Something Happened

"Good girl, grandma!"

It takes a moment for all of us to comprehend. And when we do, all simultaneously it seems, we roar with laughter and begin applauding and congratulating this little girl and ourselves exuberantly (and my daughter, seeing this response of raucous gaiety she has stimulated, bounces and rocks with glee so vigorously in her high chair that we fear she will fall out or topple over), for my mother (her hair was not all white yet, her face not all disiccated and creased) had merely lifted a glass to her lips and drained it of some strawberry punch. But my daughter was watching her. And when my daughter, who was herself being trained then by my wife and me to drink from a glass and faithfully rewarded with handclaps of delight and cries of "Good girl!" whenever she succeeded, saw my mother drink from a glass, she banged her own hands down with delight and approval and called out:

"Good girl, grandma!"

(Not long afterward, my mother could not drink from a glass unless someone held it to her lips.)

It was a small thing, an incident of tiny surprise, but it filled the room with rolling waves of tremendous pleasure and warmth. (All of us there were happier people then and closer to each other than we have ever been since.) All of us rejoiced and united in merry praise of my daughter and made the su

That was just about the last time I saw my daughter so happy. That was just about the last time I saw my mother happy. It was shortly afterward that I made my decision not to invite my mother to live with us, which meant she would have to live the rest of her life alone. Words were not necessary. The omission itself was an indelible statement. (She never asked, never made me say so. She made it easy for me. She was very kind to me about that.) Although I would have di

"Won't you wheel Mr. Slocum out of the shade into the sunlight now? I think he looks a little cold."

A vacuum cleaner that works well is more important to me than the atom bomb, and it makes not the slightest difference to anyone I know that the earth revolves around the sun instead of vice versa, or the moon around the earth, although the measured ebb and flow of the tides may be of some interest to mariners and clam diggers, but who cares about them? Green is more important to me than God. So, for that matter, is Kagle and the man who handles my dry cleaning, and a transistor radio that is playing too loud is a larger catastrophe to me than the next Mexican earthquake. «Someday» — it must have crossed my mother's mind at least once, after my denial and rejection of her, since she was only human — "this will happen to you." Although she was too generous to me ever to say so. But I know it must have crossed her mind.)

"When I was a baby," my daughter asks, "did you ever play with me?"

"Sure," I reply. "What do you think?" A warning shudder of some kind shoots through me at her question, turning my skin icy.

"Did you ever pick me up and toss me into the air," she inquires, "or give me piggyback rides, or tell me stories before I went to bed, or carry me around in your arms and talk baby talk to me and say very fu

"All the time," I answer. "Of course, I did." Her look of doubt shocks me. "What kind of monster do you think I am?"

"You don't do anything like that now."

"You're a big girl now. I always yell out hello when I come home, don't I? You don't even answer."

"Did I have parties when I was little? Birthday parties?"

"You sure did. Very beautiful parties. Mommy went to a lot of trouble to make them very good ones."

"I don't remember them."

"Yes, you do. You mention them."

"I mean when I was very little. And all our relatives came and made a big fuss over me and gave me expensive presents?"

"Yes. I used to play with you a lot. I used to go right in to see you every day as soon as I came home from work. You were the first person I wanted to see. I always played with you."

"Mommy told me you did. But I didn't believe her."

"What kind of person do you think I am?"

"You're never the same. You always change. Sometimes you laugh at something I do. Sometimes you get angry and a

"You're like that too."

"You're a father."

"It isn't easy."

"You don't know how to be a father."

"I try to be. I always tried my best. I try now. I used to play with you every night as soon as I came home from work," I rush on earnestly, the words pouring from me in a torrent of virtuous reminiscence as I seize the chance to explain to her once and for all and exonerate myself forever from whatever blame and neglect she charges me with. "I even played baseball with you with a plastic bat and ball when you were a little girl and didn't know it was a boy's game, and taught you how to swim. I'm the one who taught you. I asked you to put your face down in the water and float and promised that nothing bad would happen to you if you trusted me and did. You believed me then and weren't afraid. And that's how I taught you. Every day as soon as I came home from work, you were just a little baby then and we lived in the city, I would take my hat off, I wore a hat then, one of those fu