Thy grand ol’ parents

Two weeks ago, my grandmother’s left arm suddenly went numb and she nearly dropped a hot bowl of soup she had just ladled from a pot. Looking winded, she leaned back in our dining room chair. I stared, trying to digest the scene and felt like I was watching a movie.

What should come next? I didn’t know what to make of it and what to do. All I thought of was: Do we take her to the hospital now?

Even more distressing was the fact that her face looked twisted. Laboring to speak, she assured us she was fine, and that she only needed someone to take her blood pressure. My grandmother is a nurse, so I took some solace in that. Ah, she knows what’s best. She must know it’s nothing.

But after some frantic phone calls to my mom and her doctor-pal (hi, Tita Mayee), my grandfather (a.k.a. Daddy) and I were instructed to rush Mommy to the hospital, pronto.

At the ER, my lolo, who simply dislikes hospitals (he gets nervous in them), kept shifting in his seat as we waited for Mommy’s diagnosis. An ECG and CT scan revealed she had developed clots in her brain, brought on by a high cholesterol blood count and further aggravated by her irregular heartbeat.

Her attending doctor told us to be grateful for her "second life." Mommy could have been paralyzed by the severity of the clotting. She was lucky to have been sent home only after five days of confinement and with an admonition to watch what she eats. I think she was also prescribed a daily serving of alcohol (wowee!). Regular muscle-specific exercises were also drawn up to restore her atrophied arm and hand muscles, as well as to strengthen neural response.

My grandparents are both octogenarians, and I must admit that I had long taken their health for granted. You see, my first memories have always been of Mommy doing chores around the house (even if there was a maid). She’s that classic if-you-want-something-done-right-do-it-yourself kind of person. Daddy, for his part, would keep his regular working schedule long after retirement age.

He had used to work for the late lamented pre-martial-law Manila Times and, until last week, had been commuting (yes, commuting) daily from Mandaluyong to Navotas where he would help in his sister’s printing business. I kid you not when I tell you Daddy could still outwalk anyone with his long and quick strides. He also works out daily – lifting weights on our porch early morning while I doze (I choose to exercise my eyelids instead, see). Then comes a thorough reading of the paper (this very paper, of course!) and a dose of AM radio news.

Now that Daddy is homebound, too – to act as nurse to his nurse wife – it’s like we’re living with newlyweds. When I come down for breakfast, they’re eating together. They watch TV together. They talk to neighbors together. They negotiate with the neighborhood kids who lug our garbage bags to God-knows-where (the garbage collection boys have been missing as of late). They pick out vegetables from the ambulant vendor together. Still don’t know if I can expect another tito or tita anytime soon, though (mwahahaha!).

And most of the time, there’s a whole lot of talking downstairs in the Maceda abode – two slightly hard-of-hearing lovebirds at it.

After a horrendous round of golf (is there any other for me?) with colleagues Rey and Dante, we saw five graying golfers in the locker room talking excitedly about their round and chugging a couple of San Miguels. Hey, we wouldn’t mind doing that at all. When I’m gray and a little more wrinkled, I would want to be free to get better at things I rarely have time for – and I’m not just talking golf here. Accumulated wisdom and all the time to use it, I’d say that’s a grand deal, indeed.

Grandparents must be named thus because they have such a grand ol’ time. They needn’t worry about the crap that we young ’uns obsess about, and thus actually have a better grip on the essentials of life the Little Prince so eloquently explained.

Grandparents are also parents who have graduated from the School of Kid Raising. While many of them do take extra credit and work on grandkids, these courses should only be elective – to be taken only if desired.

The fact of the matter is, grandparents have all the fun. I read somewhere that grandparents are lucky because they get to play with their grandkids a lot – yet can return them anytime a tantrum comes and the cute little tykes turn into unmanageable monsters.

While some grandparents slow down with age, the pair I have go on overdrive. Daddy continues to whip up his Soup Number Whatever that can rival any daring chemistry experiment. I should report that he still can’t seem to stay home for very long. He commutes to the grocery to buy the smallest stuff and knickknacks. Mommy insists on going to market by herself (no way, Ninay!), and if given the chance, would probably go up the roof to clean the drain.

We the younger generation with our cell phones and laptops and PDAs would be lucky to attain the fullness of life our elders had lived. While we go blind playing CounterStrike, they’ve had the experience of scrounging around in the mountains trying to escape the Japanese.

While we text away to assert make-believe affinity, they had been appreciating the joy of face-to-face interaction – unhindered and free from the distracting beeping and ringing of insistent cell phones.

Mommy and Daddy have been together for more than 50 years and they’re still exchanging sweet nothings (though a wee bit louder). I sometimes listen in because I just might learn something.