Slightly Off the Grid

What you don’t see will bite you. What you do see bites you in a different way.

I wore white slacks and a three-quarter sleeve blouse to a bridal shower. I wanted to hide my polka-dotted age spots on my legs and the bug bites that appear after every ever-so-brief foray outside. Yes, I have bug-spray. I even just bought bug-spray with SPF 50. But you can’t spritz the skin every time you step outside to snip herbs—and those pesky no-see-ums are that quick.

So I wore slacks and a blouse while everyone else wore cute sundresses, and I looked just like my 90 year-old mother.

For the second time this week.

A couple of days ago, after an intense day teaching teenagers, I visited Mom at the retirement community. We went to the dining room, twinning in our slacks and blouses in complementary shades of navy blue. Short white hair topped our looks. Add identical glasses (another story) for the finishing touch. On the way to our table, I greeted several people I knew from church. One of them, with Alzheimers, required multiple questions before the light bulb of recognition joyfully flashed. Mom waited patiently for me at our table. When the waiter came, he turned to me, and asked me for my unit number.

So now, several days later, in my white slacks, I get to meet a four-year-old grandniece for the first time.

“Hello! I am your grandfather’s sister!”

She is silent, but her look announces, “You are nothing to me.”

Okay, fine. I get it. I remember the old aunties whose names I could never get straight as a child, and then the old aunties that I had to include in holiday invites. (One Christmas, eight months pregnant, I hosted five octogenarians.) So, yeah, little girl, I am nothing to you. But that’s okay because my brother and my sisters are here—discussing our retirement plans.

We, the Aunties, chat on a porch overlooking a scenic river. One sister swats away an invisible something.

“Floater?” I ask.

“Yes.”

We look up at the clear blue sky, observing birds gliding to and fro, trying to guess if they are herons or hawks.

“Look at that one,” I say.

“You have floaters that big?,” exclaims Younger Sister, clearly eying an identifiable heron with fish in mouth.

“All I see are floaters,” says Youngest Sister.

“Way up there to the left,” I say. “It’s the size of a floater.”

Youngest Sister: “That’s a floater.”

“It’s not a floater if we both are looking at it.”

Younger Sister: “My floaters are long and squiggly.”

“Those aren’t floaters,” we chime. “Floaters are little dots.”

“Little black dots,” says Youngest Sister.

“Or gray,” I say, adding, “Then there’s the swishy-swishy stuff.”

Both sisters: “Huh?”

“It’s fluid that leaked out of somewhere when I tore my retina. Peter (another sibling) and I have that.”

The father of the bride, observing us laughing so hard we are in danger of peeing our pants, remarks, “I heard the Wilsons were big drinkers.”

I assure him, water bottle in my hand, that this had nothing to do with drinking. It had everything to do with being Aunties.

The no-see-ums left me unscathed at the party, but this week the see-ums bit hard. Is there a spray for that?