The Truth About Luck: What I Learned on My Road Trip with Grandma Read Online Free Page B

Senators and provide professional details about the provincial leader of the NDP .
    She still loved getting outside and poking around in her flower garden. I’m not sure why, but I knew that nasturtiums (and maybe daisies) were her favourite. She was still living in her own two-storey red-brick house, the same one she’d raised her children in. She still enjoyed going for strolls around the block. I could go on and on. She had even carried the Olympic torch when it came through town. She ran with it in one hand held up over her head, waving to the crowd with the other. It’s more like LeBron James is the NBA ’s version of Grandma.
    Jimmy and I always enjoy talking about these accomplishments, her joie de vivre, and the good genes we’ve hopefully inherited. But this year we’d noticed a few changes. Grandma was becoming a little more forgetful. She would sometimes repeat a story. She was confusing dates and mixing up times. She would forget the odd meeting. She seemed a little more tired, taking naps most afternoons. She was, in her words, “getting dottled.”
    She also refused to do little things like ignore the phone or hang up on assholes, and sometimes would get caught talking to telemarketers for forty minutes at a time. She’d been scammed on the phone and at her door by dodgy salesmen and frauds. She had a hard time declining invitations to play cards, especially bridge (even though she didn’t love it), or invites to lunch. She was attempting to carry on as she always had. But the world was changing at an unfair pace. Time’s performance eventually becomes ineluctable.
    Physically, she was still an anomaly, but she also seemed maybe an inch shorter and a little more hunched, like there were invisible weights cinched to each wrist. She couldn’t be much over five feet now. Her walking pace had slowed. Against her best efforts, she might even have developed a slight limp from a sore knee. She had more sun spots on her arms, hands, and face. We agreed these changes weren’t huge, but they were present. We’d noticed. At some point, Grandma had gone from old to older.
    â€œI gotta think of something better this year, nothing practical or cheesy, just something that she’d really like,” I said again, wiping some sweat from just above my nose with my index finger. Whenever I wore this sweater, my body found new places to release perspiration. “But what do you get a ninety-two-year-old? It’s a question as tricky as the nature of infinity.”
    â€œI got her a painting,” said Jimmy. “She’s always loved art.”
    Oh, fuck you, Jimmy. “I asked that question rhetorically.”
    â€œWell, think about it. What do you have that you could offer?”
    While I thought about this, Jimmy ordered two more beers with a nod of his head.
    I finally answered when our refills arrived. “I’m curious, is the point of this to try and think of a gift I can give Grandma, or just to make me feel like shit?”
    â€œIdeally both,” said Jimmy.
    â€œIt’s working.”
    â€œReally, though,” he said, “the answer’s easy. It’s time. Just time.”
    â€œTime?” I repeated neutrally, having not yet decided if I was insulted or intrigued. I’d spent the last ten years working a variety of odd jobs, from journalism to putting up drywall. One of those years, I was forced to move home to live with my parents on their farm. For the last while I’d mostly just been writing. So I worked mainly from my apartment. I didn’t have an office to go to, or any co-workers, or work trips to go on, like Jimmy.
    â€œI know you’re working on your writing, but you can also take time off. Time that you could then spend with Grandma. No one else in the family can do that as easily. So maybe I can afford to buy her a painting, but you could spend time with her.” And then, “Actually, you