I have nothing against grandfathers. In fact I love my own, and it was my recent experience of cutting his toenails that prompted this list. As I made attempts to cut them, he kept thanking me. Alternately he mistook me for a doctor, a nurse, and a stranger. What books had I read about thisโ about caring for grandparents as their bodies and memories become disobedient? Or the flipside: grandparents caring for or raising grandchildren?
As I searched for books spotlighting grandparent-grandchild relationships, nearly all I found were grandmothers. There is something about grandmothersโ or perhaps, the figure of the grandmother in our imaginations. Witty and wise, loving and hating, good and evil. Keeper of secrets, stories, and histories. In these books, grandmothers are often portals to places that are gone. To a past time in Turkey, Guadeloupe, or Palestine. Whether they intend to or not, these grandmothers keep those places and times alive.
(mh=EVGU32O_gNcAPGv-)15.jpg "Girls Bratislava")
These books bring together grandmothers and grandchildren. In uniting old and young, one clarified theme is careโ the necessity of it in both directions. Who is to care for whom?
There can be blurred, shifting boundaries between grandmothers and grandchildren. Across these books, we see the sharp edges of the caregiving work that accompanies dementia, forgotten names, harsh demands, falls, bedsores, death and its aftermath. And we see grandmothers as caregivers who dole out advice, cook elaborate meals, provide stories and other forms of nourishment. In twenty-two vignettes as dreamy as summer, we see the tender and often funny adventures of six-year-old Sophia and her grandmother on a rustic island off of Finland.
(mh=ZhtBcjkieMTbsUbZ)2.jpg "SEX ESCORT in Bratislava")
Sensing disaster, a coming autoclaps, Ma Taffy starts telling her grandson the story of the flying preacherman Bedford. I telling you this because I did see it for myself. This novel is a capacious portrait of Augustown, with detailed sketches of its people, history, and landscape.
