughter \u2014 just 5 years old \u2014 was pleading with me. Sounded like a line from a bad baseball movie. <\/p>\n
It was 86+ degrees in my mother\u2019s house. After a rainstorm. A temperature she would dispute using complex physics and something about the silver in the China cabinet causing things to heat up by the thermostat. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat thing isn\u2019t right,\u201d she said. I had been complaining about how hot it was inside. Had walked over to the digital thermostat to read it. To prove that it was hot. Which would explain the sweat on my kid\u2019s brow and why she was fanning herself.
\nMy mother doesn\u2019t use her air conditioning. Thinks it\u2019s a scourge. Calls once a quarter to tell me that I need to get used to life without it myself. Because the economy is crap, the energy is in crisis and soon we\u2019ll all be AC-less. Her words not mine. She\u2019s been saying it my whole life.
\n
\nI warn her: \u201cMom, people will give up their front teeth, their left foot, both kidneys \u2026 but they will never give up their AC. We may never cure cancer, but we will always find a way to cool ourselves.\u201d <\/p>\n
I digress. \u201cBelieve in her, dad. Believe in Grandma Evie,\u201d my daughter told me.<\/p>\n
My wife and I were picking her up. We had left her at my mother\u2019s house for the afternoon while we went out. <\/p>\n
And you must understand the surreal situation. And why a statement like that could mean almost anything. Because here is a house where you\u2019re invited over to watch cats who come racing in from all corners of the house to watch a toilet flush. You would think some feline Messiah was rising up out of the pipes! <\/p>\n
And this is a house where I\u2019m told back porch steps need to be widened because (and I quote \u2026 I wrote it down in my reporter\u2019s notebook), \u201cSundae (her dog) and I can\u2019t fit down the steps together.\u201d <\/p>\n
Why do you need to fit together? No, never ask a question like that. Not of my mother. Not in a house like this. It will bring on a long answer involving physics and silver in the China cabinet, and for some inexplicable reason, an energy crisis that will take away our precious AC.<\/p>\n
Leave it be. <\/p>\n
\u201cBelieve in her?\u201d I asked my daughter dumbfounded as I walked around that \u201cAlice in Wonderland\u201d house \u2014 the Cheshire cats magically appearing and disappearing in front of the toilet, the intricately laid out tea parties \u2014 complete with place cards and 17 courses worth of silverware. This was a mystical, magical place. All topsy-turvy and upside down. Normal people can\u2019t come to terms with it. Can\u2019t grasp what\u2019s going on. Only children can. <\/p>\n
Believe? It was over a giant spider and a web that could trap an airplane. My daughter led me outside to see. <\/p>\n
A banana spider in the front yard \u2014 his web perched between the screen door and a rosebush, out of the way. Not near anything. But I will admit he was big. <\/p>\n
\u201cSee?\u201d my mother said. \u201cYou have to move him. He might bite me when I\u2019m over there pruning that rose.\u201d<\/p>\n
That was too much for me. I turned on my heals and loaded up to go home. \t<\/p>\n
There was already a message on the machine when we got there: \u201cBrian! Call me back. It\u2019s kind of important.\u201d <\/p>\n
I knew it wasn\u2019t important, but called back anyway. <\/p>\n
My mother: \u201cDid you ever think the reason they call it a banana spider is because they\u2019re not indigenous to Florida? They come to Florida in our bananas and are now eating all of our native bugs?\u201d <\/p>\n
Somewhere inside of my brain circuits burned out. <\/p>\n
I told my daughter about this conversation. \u201cOh dear,\u201d she said, concerned \u2014 because she got it. \u201cOh DEAR!\u201d<\/p>\n
She didn\u2019t say it, but I know what she was thinking. \u201cBelieve in her, dad. Believe in Grandma Evie!\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cBelieve in her, dad. Believe in Grandma Evie.\u201d My daughter \u2014 just 5 years old \u2014 was pleading with me. Sounded like a line from a bad baseball movie. It was 86+ degrees in my mother\u2019s house. After a rainstorm. A temperature she would dispute using complex physics and something about the silver in the China cabinet causing things to heat up by the thermostat. \u201cThat thing isn\u2019t right,\u201d she said. I had been complaining about how hot it was inside. Had walked over to the digital thermostat to read it. To prove that it was hot. Which would explain the sweat on my kid\u2019s brow and why she was fanning herself. My mother doesn\u2019t use her air conditioning. Thinks it\u2019s a scourge. Calls once a quarter to tell me that I need to get used to life without it myself. Because the economy is crap, the energy is in crisis and soon we\u2019ll all be AC-less. Her words not mine. She\u2019s been saying it my whole life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[136,8],"tags":[29,276,73],"class_list":["post-743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2011-nutshells","category-parenthoodandchildren","tag-children","tag-grandmother","tag-humor"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=743"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":744,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/743\/revisions\/744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}