A One-Woman Show

We visited Grammy in the hospital yesterday. She introduced us to the nurse and other helpers who visit her room regularly. One of these helpers was Elizabeth, who did something I've never quite seen anyone accomplish before -- speaking about S, our daughter, as if she weren't standing right there, but also somehow ignoring the rest of us, too. Her commentary was like a voice-over, in a little movie she alone was watching. She added grace notes of unsolicited parenting advice and praising S almost inappropriately while behaving as though her brother was invisible. No wonder R started careening around the room like a demented superbouncy ball.

I'm sure this all sounds like the grousing of a woman with a sore foot and shall we say a temporary hormonal imbalance (which it is), but I promise, if you had been there you would have felt uncomfortable with this woman's ravings too. How can you talk AT a room full of people, ABOUT only one of them, and TO none of them?? It was something like this, beginning before Grammy finished her sentence introducing the rest of us: "OH, she [S] is beautiful. So beautiful. Oh, her eyes, she has all of it, her eyes, her face, and her beautiful hair . . ." Incidentally, I feel safe restating this stranger's ranting about S's gorgeousness because after all I don't have any genetic stake in the truth of the matter -- which the interloper pointed out, too -- "she has her daddy's eyes, and her daddy's face, everything of her daddy . . . ." I'm telling you, she wouldn't stop. S leaned with her elbows on Grammy's bed, looking up at this woman with an almost-smile, eyes wide, nearly visible brain-wheels turning, with the same expression she wears when you try to explain something like reverse psychology. Grammy then pressed S into a song (she invited R, too, but by then he was having none of it); she broke into a version of "Tomorrow" that was not her best, but which enraptured the documentarian: "Oh, she has real talent, she does, and is not scared at all, she sings in front of me, who she does not know, and is not scared. And she has talent. It is important to get her lessons in playing musical instruments now . . . " at which point we devolved into the annoying parenting suggestions. You can ask D; I am the consummate band fag/ artiste-wannabe, and I can't wait until I can put violins or trumpets or microphones into the hands of these kids. But I was ready to swear off musical training of any kind just to offend this Elizabeth person.

Finally, without so much as making eye contact with me (although she almost did when she made fun of the fact that R stumbled over my sore foot during one of his wild trajectories), Elizabeth was gone. I'm really hoping that neither of those kids were paying attention to what she had to say -- and what she didn't.