itskristin

visiting my grandpa

this post was written on my phone so if there’s spelling, grammar, or formatting errors… be chill about it

today we are visiting my grandpa, which goes about the same way every time.

my mom will spend the last day cooking and baking up a storm in our house, making sides for my uncle’s barbecue. she will make at least one of the following: this time she made dark chocolate cupcakes, coconut cake, banana caramel cake, and something else I’m not remembering.

on saturday we will load up the car with alllllll the food she made and hope that the crockpot doesn’t come open on the drive there and that the greens don’t spill (they always do)

it will take at least an hour to drive to my grandpa’s house, in which i jam myself in the front or backseat (my parents keep buying coupes) for the drive and hope the air conditioning will hit my face.

we will pull up to his house and start unloading the car, his wife will open the door with a “HEY SUGA!” and usher us in. my grandpa will be sitting in his lazy boy chair placed in front of a big tv in the living room. he’s not so strong now so I will lean down to give him a hug. he’ll say “heyyy baby.” and I’ll say “hi grandpa!” and he’ll end off this little greeting with “good to see you.” and i’ll return it with “it’s good to see you too.” but imagine I have the essence of a heart emoji in my voice.

I will run back outside to get the rest of the food because this will take at least two trips even with the help of my mom, my dad, my grandpa’s wife and I. once everything is brought in and put down, his wife will say “c’mere girl, gimme sum suga.” and we will have a nice tight hug. she’ll say during this hug, “it’s so good to see you.” we will release and she’ll say “aren’t you just beautiful. lookin like your momma.” which is a compliment more than welcomed because everyone on planet earth says I look like my dad. no offense to him but why would I want to look like a man? but I am quite pretty so. I’ll take it.

I will go into the fridge and get a can of either:

because his wife always make sure to buy some soda for us. I will then walk into the dining room to put down my stuff and then take a seat on the two-seater couch in the sitting room.

I will near immediately get back up to get the now-four remotes needed to operate the flat screen TV. they normally don’t use it so once I get it on it has to update.

I then get the joy of larping as my kid self by going through DirecTV channels to land on channel 297, cartoon network. but if they’re playing teen titans go I will groan externally and then scroll through the hundreds of other channels to find a movie to watch, typically a romcom. one time it was You’ve Got Mail, which I actually hated so much it pissed me off for days.

then my aunt and uncle will come in, my aunt speaking a mile a minute and dropping in a “hey baby!” and promptly gives me a tight and bony hug, which I have to lean all the way down for because she is, at most, 5’1. then my uncle will come in after, sweaty, slow, and exhausted from barbecuing alllllllllll day before. he’ll say “hey babygirl.” OR he will exclaim loudly, “THE TINK!” (my nickname) and I’ll give him a hug, he will walk into the living room to say to everybody, and my dad will join him in getting all the food out of his car.

my aunt will possibly stand next to the couch and ask “what is this you’re watching?” and I’ll tell her and she’ll go “ohhhh.” and then give me a story that lasts at least 5 minutes. love her.

once all the food is brought in, we will say prayer and I will be first to make my plate because I’m hungry and I’m the baby here.

We will sit around the dining table and pull up an extra chair if necessary. if there’s more of my family there, we might split up gender-wise and all the women will be at the dining table and all the men will be in the living room watching sports and talking. the women will talk for at least an hour and a half. while we eat, someone might break out a photo album, they will talk about their history and things they did together when they were young, their kids and the news of things that happened since the last time we saw each other. will involve talking about our religion and ways god has helped them recently. they will be eating dessert by this time.

I will, inevitably, get terrible heartburn and have to lay down, either on the three seater couch in the sitting room or on the bed in their guest room. we will not leave until at least 10PM.

my uncle will thank my mom over and over for the cupcakes, because she made them for him. he once garnered some sort of injury from opening the carrier that held the cupcakes. still don’t get how that happened.

my other relatives will leave first, and we stay for at least another thirty minutes because my mom is my grandpa’s daughter where as my aunts and uncles are her friends that she grew up with.

we will give at least two rounds of hugs to my grandpa and his wife and then we will leave. it’s great.

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#musings