Who is that child in the kitchen with Grandma?
She looks like my daughter.
She sounds like my daughter.
But no, she’s someone else entirely.
Grandma’s granddaughter helps cook the meals. Those two putter about together in the kitchen, studying recipes, measuring ingredients, carrying out the preparation together step by step. Pleasant, gentle muffled sounds of their conversation drift into the next room.
Grandma’s granddaughter sets the table with precision before the meal and is the first to collect the used plates from the table after the meal has been finished.
Grandma’s granddaughter washes the dishes, puts them away and tidies and wipes down all the surfaces before leaving the kitchen.
Oh how impressed I am at each family visit by Grandma’s doting and responsible granddaughter. Oh how I wish that that girl would be my right hand man at dinner times at our house.
At our house, I have a classic teenager. After dinner, she’s tired. She’s exhausted. She has to practice guitar. She has a lot of homework to do. She’s been up since 6 a.m. and needs some time to herself for once today to guard her mental wellbeing. She has a stomach ache. She has a headache. I just don’t understand.
On occasion, such as Tuesdays with the 3-hour dance class, I do excuse her from doing dishes. Otherwise, we begin a period of negotiation. It’s a long process which generally involves her taking a 20-minute rest to collect herself before coming back downstairs armed for the job with her phone and earphones.
However, that nightly routine always goes quite smoothly in the weeks after a visit with the grandparents. That’s due to the phenomenon I call “The Grandma Glow.”
I’m not ashamed to throw Grandma’s name around liberally.
After my child claims she’s finished with the kitchen, I go in and check.
“Is that how Grandma would leave it?”
She perks up, alert and sprung for action. She’s inspired. Suddenly, she notices this container left out on the counter, that spoon by the stove and the crumbs on the floor. She takes care of it immediately.
I get those great results for about two weeks.
Then The Grandma Glow fades little by little. I don’t mean that in the sense of her feelings about her grandmother – because she knows that woman hung the moon – just in the sense of how useful her recent time with Grandma is for our present needs of a clean kitchen.
I start having to get specific.
“Is that how Grandma would leave it?”
“It looks fine to me.”
“Would Grandma leave that glop of food on the counter and the little pieces of food in the sink strainer?”
She goes into action.
By now, it’s been a month since the visit with Grandma. Our conversations are more direct:
“You missed a spot over there.”
“Ugh,” she grunts, with an eye roll as she picks up the sponge.
So we’re back to the September, October and most-of-November slump of supervised kitchen duties and heavy reinforcement.
But I’m not worried.
We’ll be seeing Grandma again for Thanksgiving, at which point The Grandma Glow will be renewed, and I’ll have another month or so of clear sailing in our own kitchen at home once again.
