The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma

by Iain Reid

  I exhale in relief, choking on the breath. “I actually slept really great.”

  “Oh, good. Happy to hear it. I thought you might.”

  “Grandma, what are you doing on the floor?” I ask.

  “I was feeling better this morning. I think the worst of my cold is done. So I just thought I’d do some exercises and stretching. I guess it probably looks silly. I often do this at home. I’ve been feeling lazy since I’ve been here.”

  She pulls one leg into her chest as far as she can. She holds it there. Then brings the other leg, the one with the bad knee, up beside it. She can’t get it quite as far. Beside her on the floor I notice a ball of bedsheets.

  “But isn’t the floor hard? Doesn’t it hurt your back?”

  “No, I like the wood floor. It’s good for my back.”

  The spare bed has probably been murderous on her back. It is on mine. I should have switched beds. I should have taken the spare bed myself. But she would have insisted I stay in my own room. It’s delusional to think otherwise. Still, I could have at least suggested it.

  “I hope it’s not the damn bed that’s hurt your back.”

  “No, of course not, my back is fine. I enjoy doing these exercises. It’s good for me.”

  I watch her release one leg, then the other. She just lies there on the floor. She puts her arms back behind her head and closes her eyes.

  “How about a little breakfast, then, when you’re done.”

  “Thanks, but I already had some, dear. I was up early. And I stripped the bed.” She motions toward the ball of sheets beside her.

  I thought I was up early?

  I pull out one of the chairs from the table and flop down. Grandma continues her stretching. In the reflection in the window I can see my own distended tummy. I slap my belly twice and roll my neck on my shoulders, joining in on the morning calisthenics. The rain was supposed to have stopped. It hasn’t. Not even for our last day. It’s grey and raining and windy and generally shitty, like it’s been for most of the past four days.

  “Could you have some coffee, then? I’m going to make some.”

  “Coffee would be great.”

  As I prepare our brew, Grandma slowly rises up off the floor. It’s a struggle. I want to ask if she needs any help, but I know by now she’d rather do it on her own, even if it takes longer.

  “I was thinking about our dinner last night before I fell asleep,” she says when she’s up and seated at the table. “It was delicious, Iain. I can’t believe how well we’ve eaten. I’m going to try and make that salad when I get home. I wrote down the recipe, right?”

  “Yeah, you did. You had a little piece of paper with you. I think it’s here somewhere.”

  I start shuffling through the newspapers, magazines, and notepaper scattered on the table beside the phone. I’m not convinced I’m going to find anything. “Here, I think this is it.” I try not to sound too surprised. I hold up a white sticky note with what appears to be her handwriting. It’s tricky to decipher. The writing, although neat and orderly, is small and unsteady. It doesn’t look like a recipe. It’s definitely her writing, though. “Maybe this isn’t it.”

  “May I see?”

  I pass the paper to Grandma. She accepts it and holds it up close to her face, squinting at her own writing. “No, this isn’t the recipe. I’m not sure what . . . Oh, I know what this is.” She looks up, giggles, then turns back to the note. “It’s mine, all right.”

  “What is it?”

  “It’s just a little diary, I guess. I decided on Tuesday I should start writing down what we’ve been doing. I knew if I didn’t, I’d forget it. And some of it I want to remember.”

  I’m unexpectedly touched by this development. She’s been keeping her own travelogue of our road trip — our road trip without a road, or a trip. On scrap paper. In faint pencil. I tell her I’ve had the same idea, that I’ve been doing the same thing. “I’ve been keeping some notes, too.”

  “I’ll be able to read it over every now and then. It’ll be nice to have.”

  I stand up and walk toward the sink. I’ve had the ingredients for peanut butter cookies sitting on the counter for more than a week. I was going to have the cookies ready for when Grandma arrived. That way my place would smell like fresh baking when we stepped inside. It never happened. I’ve been estranged from any desire to bake since the last time I baked a pie. It was also my first time, and the insides of the pecan filling came out like soup. I ate it (with a spoon) but wouldn’t have wanted to serve it to anyone else. I know cookies are easier but I just couldn’t do it. Now would have been a good time to offer Grandma a homemade cookie.

  “Would you like to nibble on something with your coffee, Grandma?”

  “No, dear. I think I’ll wait until lunch.”

  WHEN IT COMES to weekday lunch in downtown Kingston, there are several choices. There are delis, lots of sushi, pizza. There are homemade takeout meals at a small grocery on Barrie Street. But when I feel like spending more money than I should, the bakery on Princess Street is nonpareil. The combination of fresh ingredients, extensive choice, and friendly service equates to an eternally packed interior and the diametric opposite of my kitchen.

  The clientele are a blend of businesspeople, post-boomer artisans, grad students, and elderly retirees. The sum is an undissolved potion of affluent bread-and-soup-lovers. Grandma asked about the bakery when she saw it from the café, so I felt like I should take her to see it.

  Walking along Princess Street today, what’s noticeable is some of the empty buildings where there used to be stores. Along with the Starbucks, two burger joints, a shoe store, a dollar store, a chain drug store, a natural foods store, a cellphone retailer, and a couple of clothing stores, I count three empty buildings with paper half-covering their windows.

  We pass a place where I used to buy books. It was called the Book Market. Someone has literally X-ed out the word Book and scrawled Art above it. I guess it’s now the Art Market. A number of the storefronts are festooned with flashy reminders of low prices and great deals. Grandma comments on the shoe store and wonders if it’s new. It’s not. I tell her new stores downtown have had a rough go lately and there are fewer and fewer new anythings.

  We walk through the bakery’s door to the unmistakable scent of fresh sourdough. I like it here but am already ruing the decision. I know she loves a satisfying soup-and-sammy lunch, but the bakery is more hectic than I thought it would be. Maybe I should have picked another place. We could have just grabbed takeout somewhere and eaten in my car. There’s an urgency built into the glass display here. Everyone but us has things to do and places to go. All are in a hurry. Even the old people and lackadaisical students are in a hurry to get their lunches and go. The staff are extremely friendly and helpful but are taught to trump congeniality with efficiency. Most days I’m fine with this, but today it adds another layer of unwanted intensity.

  The guy beside me is probably a student, or he could be about to depart on a month-long trek through the Andes. His backpack is holding more belongings than I own. There are water bottles and keys and frying pans dangling off many large buckles. I’ve just caught a glimpse of his face. He looks like he hasn’t just smoked from a bong but has smoked the whole thing, drunk the water, and eaten the bong, too. The whites of his eyes are the colour of canned salmon.

  Grandma’s waiting unassumingly, holding her purse over her left shoulder. To her right is an elderly woman in a rain hat. She has a piece of notepaper with her. She’s reading a list of orders from her paper to one of the women behind the counter. Beside her is a standard-issue insurance salesman, or banker, or real estate agent — clean-shaven; dark suit; short, neatly combed and gelled salt-and-pepper hair. Apart from large-scale coastal oil spills, is there anything worse and more unsettling in our world than the use of cologne? Not the overuse, just the use. Doesn’t it seem like a
n antiquated measure, useful perhaps if we didn’t have access to three-dollar sticks of deodorant and warm running water? And soap. We don’t smell that terrible, do we, that we need to spray these repulsive chemicals onto our necks and then stand in line at a deli counter trying to decide between roast beef and pastrami while discharging the powerfully synthetic pheromone of a Glade Plug-In?

  “Do you know what you’re going to get?” asks Grandma.

  I’m flustered. I turn and look at her. I have to stop myself from asking if she wants to go somewhere else, away from other humans. There has to be a restaurant around here with good food. And no other customers. “No, not for sure, what about you?”

  “I’m thinking of just getting some cheese. And maybe one of those fresh croissants.”

  We’ve come at feeding time, but our goal should be to graze. There’s a café in the back, and I suggest to Grandma we go back there and sit where we can eat slowly, without feeling rushed. It feels like the right place to go. We can eat our lunch at our own pace.

  We find a square table for two beside a table for four. Most customers take their food out, so the café section is only a quarter full, at most.

  I always try and decide what I want before I arrive. It’s seemingly inevitable that I change my mind six or seven times before I place my order. And the split-second post-order is when I start to feel guilty for buying lunch at all. I should have just had peanut butter on toast at home.

  Today I’m feeling rested and adventurous. I’m determined to make it a guilt-free lunch, for Grandma’s sake. I want something I’ve never had. Maybe something open-faced or something with chorizo. The waiter drops off two coffees, water, and some fresh butter and bread and says he’ll be back to take our orders.

  “Looks pretty good, doesn’t it?” I say.

  “It does.”

  For a while we snack on the bread and butter, not talking much. The waiter returns and takes our order. We’re going to share a grilled cheese and a café salad with roasted pumpkin seeds. The food arrives promptly and has already been split in two. We stop to rest after I’m done almost half my plate; Grandma is only three bites into hers. She unwinds the scarf from her neck and sets it down on the empty seat beside her.

  “This is what’s nice about getting old, being somewhere like this.”

  “Really?” I look around the café and back toward the busy bakery section.

  “Everyone knows the bad parts about aging. We hear about them all the time. But I never could have guessed at any point in my life that I’d still be here, at this age, eating a green salad with pumpkin seeds with my grandson,” she says. “I’ve been thinking about this, how the more you age, the older you get, the more of the future you get to see.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I say.

  Patrons from two other tables have finished and left. Besides us, there’s only one other occupied table now, under the “Specials” chalkboard across the room. It’s an elderly lady, sitting alone. She’s eating a bowl of soup and reading the paper.

  I’ve often heard the cliché about how childhood comes full circle. We’re born helpless and dependent; we grow, we age, and we die helpless. There are strands connecting the two. A child needs my help carrying heavy things like bags; so does Grandma. But really, childhood and old age are distinct stages. Grandma is right.

  No age is a destination, just a place we are actively travelling through. Childhood is lived intrinsically. Old age is felt more discerningly and often negatively. It’s a place many of us don’t get to visit, yet paradoxically a place easily taken for granted. Old age is often an assumption. We all think we’ll get there. Lots of us don’t. The part of being old that Grandma likes — being old.

  “In the present, we often lose historical perspective,” she’s saying. “We tend to look back at generations and think of how much we’ve progressed. We laugh at pictures of people smoking in planes. But what are we doing now that the next generation will find ridiculous . . . or destructive? By then it will seem so obvious. Am I making any sense?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I understand, you’re right.”

  “I guess what I mean is the future becomes the past pretty quickly.”

  “So then the only constant is the present.”

  “And when I think about it, I really can’t believe that I’m still around. It doesn’t make much sense to me,” she says. “George never would have believed it. We always thought I’d be the first to go.”

  “You’re healthy and active and you do things. You still think about things, Grandma.”

  “It’s hard to explain, though. So many in my family died young. Even my dad, who was a healthy guy, he died when I was away at war in Europe. I just never would have imagined living this long, into my nineties.”

  I’ve been wanting to ask her more about death. The topic has come up only once, back in my kitchen. It’s not an easy thing to casually toss out to someone in their nineties, someone who is so close. What does it feel like to know you’ve already lived the vast majority of your life, to be one of the last few of your generation? It must feel strange to know death is so near. If I don’t ask now, I won’t.

  “So you don’t worry about dying, Grandma? Or even what death is?”

  “I don’t worry about it, no, never. It’s the end of something, that’s all we know. What if it’s also the start of something, something unimaginable for us now? We just don’t know. But we can each have our own ideas about it, and that’s what I like. I like that our own impressions and suspicions of death can be so utterly personal. Do you ever think about it?”

  “I guess, yeah, sometimes.”

  “Maybe I should think about it more, but I don’t know any more about dying because I’m closer to it than someone younger. We all know the same about dying: nothing. And my entire life, I’ve never thought much about it. That’s not to say I don’t think about everyone in my life who’s gone before me. My mother, father, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, friends. And, of course, George. I do feel like I know the process of dealing with death, its pain. And it is a kind of process,” she says. “That’s why I left the war, on compassionate leave. I was told I had to go home, back to Canada. Someone in my family had died.”

  “But you weren’t told who?”

  “No. And to be honest I thought it was my mother. She’d taken ill before I left. I thought about her all the way back home. When I arrived, I found out it was actually my father.”

  “So many people around you have died.”

  “I don’t think you ever get used to it, though, or really know how to deal with it. Each time it’s different, and hard for different reasons. I guess I’m the last one left. And in some ways that makes the idea of death almost comforting to me. It’ll be my turn soon enough. It’s just not something to fear or worry about. So I never even think about. When it’s my turn, it’s my turn,” she says. “And that’s really all I know.”

  “I guess you’re right,” I say.

  “The older I get, the more of the future I get to see. I’m still the person I was at nine, just older. So being old like me is being in a position of luck. I think sometimes people assume luck and ease are the same. I don’t think they are,” she says, stirring cream into her freshened coffee. “Being lucky isn’t about constant happiness, things being easy, or always getting what you want.”

  *

  OUTSIDE THE CAFÉ, in the rain, we huddle together under my fickle umbrella and wait.

  The rain is falling harder. I think it’s falling harder. There’s been so much rain this week it’s hard to remember when it’s been heavy and when it’s been light; rain of varying strength has essentially been a constant companion. We’re hopeful it might let up.

  I’m still considering Grandma’s words from lunch, and not just the sentiment. It was her face, her eyes, as she spoke. I watch a guy walking for the bus. He doe
sn’t think he’s going to make it, so doesn’t bother to speed up. The bus has already disgorged passengers and filled up with new ones; it’s lingering. The light hasn’t changed. I watch as hope enters the man’s body. His next step is swifter. Then, yes, he can make it! He believes! He’s going to make it! He starts into a full trot. Four or five strides into his run, the light changes, and the bus spits some cloudy exhaust and abruptly pulls out into traffic. He’s about six steps from it. His bag drops off his shoulder. He eases back into a casual walk.

  This is life, I think.

  “Did you see that?” I ask Grandma. “That guy?”

  “Which one, dear?” she asks, looking up at me.

  “The one over there, who ran for the bus. He wasn’t going to run and then he did. He made the decision to run, but he still didn’t make it.”

  “No, I didn’t. Did he miss it?”

  “Yup. It was heartbreaking.”

  “There’ll be another, then,” she says, hooking her arm into mine. “Shall we brave the rain?”

  *

  IT’S NOT A café, but coffee is the first thing you smell. There are other smells, too — all pleasant, but none as potent. The fine food store on Brock Street has a creaky wooden floor and an olfactory appeal unmatched in this town. Grandma has been asking about stopping by since her first day in Kingston. We almost forgot. I almost forgot. Grandma remembered during lunch. She wants to take some cheese back with her. Just some aged cheddar cheese is what she said. It seems like a relatively insignificant item to make a special stop for, but I know she loves her cheese.

  I’m carrying the handbasket. She’s already half-filled it. Inside are a pack of white tea, two chocolate bars, some coffee-flavoured hard candies, organic wheat crackers, and a jar of marmalade. We’ve yet to make it to the cheese counter.

  “Do we need any other snacks for the car?” Grandma asks. “I still have to get my cheese.”

  “We could probably use something else.”

  “Well, you go pick something, then.”

  I leave Grandma at the cheese counter to sniff out the fine selection of fudge, another soft spot for her. I’m no fudge devotee. I have many vice teeth — fatty, salty, caffeiney, alcoholy, etc. — but surprisingly not much of a sweet tooth. And fudge is as sickly sweet as they come. I find it intentionally cloying, borderline offensive in its obviousness as a sweet snack. Yet in the car, especially on road trips, I do covet the odd lump. Its high sucrose content and robust flavour switch from annoying to comforting. This time I go with maple and peanut butter. I furtively pay for them and find Grandma still kicking tires at the cheese display. There are many varieties to choose from.