Emmeline’s elementary school is having a Grandparents Day this morning, not in synch with the “official” date, September 12 this year, but presumably a community outreach effort to give the youngsters something to think about besides how nice it would be to play outside rather than to be stuck in a classroom.
The announcement mentioned activities of some sort, along with a request for breakfast foods, which might be a good excuse to stop by the newest local retail outlet for the Krispy Kremes that now are trucked in daily from Cranston.
The announcement also suggested that grandparents bring in “memorabilia” from childhood, like photos or a favorite toy.
Whatever favorite toys I might have had are long-gone, and I don’t have a lot of happy childhood memories, although I did manage to dig up a photo album last night, just to show Emme I was paying attention.
Going through the album, I was struck by the photos from my childhood and adolescence, which I remember as a time in which I could never achieve the approval of the relentlessly critical Cruella deVille with whom I had the misfortune to live. I felt, probably from age 2 on, ugly and unattractive, and from age 11 or 12, large and ungainly to boot.
The photos, on the other hand, show an average-sized, healthy, wholesome girl with a sweet smile, the kind that shows how hard she is trying to please.
Disapproval seems to follow a lot of us like a dark cloud, even affecting people who you’d least expect would encounter it. It’s true, you can’t please all of the people all of the time.
Maybe most of us can’t even please most of the people most of the time. Unless one is lucky enough to have been born an attractive male with an outgoing personality, we are stuck with who we are.
And here’s my legacy to my granddaughter: if some jerk doesn’t like us because we’re the “wrong” marital status or don’t resemble the hottie du jour or belong the “wrong” church or don’t have the riches of Croesus in our bank accounts – f* ’em.