But I just can’t do it.
My grandmother’s advice is too strong. One afternoon a few months after DH and I were married, I was sitting in her office complaining. She listened, smiled soothingly, tsked at the appropriate times. After I finished a twenty-minute diatribe on men in general and my husband specifically, on the account of mounding dirty laundry and no help with dinner, I stopped for breath and a drink.
She leaned forward over the desk, glasses perched on her nose, hands folded gently on the blotter. Eighty-two years old and she still worked every day. Did all her own cleaning. Had a garden. She leaned forward–not a hair out of place–gave me the stern smile reserved for overdue renters and wayward grandchildren and said, gently: “Cut the crap, dearie, and grow a backbone.”
