Tucking Away Your History
There is a grandmother pageant every year in New York. It actually sounds like a sweet event, celebrating elderly ladies. They make a chicken soup, they wear a national costume, and they perform a talent. I read the article because I miss my grandmother, and it seemed like the type of article I would have brought up during a visit.
Towards the bottom of the article, there’s a paragraph I kept re-reading.
The MC introduces each grandmother by reading a short bio she has provided. There is an almost willful omission of some fairly important information in these introductions. For example, in lieu of something as significant as “She survived the Holocaust,” Mara Goldshtein prefers “Mara has two granddaughters and loves to read and dance.” They lead with their passions, not with their hardships.
What they include, of course, is their choice. It’s their bio. That’s the best part about a bio: you hopefully get to write your own and decide which facts about you are important to tell others about and which ones can be tucked away. So I guess I support it as long as tucking away hardships is not celebrated. That someone who wishes to lead with “She survived the Holocaust” feels encouraged as much as someone who wants to talk about reading and dancing. Maybe it worried me because it sounded like positivity gone awry?
Or maybe I’ll see that paragraph through entirely different eyes when I’m competing in the 2060 Your Highness Grandmother pageant. Not as a grandmother, mind you. But as a bad-ass gate crasher, still in my combat boots, shrieking, “Old ladies rule!”
4 comments
I’m laughing, because if you become a grandmother, it’s going to be a decade or two before 2060! Many grandmothers are not what we would call old ladies. I have a few friends who are grandmothers. My sister became a grandmother in her 40s (she was a mum in her early/mid 20s, and her daughter was at the same age), and so did one or two friends. They are far from being “old ladies.”
I also object because this is a competition I couldn’t enter, and neither could my many No Kidding friends without children. Grandmothers can (some of them), I hear, be insufferable enough without having competitions like this for them.
Still, I like your last para, and can imagine you doing it! Just before the 2060s please, so I can still be around to see it. lol
I will attend that event!
In my old lady yoga pants.
Also: this makes me see that writing one’s bio is hard, no matter what stage of life you’re in.
With you… I’d like to list “survived the Trump administration.” (Assuming I do.)
Like Mali, my first thought was that this is a competition I’d never be able to enter. 🙁 But yes, I too would love to see you do this (also before 2060, please, since I’ll be almost 100 years old by then!). 😉