Grandma Talk

About a month ago, my mom texted me in the middle of the afternoon.

“Hey. Are you busy?”

I already had a pretty good idea what was coming. Grandma was having trouble with her TV. Could I go look at it?

I've done this for her before. Usually it's something incredibly simple for me. But technology has only been part of a relatively small piece of her nearly 90 years. Something obvious to me isn't necessarily obvious to her.

I wasn't doing anything important. Nowhere I needed to be. Nobody calling to find out where I was.

So I went over.

The TV took about five seconds to fix. I wrote my name and phone number on a little piece of paper and taped it near the TV. Next time she could call me directly instead of calling Mom and having Mom call me. I put a sticker near the button she needed, too.

Grandma looked at me and asked something like, “So do I, like, pay you? Or…?”

“Gram, you don't have to pay me for anything.”

She'd paid me before. Contributing mattered to her. One time I tried refusing money and she stopped dead in her tracks.

“You take this money right now.”

I learned not to argue with Grandma.

But this time, when I said I didn't want anything, she started crying.

I have almost never seen my grandmother cry. She's not mean. She's just always been more stern than my mother, and I had never really been in the position of comforting her before.

I hugged her. Told her it was okay. Tried not to cry myself.

Eventually she calmed down. And I did what I normally do: got ready to leave. I'm always moving. Even when I don't have anywhere to be.

She walked me to the door.

I went to the elevator. Pressed the button. Waited.

The doors opened. I stepped inside and pressed the button for the ground floor.

The doors started closing.

At the very last second, I stuck my hand out and stopped them.

Something didn't feel right about leaving her like that.

I went back.

I knocked on her door. When she answered, I asked, “Do you care if I hang out with you for a while?”

Of course she didn't.

So we sat down. And we talked.

We talked about my mother. I told Grandma how proud I am of her for raising Mom, because I don't think there are many people in the world like my mother.

Grandma told me stories about Mom growing up. She told me things about her own life that I had never known.

Not because she didn't want to tell me.

Because I had never asked.

We sat there and cried together for probably half an hour. Nothing like that had ever happened between us before.

I'm so glad I got off that elevator.

I'm constantly worried about wasting time. I need to be doing something. If I sit still too long, I start feeling like I'm wasting valuable time.

But that afternoon made me realize that some of the time I'd actually been wasting was the time I wasn't spending sitting with my grandma and talking to her.

— Adam

AFTERWORD
That afternoon is part of why I'm exploring a more personal use for AI, beginning with my grandma. If you'd like to understand the idea, read Before We Wish We’d Asked.