First of all, when I called my mother on Sunday (for her birthday and Mother's Day), when I mentioned that Kennedy would be going into Toronto later that day for a rehearsal for the Fringe play she'll be appearing in this summer, Ma noted, "I'm so glad that the acting is working out for her. Remember it was me who took both of your girls to their first plays. You do remember that, right?" Just as she likes to misremember that she held the newborn Kennedy even before Dave did (she did not), Ma wants credit for being some kind of seminal influence on my children's cultural development; and she was not. I don't think she was with us when Dave and I took Mallory to her first live performance, but if she was there for Kennedy's, it was because we invited her to tag along. (To be fair: Ma did buy tickets for and took us into Toronto to see The Lion King live - which I had thought Mallory was too young to sit through [due mainly to the high ticket price and the comfort of other patrons] - and I was pleased when she agreed to travel up to Toronto a few years ago to relive the experience with me and the girls when it was coming through again.) My mother has only seen Kennedy in one thing (42nd Street when she was in grade seven) and Mallory in one thing (the children's scene from The Nutcracker ballet when Mal was in grade two), and those two performances only because I kind of insisted that she come up for them. My parents live too far away to have really been able to show physical support for my girls' love of performing, and with a couple of bouquets and a rare post-performance phone call, my mother has found few other ways of supporting them; my father, none at all. But this story suddenly gets stranger.
Ken was over on Sunday night - because it was also Mallory's birthday - and he said that he had been talking to Dad the other night and learned the strangest thing. Dad - who has never said a word about basketball before - started badtalking the Toronto Raptors for getting knocked out of the NBA playoffs and Ken said, "Where is this coming from? What do you know about basketball?" And Dad explained that he had been a junior high basketball star, and that he was poised to play varsity hoops in senior high except that the practise schedule conflicted with his rehearsals for the play he was in. Under pressure from his mother, Grammie, and her beloved father, Granper, Dad gave up basketball and went on to star in several high school plays. Ken told us he "called bullshit" on the story and Dad just shrugged (as well as one can convey over the phone) and that was left at that. A couple of hours later, after apparently trying to remember more details, Dad emailed Ken to tell him that the play that killed his basketball career was Rose of the Danube, in which he had played the lead male role, Darrell. An operetta? Dad sang? Dad played basketball?
When Ken left, I turned to Kennedy and asked, "What do you make of that?" And Kennedy drily replied, "I have no idea what to think if my grandfather spent his high school years acting in plays and he never once thought to bring it up to me or Mallory when we started doing the same thing. Just no idea."
When my parents carried through with their retirement plan of moving a twenty hour drive away from the rest of us, I really thought that was kind of tragic; that if they had stayed closer, they could have shared in their grandchildren's lives in a way they hadn't in their children's. But Dave's parents have come to see everything the girls have ever been in; they act like they enjoy seeing their granddaughters perform; they're loving and supportive and proud. Heck, they were here on Sunday for Mallory's birthday; I've come to realise that that's what families do. I no longer believe that just staying closer to us would have turned my own parents into more engaged or loving grandparents - this is simply who they are, no matter where they live. Like, what the hell, Dad? (I will note that this could be some sort of elaborate leg-pulling on Dad's part, but I really don't know if he's creative enough to have come up with the obscure but timeframe-appropriate Rose of the Danube.)
