T A B L E++T A L K

Public schools vs. private: Take sides in the Mothers area of Table Talk

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R E C E N T L Y

Spice of Life
By Chitra Divakaruni
My fictional children
(01/28/98)

"Mama, you're Old Spice!"
By Ariel Gore
Spice Girls, aka the anti-Christ
(01/27/98)

Femmes fatales
By Margaret Talbot
Are women more violent than men?
(01/26/98)

Can this marriage be saved?
By Camille Peri and Lori Leibovich
Will Hillary Clinton stand by her man?
(01/23/98)

Do the right thing
By Sallie Tisdale
Should the U.S. apologize for slavery? Only if we ever want to have a real conversation about racism
(01/22/98)

ARCHIVES

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Mamafesto
By Camille Peri
Why it's time
for Mothers Who Think

POOL OF MEMORIES | PAGE 2 OF 2

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Not that my grandmother ever once went into a health club in her life. She'd have said it wasn't her sort of thing. But had she lived into her 80s, the age I suspect most of the arthritis ladies are, I could have argued and pleaded and eventually convinced her that an arthritis class was just the thing for her. I'd have told her how much the ladies in the class were just her kind of ladies -- she'd like them. I'd have made her admit, finally, that her doctor had told her she needed to get more exercise.

My grandmother loved the water anyway, I'd remind her. "You know how you would float way out in the ocean every summer when we were little, and you'd let us climb up on you like you were a raft?" She'd throw back her very red head and laugh at the memory, I'm sure, remarking about what great floaters big, round Irishwomen were.

My grandmother could take her arthritis class while I swam my laps or did aerobics -- well into my 30s now and determined to keep those round genetic tendencies at bay. I would wait patiently for her to shower and dress with the other ladies. Then I would drive her powder blue Mercedes for her to wherever we had picked to go to lunch that day -- likely a tearoom. She liked tearooms best for lunch. I'd go along willingly, because I enjoyed the delicate kind of food they served, even though I always felt ungainly sitting at one of her fancy tearoom tables. Mother, as she was called by her grandchildren, would tease me through lunch that maybe, just maybe she would want to stop by the mall on the way home. She knew I loved to shop almost as much as she loved to tease, and she wasn't too slack when it came to purchasing things herself -- when she was able to find anything "feminine enough" for her tastes. She would chatter away at the salespeople, letting them know that she wasn't at all pleased with their current dress selection, meaning not enough floral arrangements on every inch of available fabric.

After the mall, I'd drop her and the Mercedes off at the front door of her huge, dark house. Her house by night could still make me a little scared -- even when I was 24, the year Mother died in a car wreck, driving the same little blue Mercedes. The house loomed at the end of a long driveway, embellished by what seemed like hundreds of very live oak trees. I'd load the new pair of silly shoes or jeans she had bought for me -- over much protest -- quickly into my car, and then follow her inside as she turned on several ornate lamps.

We'd put down whatever packages she had by the door, go get bottled Cokes from the refrigerator and then trudge up her dramatic, curving staircase and down a long hallway to her library to watch the evening news, which she still called "Walter Cronkite," even though he'd been gone from the air for several years.

And my grandmother has been too long gone from my life, over a decade now. I doubt there's a day that's gone by that I haven't thought about her.

Everyone thinks it must be hard to be old, like the arthritis ladies, who dutifully take their classes despite the pain of their old bones. I hope the water and the exercise does them some good.

I'd like to say seeing them does me some good. But sometimes, just seeing the arthritis ladies is painful for me, like it must be for them when they are reminded so vividly, at a fitness club of all places, of what youth is all about. Do they, too, have to turn their heads away, sometimes, for all the memories?
SALON | Jan. 29, 1998

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Grayson Hurst Daughters is a corporate video producer. She contributes to the Atlanta Constitution and to New South Radio Drive-In, a Georgia Network public radio show.