1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
Aron, A., Melinat, E., Aron, E. N., Vallone, R. D., & Bator, R. J. (1997). The Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness: A Procedure and Some Preliminary Findings. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23(4), 363-377. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167297234003
There are all sorts of famous people who would be intriguing to have dinner with. Authors, musicians, philosophers, scientists, politicians… I could likely name 5 in each category at least. But when it comes down to it, I would want to have dinner with my grandparents.
They helped to raise me until I was about 10, getting my mother through single parenthood, marriage, college as an unconventional student, and the birth of my baby sister.
They taught me to love to learn, to ask questions. They taught me to love fearlessly and to embrace moments. I think I learned morals and ethics from them, but that’s why I would want to have an adult conversation with them. They both lived until my adulthood, but we moved further away. The bond didn’t dissipate, but it did fade. I did not call nor write. I took them for granted until it was too late, and my time for answers had lapsed.
Pa was a prisoner of war in WWII, and I would have questions about his experiences that I can’t garner from his war diary. I might ask about this choice to teach history given his experiences. I would ask where he got his love of woodworking and hunting, and what was his most spiritual experience as an adult.
But if I can’t choose a couple, if I’m restricted to dinner with only one person, it would be Grommy – my maternal grandmother, a true matriarch, and the bigger mystery to me. Where did she find the strength to raise three children on her own? Did she have any idea how her son seemed to escape most the generational trauma that her daughters passed on to my generation? How did she come to be an End-time Handmaiden? Do I dare ask what she thinks of 45-47, the woman who always taught me to share a surplus (and that a surplus can always be found), and who went to summer church revivals, speaking in tongues?
What was she most proud of passing on, what she sees in 3 generations down? Does she regret anything based on those same images:?
I regret never finding time to ask these questions, regret not telling her seventy times seven times more that I loved her.
I’ll also thank her for mashed potato rolls. For teaching me to read. For the memories of watching the Wizard of Oz next to the fireplace. For never giving me pause to wonder if she loved me.
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