Recently, one of my friends from school sent me a video on Facebook about music students living for free in a retirement home in exchange for putting on recitals for the residents.
“I wish I could do that and not have to pay for a dorm!” they told me.
At FIT, about half the students dorm. Most of the commuters live off campus with either their parents or roommates in an apartment. I live with my grandma, and honestly, it’s the best thing ever.
1. My grandma understands what it’s like to live with a young adult who is balancing work, school, and a social life.
She’s a pro at this by now. When my mom went to college, not only did she work part time, go to school part time, and have a booming social life, but was the third kid to do so. Gram is the perfect person to come home to. She’s usually sitting on the couch watching old black and white movies when I stumble in the door at night. She understands how exhausting it is to come home at 10:45 at night after leaving the house at 7:30 in the morning. She doesn’t mind when I need to be left alone to get a particularly intense art project finished the night before its due, or if I can get to the copy and print center back at school, or be out early, rushing to the city to get supplies for a project due the next day and be back home in time for work. Plus, she's crafty too, so if I need help with a project, she doesn't even wait for me to ask for help, she just offers it.
2. She’s an expert at remembering dates.
If I mention that I have a paper due two Thursdays from now, she’ll ask me how it’s going during a dinnertime conversation the week before, without mentioning that it’s really a reminder. On very few occasions, she’s been the reason I’ve gotten to school on time, like the one time I left my phone at work and the alarm on my iPod didn’t ring, and she just happened to be throwing in a laundry downstairs. Sure, it might take a week or two to remember which days I’ll be home and which days I’ll be out, but once she gets it, she instinctually knows it better than I do.
3. Two words- chicken soup.
I’ve lost count of how many times she’s cooked me chicken soup since I was little, but there is absolutely nothing like coming home to a steaming pot of soup with dumpling-biscuit thingies on top, especially after one of those 13 hour days or a snowstorm. I swear, her chicken soup has had unusually good healing powers lately, because everyone seems to be getting sick except us.
4. She always know when it’s going to rain.
One of the little things that grandparents seem to do is listen to the news stations, especially the ones that give the weather evert twenty two minutes. Sometimes, in the rush to get out the door on time, I don’t have time to check the weather, but Gram never fails to ask if I have an umbrella if rain is on the forecast, and she’s saved me from a secondary shower on multiple occasions. I’m not the “squeaky sneaker on rainy days” student, thanks to her.
5. She’s a human encyclopedia.
She seems to know the answer to every “how do I do ___?” question I come up with. Oil stains on a piece of silk? Try baby powder. Need to take care of a plant? This is the food you need, and you should feed it once a month. What’s the capital of Maine? Augusta. Can’t remember how to do a flat- felled seam? Here, let me show you. It’s incredible how much she recalls, and how quickly she can remember it. Gram picks up new skills pretty quickly, too. She got the hang of the new TV remote way before I did.
6. Gram knows the best stories about your childhood and your parents.
I remember more about my childhood from her stories than the ones my parents told me. And they’re always told with the most endearing tone, too, even if it’s the one about two- year- old me hiding seven jars of JIF peanut butter under my blanket at the grocery store and no one noticing ‘till we were home. Or the time we were playing Barbies and they went to see the Queen of England in their cardboard boat. One of her favorites to share is the time she was watching me while my mom ran errands, and I got a dixie cup from the freezer all by myself so she wouldn’t have to make a noise bending over to get it for me. There’s also stories from while my mom was an illustration major in college- taking her projects to be copied, and having the guy doing the replica photos tell his wife over the phone that he’s shooting nudes. Art school never changes.
7. My grandma has a more active social life than I do.
She’s involved with her church’s Italian class, the Widow’s Support Group, and has a floating Mahjong night with her friends. I love hearing about whose daughter is getting married, who got a new dog, or how so-and-so dyed their hair but they looked better blonde but that’s none of my business, or how she was tickled pink to win at Mahjong but didn’t think she was going to. It’s refreshing to hear stories about things other than parties, work, and school, and a really nice break from worrying about deadlines.
8. Adventures with Gram are the best.
My grandma is the one who taught me to sew, way back when I was three. She’s also one of the most stylish women I know, and the only person in my family who enjoys fashion close to the same level that I do. I like taking her to the city with me when I have a market research trip to one of the high- end stores, like Bergdorf Goodmans or Saks, because we have the best time examining the clothes, trying to figure out how it was made, and commenting on how we could obviously make it better ourselves. She also likes visiting the garment district and looking at all the cool fabric in the stores with me, which makes an already fun trip even better. She’s also taken my sister and me on adventures, too- we all went to see the Swan Lake Ballet earlier this year.
9. She’s proud of me, no matter what, and she’s not afraid to share it.
I can tell her that I had a terrible day at work because someone was in a grumpy mood, but I helped an elderly lady find exactly the shower curtain she was looking for, and she’ll be happy to hear about it. I can come home from school with a project that I wasn’t happy with the outcome of, and all she can see is what I did right. If I make a really delicious meal, she’ll tell her friends about it the next time she sees them. She’ll also proudly tell the ladies at church about whatever project I’m working on, and make me take pictures of it so she can show it off to them. I gave her the jacket that I made in the second semester sewing class, and it’s her favorite fall blazer. She loves wearing it because when people compliment the jacket, she gets to tell them, “my granddaughter made it for me.”
