My Grandparents

When my grandparents have company over, I like to come by for a visit and regale them with sentimentally poignant songs, thus bringing everyone there to tears. It's not difficult to come up with an effective repertoire - the "Sunrise, Sunset" song from "Fiddler on the Roof" always does the trick. So does pretty much anything that was popular in the Soviet Union in the 50s.

For as long as I can remember, my grandparents adhered to austere communist values, completely rejecting all the frivolous material clutter that dominates our contemporary lives. My grandfather was an engineer and my grandmother was an English teacher. In their retirement, they enjoy few hobbies. When he is not playing chess, my grandfather spends his time trying to prove that every celebrity, as well as every major political and sports figure of the past 50 years has a Jewish relative. My grandmother's pastimes consist of correcting my grammar, force-feeding anyone who comes to her house, and generally making fun of me and my friends.

I stopped over on Saturday afternoon to visit, and they had their friends over from the "old world" (but more recently, from Rego Park). I got to work with my songs, and soon enough, the box of tissues was being passed around. For a job well done, I got rewarded with a large plate of something delightfully greasy. That's when my grandparents told me that they are really tired of this frigid weather, and that this year for the holidays, they are planning to go on a Caribbean cruise. I couldn't resist, I really couldn't - so I immediately plugged my iPod into their speakers, and turned it up for "Hannukah in Santa Monica." They didn't share my enthusiasm for the song, and said that they couldn't really see what was so funny about it.

Since they wouldn't be cooking for us this year, I asked them for some of their recipes, so that I could try them out for the holidays. Before sending me home with a backpack full various meat-filled doughy products, my grandfather wrote down what he claimed to be their latkes recipe, but it really looked like some sort of incoherent combination of German, Russian, and JavaScript. I think that I will give it a shot this week, and if my cooking turns out to be really and truly terrible, that just might be enough to persuade my grandparents to abandon their newfound affinity for leisure, and stick around for the holidays. After all, the one thing that just isn't tolerated in my family is bad food.

So, that was pretty much it for Saturday.