I didn’t want my grandmother—I wanted my cousins’ grandmother, Grandma Slossinger who wore a silver charm bracelet with silhouette heads of her grandchildren—each one’s name engraved on the charms.

I checked it frequently, but my head and name never appeared, no matter how much I wished for it.

My grandmother, Granny, wore a single item of jewellery—her wedding rings. They huddled together on her finger below her swollen arthritic knuckle, like two sisters on a narrow bed.

I envied my cousins’ wealth of grandmothers—two, in fact—and they got to call theirs the soft, gentle word Grandma. I had only one because my father’s mother died the year I was born—no correlation, I hope—and I had to call mine Granny, which was a hateful term in my estimation.

Mine wore horn-rimmed glasses and played a melodica, which is what happens when a recorder mates with an accordion. She blew hymns through it, and sometimes she burst into song—a warbly soprano, tuneless as any Protestant hymn could be.

She wore nylon knee-highs rolled down to her ankles. Even as a child, I knew that Grandma Slossinger wouldn’t be caught dead in such things. Grandma Slossinger wore white golf shoes with fringed tongues, plaid shorts, a white visor, and smart sky-blue polo shirts.

I wanted to want my grandmother, but I just didn’t. I wanted some reciprocal love. I was a moth, but there was no light in her to be drawn to. Her self-denial had extinguished her radiance.

Grandma Slossinger spoke in a gravelly voice and filled her glass ashtrays with lipstick-marked Peter Jackson butts. She always kept a stash of hard candies for us, and bridge mixture, blech.

Granny sat in a lawn chair, sensible shoes planted on the grass, a sloppy faded sun hat over her bowed head, keeping her hands busy shelling peas.

Eventually, the two grandmothers died, as all grandmothers do, and I was left with these two opposing role models. I went down the Peter Jackson route for a while but gave it up when it turned me into a fiend.

Now I wear hats to keep my frizzy hair flat—practical and probably unstylish. I still like fresh peas, but I adore charm bracelets. Maybe that’s my compromise—a little bling, a little duty. The buzz, and the hush.

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