Golden Girl

I have a lot of grandma tendencies. From a penchant for cardigans and anything free, to being prematurely gray, I have become the grandma I’ve always wanted. Yes, I can throw back quite a few ounces of whiskey, party to Britney classics including ‘I’m A Slave 4 U,’ all while squeezed into a onesie from American Apparel, but I’ll always be home before 1:00. Chances are that this geriatric aspect of my identity stems from never having met my mom’s parents and growing up with only my Nanny, my dad’s rough and tough Irish Catholic mom. In first grade when kids talked about how their fit and fabulous Nonas and Pop Pops and Bubbies and Babas had them over for sleepovers and took them to Boca, all I could think was, “Oh shit. Nanny is seventy-six! What’s the chance she’ll live to see me get to second grade?!”

But live, she did. And she kept on living, despite repetitive threats during Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners she’d soon “be in the box” (read: bite the dust). She went on living until the dignified age of ninety-three. Nanny was not the woman I would necessarily pluck out of a line up of potential family members, however. She was the woman who told me at my fifth birthday (which she reluctantly attended in her polyester party dress and visible slip) that I shouldn’t smile. “Don’t smile, you have an ugly smile.”

Thanks for coming to my party, Grams!

Things definitely improved in the years since my five year old fete, but she never swaddled me in a hand-croqueted blanket, begged me to tell her about all the boys I liked in school, or gingerly braided my hair. The usual scene from my middle school years went something like this:

Nanny: Jesus, Mary, and Joseph you’re bigger! You’re bigger than the last time I saw you!

Me: Yea, I grew actually, but taller. Now I even wear a size 9 shoe. I grew two inches this month.

Nanny: Oh that was like Billy! Ah! He had those growing bumps in his knees and was in bed for two weeks! Ah!

Me: Yea, I know, I have those “growing bumps” too. They’re really painfu—

Nanny: I saw the Mets play today. Awful! Tisk, tisk, tisk. What’s with their pitcher? Oh, and I read something about them today in the paper. Goddammit where is that paper? (Cue the incessant shuffling of papers on the kitchen table in attempt to find the list or article or coupon she needed. The rearranging continued for the duration of our visit and could only be paused during a break for Entenmann’s crumb cake and coffee.)

End scene.

So unlike my friends who would call their grandparents to share exciting news and moments of glory, I accepted my Nanny for what she was—someone doing her best, even though her best erred on morbid and depressing—and I set off to be my own grandmother.

Genetic predispositions helped this effort tremendously. Sprouting my first gray hair at age seventeen captivated me in the way I was enthralled by my first period: I knew it was the mark of a new era in my life, but I had no idea what a complete pain in the ass it was going to be. So I oohed and ahhed over my startlingly early color change, and set out to buy Loreal, dark brown 4H.

A few years later, during another stint at being athletic (“And really this time, I’m going to run everyday, and that will mean I’ll need new stretch pants... Oh this is exciting!”) I returned from trotting around the block only to feel a shock of pain sear through my knee.

“I can’t look! You look!” I dramatically pleaded to my mom. “It feels like something’s popped out! I can’t look! Ow ow ow!” Then I cried.

“Oh no! Oh no! Sit down, roll up your pant leg, sit down. Oh no, what if you broke something!” (My mom is not the person I should go to when I’m panicked about something. She is the frayed wire to my stack of nearby papers: One false move and everything goes up in flames.)

“What do you see? Now you’re making me nervous!”

“Phew! Nothing here but a little swelling. You look fine. Oh, except... for... this... What is this?” She poked at a bulging vein in my leg. “Looks like you should get this checked out.”

“Oh no, what if I have leg cancer?” You see, ever since my dad died when I was eleven, every affliction I’ve had since has been some (usually rare) form of cancer. Got my first period: Bladder cancer. Develop a canker sore: Cheek cancer. No cancer is too rare.

Even though I’m always sure I have some fatal and complicated disease, thinking about going to the doctor makes me feel even more undone. And without fail, I slowly belay myself back down Cancer Mountain, and the mind work goes something like this (Note the gross misunderstanding of actual medical knowledge):

What if it’s something worse than I expected? The vein is pulsing, it feels like it’s about to break. Yes, it’s going to break. I should stop running—for sure! What if it’s that thing that woman had from last week’s episode of Mystery Diagnosis? (Insert quick Web MD research here.) Looks like I have deep vein thrombosis. Oh wow! That’s serious! What if I need invasive surgery? Oh fuck. Just what I need right now. How will I be able to take off from work? Now I’m really anxious. Actually, now that I think about it, it’s feeling better. It’s probably fine. I’ll ice it. Yea, no more running, I’ll be fine. Just in case, it says to wear a compression stocking. Wearing this knee brace would probably do the same thing. (Slip knee brace on.) OK, this is uncomfortable. Whatever, I’ll just slap it a few times and ice it.

Well, turns out the knee brace didn’t do the trick, and that’s how I found myself waiting in the Weill Cornell Vein & Vascular Center. After a few scans and pokes, I was ushered into the doctor’s office where he scanned my records and said, “Oh, you’re only twenty-two! You’re young…”

“Thank you?”

(Oh but he wasn’t finished.) “… to have varicose veins! Hmm. It’s only going to get worse when you get pregnant. Yup, a valve in the vein seems to have shut down. It’s called an incompetent valve.”

Fuck. I’d spent my whole life over-achieving and my own body was betraying me! Incompetent valve? Thanks, old body.

I’d like to note that just because I’ve always tended to act like a grandma and really, really want a grandma, doesn’t mean I like to hear I’m aging. There’s a fine distinction between feeling old and looking old, and the latter is something that frightens me. And so it wasn’t when the doctor informed me that a catheter was to be inserted in my calf and moved up into my groin, collapsing the problem vein along the way, that I started hyperventilating: It was when he said I had to wear a thigh-high compression stocking for two weeks straight and then after every time I work out. I realize now that was just the universe’s way of telling me I should stay put on the couch and save running for some younger, more able bodied sap.

Believe it or not, I was quite the trooper when the time came for the big surgery. I was awake for the procedure and only received anesthesia in my leg, one needle at a time all the way up from my knee. I did, however, get extremely clammy, nauseas, and green. I kept saying, in a loud monotone fashion, “I’M GETTING REALLY HOT. IS IT HOT IN HERE? I’M FINE. AREN’T YOU WARM? I’M FINE.” After all was collapsed and stitched, two nurses shoved my leg into the compression stocking and sent me on my way.

Back in my apartment, my oblivious and impossibly self-important roommates both asked, “Why are you home early today? Are you sick?” No, bitches, I had massive surgery and I’m lucky to be alive but it’s OK that you forgot after I’ve told you about thirty times. Wrapped in a blanket and sucking back green tea with honey, I pictured my legs during my ninth month of pregnancy and the image was that of a topographic map. “Now I’m old, ugly, and getting worse,” I indulged myself. And just like that, Ethan called.

Our moms were best friends and we spent all of our summers together on the shores of Long Island. Ethan, the funniest person I know, is my panacea for all things troubling. His timing was impeccable. Instead of slipping into the looming depression coming on, I flung off my blanketed encasement and busily prepared my outfit.

No heels—bad for the vein. No dress—can see the stocking. Pants then. I smacked some make up on my ashen face and slicked my sad hair back with a headband. It was the best I could do. Ethan arrived, with open arms, and we set out for an adventure. While giving him the dramatic play-by-play of the day’s events, Ethan was most taken by the stocking aspect. “Let me see it!”

I inched up my pant leg, and revealed the thickest, oddest flesh colored nylon one has ever seen. And with that, Ethan gripped his stomach, flung his head back with a verging-on-evil laugh, and screamed, “Oh my God! You’re Blanche from the ‘Golden Girls’!”

“Shut up! You’re an asshole! ... But you’re right.”

I was bearing the cross, or nylon, of my incompetent body, all while fabulously dressed and up for a night of dirty martinis. And if I do have to be my own grandmother, I might as well be Blanche—the coolest grandma of them all. She too had lived with a bunch of egocentric gals, never let her glamorous guard down, was a favorite with the guys, and leaned toward the dramatic side of life. She made her uncharted Mecca to Florida and invented the rules as she went. If Blanche could do, so could I. Now if only I could get in touch with my podiatrist for some new inserts…