August 26, 2006August 26, 2006I’ve been caring for my grand-ma a little bit here and there. I usually make her supper; my grand-pa eats really early so we eat a little later. I ask her what she wants and how much and so on. When we’re ready to eat, I bow my head and thank God for the food -in my heart. My grand-ma keeps talking to me all the time and as soon as she stops for a second, I take the opportunity to pray. Usually she doesn’t notice it, but she talks while I’m praying. Sometimes she realizes it and apologizes. She is Catholic. So tonight, before eating my shepherd’s pie I again bowed my head. Then I heard, “Oh les benedictions!” (Oh, the “blessings”), when I opened my eyes I found my grand-ma’s chin lifted up with her eyes closed. She was (I would think) praying too. I think it’s funny that all the sudden she starts praying before a meal simply because her grand-daughter does it. I hope she doesn’t thank the virgin Mary…  

August 25, 2006I’m usually patient with most people and I can “endure” it for long when people are frustrating and/or unkind and the like. That’s just the way I am and I never work too hard on being that way. I guess that if you don’t speak French extremely fluently you won’t know what I’m talking about, but I’ve been really close to “péter ma coche”. What does this expression mean? Hum, how can I explain this… Literally this is what it means:“Péter” is the verb “to break” (something), “ma” means “my” and “coche” means… I don’t know what it means in the context of this expression. But when you say “Je pète ma coche” you’re saying that the line that stands between your sanity, how much frustration you can take in, and insanity, when you explode in red anger or shouting or crying (depending on your personality), well, this line has been broken, has been crossed and you now won’t take anything more in. That was just too much. This sort of thing (pèter sa coche) more often happens when you’re a counsellor in a summer camp for more than a week (or just a few days depending on your campers). To be honest, I don’t think it ever happened to me in my long life of 21 years. So for the very first time in all those years I can say that … I almost “pété ma coche”. I came home from hanging out in the old Montréal and I found my grand-ma cleaning up some stuff upstairs. I offered to help her. She wanted me to rest and sit. I replied “Grand-ma, do you need help” so she finally said yes. I dusted a few things for her and she was really happy. Now she was debating with herself if she wanted to keep the phone right there where it was or bring it downstairs. I had hooked a “double-entry” phone thingy in there so I could plug in my phone. After many years they had that phone right there, all the sudden, the telephone cord was too short for grand-ma… and this since she noticed that there was a new cord plugged in. She was then talking about this as being a fire “hazard” (is this the proper word?) and so on. I tried to explain to her that it was totally safe (especially that they were phone cords) and then offered her to put the chair closer to the phone so she wouldn’t have to pull the cord so much and so on. But she was “categorical” “You don’t understand… we can’t do that… I don’t know if your grand-pa will like that… It’s too dangerous… You don’t understand.”
Man. Why is it this way with my grand-ma every single day about every single thing? She’s old, we have different backgrounds and knowledge of things. That’s all true. But it is just so frustrating to shut up in humility. I know this sounds very simple. But I’ve never had to face such a great need for patience, and a wind of frustration like this before I moved to my grand-parents’. I almost “pété ma coche” this afternoon. I didn’t. I kept quiet I told myself to shut up, that it would be okay. That it was sad for my grand-ma, yes, but right now she couldn’t see it. Maybe later, maybe never. The only good thing I could do was to comply to her desires.

I am fascinated how my grand-ma cares for the smallest things. Like making sure the plastic bags she keeps in a big old purse locked in an unused closet upstairs, are placed from big to medium to small size type of order in the purse. Isn’t there more important things to do, to think about?
Man. This teaches me to be patient with my grand-ma and help her in these little things. Old people are weird! Just kidding. We are definitely extremely different and that’s understandable. But I wonder… shut up Gabe.