Grandma

I  saw this picture of Cher taken at a Clinton rally the other day and it has me  wondering: When did she start looking like an Italian grandmother circe 1930?It must be the ruffles at the wrist. If you're getting up there in age and your relatives don't strictly forbid it, the undertakers will try dressing you in ruffles for your viewing; this I have noted at more than one wake.Though I don't look at all like Cher with my thin lips and map-of-Ireland face, I definitely do feel like a grandma on this family vacation anyway, which is to say:I'm doing a LOT of laundry.In fact it feels like that's all I'm doing.I have learned this week if I had forgotten it, that kids shed clothes like a snake sheds skin. One of these grandchildren of mine yesterday had so many clothes strewn about his sleeping area  that there was no telling which ones were clean and which were dirty.So, I washed them all.Another, the first one's younger brother, seemingly had no dirty clothes at all, since, as I just this morning realized, he has been wearing basically the same clothes since he arrived last Saturday.The third grandchild, their four-year-old sister,wears long tea-length early-20th century 'frocks' pretty much exclusively , which I find myself not only washing but also  ironing God help me. Still, she looks very nice in them, even when she wore one to climb Rattlesnake the day before yesterday with her doll.Her mom's job that day was to forge the path up and up and up the hill. The job of her dad, now called "papa," was to keep things moving in the middle portions of the line of march. My job, I was told, was  to be last.As it happens, I did an excellent job at being last but I have to say: the Grandma who does all the wash and can be counted on to go slow is not exactly the Grandma I had hoped to be. I liked it much better last summer when I was the Grandma who took the kids and bought the kind of stuff that was instantly condemned by their parents and summarily confiscated.At least that job had some fun to it.But I'm not complaining, not really. It's kind of nice being one of the old ones, the  ones who are definitely NOT in charge of much of anything even though this is still our house. Just please, if any of you are around when I finally kick the bucket, put me in tattered workout clothes like these before those undertakers begin coming at me with the ruffles.  :-)