Holding Out

“Oh Graaan-ma,” Adella calls out. 

I know trouble is a-brewin’. Whenever Adella lengthens out the vowels in my name, she usually wants to draw my attention to some failing on my part. Like an empty cookie jar or one of her toys that has somehow found its way into one of my toy baskets. I look up.

“Look what I found,” she sings out. She holds up an egg-dyeing kit.

We have just cleaned up our mess from sponge painting this year’s Easter eggs. Those eggs are not even dry. But somehow Adella has found an unused egg dyeing kit from a previous year in my pantry.

“Oh, Granma!” my daughter Chrissy adds, mockingly shocked. “You’re holding out on us!”

It is true. I am cheap. Too cheap. Too cheap to throw out a kit I bought years ago. Even though it probably cost no more than a dollar or two, I have kept it. Did I mention my mother, who came of age during the Depression, used to rinse out the Wonder bread wrappers and reuse them? 

“So now we can color some more eggs,” Adella asks.

“No,” both her mother, my daughter, and I quickly shout. The unplanned unison of our responses sounds well-practiced. 

“Not today, ” I add, a little more calmly.

I don’t want the mess. And my daughter does not want to blow out any more eggs. We Stornettas do not hard boil our Easter eggs, we put small holes in the ends of each of the eggs and blow the innards out. As a result, we have cleared sinuses and lingering stuffy pressure headaches from all that blowing. And we eat lots of omelets and scrambled eggs for a few days.

Chrissy and I settle back into our lazy Sunday afternoon conversation. Soon Adella returns. She is holding up not one, but two more egg dyeing kits that she has found in my pantry. I am not sure where she is finding those kits. But I am certain that if she is able to delve into the deep abyss of my pantry to find these kits, some of which probably date to years before she was born, I should be teaching her how to deep clean my pantry. 

“You’re holding out on us, Granma,” Adella says, perfectly mimicking her mother’s tone.

What can I say? I am not only cheap, but also forgetful. And clearly aspirational. Every year when I see all those egg dyeing kits on the shelves at Walmart, I immediately envision a Norman Rockwell scene, me at my kitchen table surrounded by my cherubic grandkids sweetly dyeing eggs even Martha Stewart would envy. But usually when I return home and tiptoe through the Legos, Littlest Pet Shop pets, and action figures littering my floor, I remember my grandchildren are not cherubs but preschoolers and that life, much less egg dyeing, is just plain messy. So usually I shove my newly purchased egg dyeing kit to the back of my pantry and my aspirations to the next year when my life will be less messy. Of course, the next year, when I am at Walmart aspirationally daydreaming in the floor-to-ceiling aisle of egg-dyeing kits, I have truly forgotten whether I have a kit in my pantry. So I buy yet another. 

“Can’t we color some more eggs?” Adella begs.

“No,” Chrissy and I answer resoundingly, again in unison. 

“Not today,” I add encouragingly, offering hope.

Thankfully, Adella finds no more kits in my pantry. But she keeps returning to us, pestering us. Being five, she simply cannot resist the allure of the glitter kit.

“Maybe Grandma will dye some eggs with you on Tuesday,” my daughter devilishly offers.

I give her the evil eye. “Maybe,” I say, hoping my ambiguity will somehow extinguish Adella’s fervor.

It does not. On Tuesday, Adella bounds through my kitchen door at 6:30 a.m. ready to glitter those eggs. 

I put her off yet again. “Maybe Thursday, when I am not so busy,” I suggest. 

Tuesday is not a good day to dye eggs. In fact, for the next fifteen Tuesdays, Granma’s house will never be a rockin’ fun zone. I have agreed to teach a class on Tuesday afternoons. A scheduling blunder on my part, agreeing to teach a class in the afternoons after I’ve spent the mornings watching my grandkids. It took only one week to convince myself that I am not really the Super Granny Nanny that I imagine myself to be. Did I mention this class is new to me, that the parents frequently sit in on the classes, and that I am creating the curriculum on the fly?

But this Tuesday morning Miss Adella is nothing if not persistent. At one point, when I look up from my computer, I see six little cardboard circles on the floor. She has punched them from the back of the box of one egg dyeing kit in order to create a stand with holes for drying eggs. She does not realize she has created a utilitarian stand. She has simply caved into an unremitting urge to punch out the perforations. Then, a little later, I see several colorful strips scattered about the floor. From another kit, she has retrieved and separated the perforated strips intended to be bent into a circle and connected at the notches to create a different kind of egg stand. Next, she hands me a mangled wire, once an egg dipper from one of the kits, asking me to fix it. It is not worth rescuing. 

In a matter of minutes, Adella has pulled apart three different egg dyeing kits. I marvel less at her tenacity, however, than at the fact that Marshall has not been drawn into Adella’s antics. I am just happy he is absorbed first with the toys in the toy box and then the banana I have given him. I keep working. That is, until Adella calls out to me.

“Granma, I think I need some help,” she says. There is an atypical urgency in her voice.

I immediately look up from my computer. There is fearful helplessness in her eyes. Her lips are blue. Not a pastel, I’ve-just-eaten-cotton-candy blue, but a deep, dark ink blue. And there is a little trickle slowly dribbling from one corner of her mouth down to her chin.

I jump up. Gently but quickly I push her towards the kitchen sink before the blue drips from her chin while my mind races, trying to figure out what she has eaten and whether I need to call Poison Control. Then it occurs to me. 

I stop for a minute and look at her. “Did you eat one of those little Easter egg dye tablets?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says sheepishly, her head bowed as she nods. 

Then I wipe her mouth, inside and out. I get her a drink of water. I check one of the egg dye box abandoned on the floor. Yes, those egg dyes are in fact food grade coloring. 

Whew, I think. And then I go in search of the melting dye tablet that Adella admits she has spit out. I capture it in a paper towel before Marshall finds it and wipe the floor, relieved my wood floor has not been stained. 

Crisis solved. The only remnants of the mishap are Adella’s deep blue lips and her unusually obsequious demeanor.

Then I sit down. I laugh. Yes, I think, I guess I have been holding out. But sometimes Granma has her reasons.