Ohio, part 4

The anticipated fatigue hit Granny today, the third day of radiation treatment. She said she felt just about like falling out of her electric wheelchair. She didn’t, but barely made it to her chair to watch some more “The Price is Right”.

I realized that Granny is all about games. I mentioned that she lives for Bridge, but she also enjoys other card games, most board games that involve thinking (as opposed to chance), and her TV shows are all gameshows. She’s not interested in drama, comedy, mystery or even really news (although she does watch news). I think she’s not that interested in people. The news she watches is the type where they tell you what to think about what’s happening in the world, and I think she watches to see what is going on that might affect my mother and her various parts of the world (or other close friends and family not here in Cinti) – the number of whom seems to be dwindling. I believe that she cares about her family, but I don’t think she cares much for other people (“Hell is other people” –XXXX). But over the years, everyone has a story about her choosing the play Bridge instead of help a family member in a crisis or meet an important new significant other, etc.

My mother and I have speculated about why she is the way she is, but we haven’t come up with a good explanation. She’s lost a lot of loved ones and experienced a number of other heartbreaks in her life. Yet we know that being close to other people is not only rewarding, it is also the only way to truly know yourself; the equation goes in both directions, as I am sometimes terrified by my own potential vulnerability. Maybe Bridge has felt like the only thing she could count on not dying or embarrassing her with socially “inappropriate” life-choices.

There’s a copy of Harper’s magazine in our room (probably left by me the last time I stayed here) dated November 2002. Over the last couple days, I have been reading and really enjoying it. Notebook, Audible silence, by Lewis H. Lapham discusses the political/national response to September 11, still fresh in the American consciousness at the time:

“The New York Skyline didn’t look the way it once looked, but the on-air company of talking heads (anchors, learned scholars, distinguished statements) held fast to the doctrine of American exceptionalism, and the bland certainty of their believe in the country’s innate goodness…. Max Frisch recognized as ‘the knack of so rearranging the world so that we don’t have to experience it.’ (pg 9) “… We know that what was said last week (on the news) will be said again this week, and then next week and once again six weeks from now…. Here we all are living more or less happily every after within the virtual reality provided by the news and entertainment media that can configure death as a sales pitch for a weapons budget, an insurance policy, or a face cream.” In Presidnet Bush’s militant speech to the UN the day after his benign appearance in NYC’s festival or mourning and during his visit to ground zero, “In neither setting did it matter whether he or anybody else understood what he was saying.” (pg 10) “The media were interested in mood and gesture, and so, on September 12, as on September 11, they directed their cameras and their questions to the presentation of an image rather than to the substance of an idea” and didn’t ask any questions about the speech as it was “so strong and brave and presidential – that no one wanted to spoil the effect by asking what it meant”. And finally, “but if it is disgrace for any country at any particular time in its history to rest content among the relics of a lost language and an imaginary past, it is a matter of some interest in a country that possesses the power to poison the earth without possessing either the means or the desire to know itself.” (pg 11)

That’s enough of someone else’s voice for one blog post, and there’s a whole lot there to think about. But as I spend a 3rd day in a row discussing my eyebrows (I exaggerate) I wonder if the thing about Granny is that she’s American. That is, someone who buys what the American media is selling. She sits up there in her comfy chair resting and watching [insert name of popular game show here], I can’t help but think that this 94-year-old cancer patient, with 3 of 5 children still living and several great-great-grand children taking their bottles, represents the both the foibles and the potential of our nation.