Grandmas take a spin on the Bicycle Ride during their outing at Coney Island, August 8, 1952.

Photo: Robert Kradin (?) for the AP

quora (a q&a social media site, like yahoo answers, but higher quality) used to have a lot of questions of the form "how would you explain X to your grandmother?" Where X was usually some mathematics or physics concept. Things like:

How would you explain quantum mechanics to your grandma?

Category theory?

General relativity/space-time?

Bayesian statistics?

(this was before quora made it so that you got paid for asking questions that generated engagement, thus inundating the site with troll questions; back then quora had decent questions)

One of my friends, who had a fairly large following on quora, had two grandmothers (out of four, including step-grandmas) who had PhDs in mathematics. He used to love answering these questions like,

"I would say [extremely abstract explanation with analogies to far more esoteric concepts than the question was asking],

But my grandma's an algebraic topologist, so your mileage may vary."

One time some fellow quora users we knew irl asked him about this, since he's generally very sweet and opposed to trolling/being needlessly rude to people online, and someone asked him why he didn't feel bad about ignoring the spirit of the questions, and essentially poking fun at them in front of his large following,

And he said, "well the thing is that these questions are actually kind of rude to grandmas. they act like all grandmas are the same, just some blank slate for you to explain things to, when in fact grandmas can have quite varied interests and knowledge. I'm just responding to the questions' offensiveness in kind"

And then he mentioned how nobody asks "how would you explain [science concept] to your dad?", right?

Because society thinks of fathers as diverse and varied, so why aren't grandmas viewed as a similarly diverse group, when they actually are, and as someone with four grandmas (through divorce and remarriage), he would know (even though two of his grandmas apparently had very similar interests to each other, lol)

.

And I just. Those questions always left a bad taste in my mouth, too, but I had never thought to explain it this way (which I guess is why he was a quora influencer and I wasn't, lol)

I also had more than the normal number of grandmas (grandpa was double married (poly marriage was legal back then)) and like, yeah, each of my three grandmas had a very unique and interesting story.

Two of my grandmas ran away from home to go to university when their families didn't approve of women getting educations. One of these became an electrical engineer.

The other studied law (fully funded on government merit scholarship) and became an understudy to the equivalent of a justice of the supreme court (under the nationalist government, which unfortunately led to her being subject to denunciation rallies later on). She was also into martial arts and knew some gorgeous forms with a sword. (She was the grandma I was closest to because she raised me for a few years when I was a kid)

The other grandma (the one who didn't go to university, grandpa's first wife) was an avid storyteller who could keep all the neighbourhood kids entertained for hours from stories told from memory (her language had no writing system), and also a master at embroidery. She also easily won over my mother and my aunt's love even though they only met her in their early teens (my grandpa had hidden her from their mom, his second wife) and she didn't speak any Chinese, and my mom and aunt only spoke Chinese.

Like, yeah, grandmas are a diverse group and it does suck that society generally doesn't regard them as such

It’s been 7 years

As per every year, I would like to make a tribute post to my mother who passed away July 31, 2016. For those of you that are new here, this post is never supposed to make anyone feel bad or sad, but is instead meant for me to reflect on this event in my life. I do recommend reading the posts from previous years:

2017′s post

2018′s post

2019′s post

2020′s post

2021′s post

2022′s post

I scheduled out today’s comic long before this month rolled around, so I’m not exactly “off” as I usually am, at least from your guys’ perspective. IRL I am definitely off...since this July my grandmother on my father’s side also passed.

We knew it was coming, but it still hits hard. If you’re seeing this post, please take today to talk to friends or family members you haven’t seen in a while - you never know how long you have with them.

Spread a little kindness - let people know you love them!

Buns in the oven!🤣

looking over my kitchen table this morning I can see just how much I have learned from my father’s mother. it is decorated with jellies and preserves, the strawflowers we grew in her garden after the ones she helped me plant as a child, the little baby cozy I just finished making (graciously modeled by my son’s stuffed monkey) lying snug on an afghan, each made with the knowledge she took the time to share with me.

it’s difficult for me to imagine a world without two good grandmothers (what I’ve mentioned here is a small sample of the impact of just one of them!). my Mund is awfully lucky to have two of his own, as well as the chance to share in mine.

if you’ve ever lost one, or if you never had one, my heart goes out to you. here is your invitation to come and sit with me and mine. there is always room at the table, in the garden, always tea in the cupboards, extra hooks and far too much yarn.

From a photo of my mother in law with the kids planting seeds in a pot. Oil on canvas, 11 x 14”.

“grandma”

-S

We might be grandmothers darling by @ejfiction

Six fics this week!! @ejfiction has brought us another fic featuring the lovely 'grandmothers' of Hogwarts.

Summary: Harry is born and he has a large family with a lot of people who love him.

What's to love: A sweet account of how joyful Harry's birth might've been for more than just James and Lily. Soft femslash from Minerva and Poppy, delighted that they've become grandmothers through their beloved children/students. So much joy for a little boy who deserved it all and more.

Thank you again EJfiction!

When I was a kid growing up in northeast Ohio, I used to go along with my grandma to her weekly chemotherapy appointments at the old Lake East Hospital in Painesville. As I sat waiting with my mom, I’d pore over the pamphlets of historic photos that were scattered throughout the hospital. I was too young to really grasp what was going on, but I knew that it was painful and I needed a distraction, and so I was happy to let my mind wander to imagining what life had been like in my own town all those years ago.

My grandma passed when I was in the sixth grade, and the loss left a void in my life that couldn’t be filled. My grandfather, her ex-husband, was a big presence at times, but his relationship with my mom was marked by long periods of estrangement. My parents had split up while my mom was pregnant with me, and so I never knew my dad or any of my family on his side. My stepfather had lost his dad as a child and had had a bitter parting of ways from his mother after that. When my grandma died a portion of her collection of family photos was passed on to me. It turns out that that’s a lot of responsibility to put onto an eleven year old. My home life was scarred by domestic violence, drug and alcohol addiction, and a chronic instability. We moved around a lot, sometimes unexpectedly. Somewhere along the way almost all of those photos were lost. I was haunted by the sorrow and guilt of losing these invaluable connections to my own spotty history.

As time went on, I started bringing home photos of other people’s families, photos from antique shops and flea markets cheekily marked “Instant Relatives!” I didn’t know what I was seeking from them, but I knew that I needed them. I knew that they needed to be seen and that they deserved to be cherished, and if nobody else was doing it, well then it was up to me. 

In the summer I was forty, I was in my bedroom in my adopted home of Chicago looking through ancestry.com for information on a name I’d found scrawled on the back of a photo I’d picked up. I’d researched my own missing family before and I’d come up with very little, but on this day I stumbled upon my paternal grandmother’s remarried name, Synenberg, and with a quick internet search I found her contact information. That night I wrote her a note asking if she’d be interested in meeting, and she called me on the phone later that week. The next month I visited her for the first time at her home in Madison, Ohio, and I returned the next month to help celebrate her eighty fourth birthday. In the last years of her life we were very close, and when she passed away earlier this summer (June 22 to be precise), I stood next to her husband as her casket was closed for the last time. 

I miss my grandma a lot.  It is still very painful.  Sharing this is therapy for me.

The photos that make up The Old-Time Moan come from shops I frequent in and around Chicago, as well as places I visit in the tiny towns I grew up in back in Ohio. I can’t bring home every photo I find, but I know when I find one that I need. It’s more than “Instant Relatives!”, it’s more than kitsch. I think about the preparation that went into taking them, the anticipation of waiting for them to be developed, the pride of seeing them displayed. Somehow, somewhere, something went terribly wrong and they just disappeared. When I bring them home it’s my way of saying, now you’re with me. You’re far from your home but you’re not lost anymore. 

I don’t want to be forgotten either. 

That’s it. That’s the why.

*******************************************************************************************

Photo 1: my maternal grandmother, Jeanne Boxerbaum, 1982ish Photo 2: my paternal grandmother, Joan Synenberg, Christmas 2019

Grandma

Dear Gus & Magnus,

Today was candy-making day on the Compound. I am always an advocate for less candy and more baked goods, especially kolaches, so this year Nana gave Mom and me a lesson in how to make them while everyone else dipped things in chocolate.

As always, you two had a ball with your cousins, which makes me incredibly happy.

After everyone loaded up to leave, Nene wanted to take you to Daniel Park to run under the lights, so we did that for a while and then stopped for Mexican food on our way out of town. It was a good day, but a long one. I was astounded that neither of you fell asleep on the way home.

Dad.

Beebe, Arkansas. 12.9.2023 - 3.41pm.

GRANDMA GOT ME A SMOOTHIE AND WOULDNT TAKE MY MONEY WHEN I TRIED TO PAY HER BACK I FUCKING LOVE HER SO MUCH

- @one.paper.crane

flowers for the dead

Hear the Dogs Crying

A recording of her voice, an old woman's voice full of gravel and lead steeped through the car radio. She spoke of gathering limu visitors on ships, and dusty roads in Wai'anae. In the distance you could almost hear the dogs crying, the mullet wriggling in the fish bag. Nostalgic for a tūtū I never knew, I feel the ocean pulse inside me waves rolling over, pushing me till I leap from this car through the congested H-1 across the noise and ashen sky emerge beneath the rains in Nu'uanu. I move past the fresh water ponds past the guava trees towards homes with flimsy tin roofs where my father, already late for school, races up Papakōlea with a kite made of fishing twine. Framed in a small kitchen window, tūtū scrapes the meat from awa skin for dinner tonight, wipes her hands on old flour bags for dish cloths. She is already small and watns to forget I may be too late— I have tomatoes and onion from the market, tūtū, my hand is out, my plate is empty and some bones for the dogs to stop their crying do you know my name? I am listening for your stories to call me in my hand is out, my plate is empty for your stories to show me the way tūtū, do you know my name?

— Christy Passion (1974–)

When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry (2020)