Nail Polish That Binds Them Together

My granddaughter, Christina, and I have become theater buddies. Things like “Phantom,” “Ragtime,” “Rigoletto.” A few Sundays ago, we went to see “Riverdance.”

“Hi, sweetheart,” I said, watching Christina deftly maneuver her long-stemmed gams into my two-seater. She seemed to have grown 12 inches and matured 10 years since I’d seen her a week before.

I couldn’t think of a single grandmotherly thing to say to my sophisticated, expensively schooled 14-year-old darling. I knew she would know everything there was to know about anything. They all do these days. Besides, all cultural references, idiom--language itself--has changed dramatically since my children were teenagers. Even intonation has gone awry since I last looked, with statements sounding more like questions. I was on shaky ground.

“You want to bet how much time it will take to get to the Pantages?” I asked, thinking that a little game would do it.

“No?” she answered (giving me a look that said “Do you think I’m some kind of toddler?”).

It was the new intonation, you see. “No?” meaning “no!” Question-as-statement.

Then I tried, “What did the pirate pay for his earrings?”

“A buck-an-ear?” she answered before I could finish the sentence. She had already heard that one. I knew she would have. But, heck, I was getting desperate.

Let’s get serious here, I told myself. This child needs to hear something worldly, wise and adult from a senior citizen.

I tried again.

“You must be freezing without a sweater, dear. Would you like to go back and get one?”

“I don’t have a sweater that matches,” she said.

Maybe things haven’t changed that much since my kids were teenagers, after all.

The sidewalk outside the Pantages was jammed with members of the human race in numbers I had almost forgotten existed.

“Where did all these people come from?” I asked rhetorically.

“From everywhere?” my urbane granddaughter replied.

The doors opened, and a line formed. I slipped into the line from a spot where we had been cooling our heels. OK, so I cut in.

My granddaughter’s eyes squinted into sapphire slivers.

“I don’t think it’s wise to cut in,” she said.

“Of course not,” I said and followed my darling a mile up the block to the end of the line, glad to be taught a lesson in politeness by my granddaughter. Things were looking up for this generation, after all.

*

Finally inside, we made a beeline for the candy counter and hovered for 10 minutes over the dizzying array of sugar-fix choices. Christina chose red licorice vines and I the sour Starbursts, squiggly things that can pucker lips permanently and which, Christina pointed out, were a better choice than Milk Duds because they are less caloric.

“Riverdance” was the kind of every-thing-for-every-man-woman-and-child dance show that made 2 1/2 hours fly by even though we were crunched in an airtight, leg-locked position. Psychedelic lights, action and stereophonic sound in head-splitting, eye-boggling multiples. A blast, were it not for a big-hair lady whose own view was blocked by the big-hair lady seated in front of her. Our heads snapped continually from side to side for a view of the stage.

“Doesn’t all that dancing make you want to do a jig?” I asked, breaking the lock on my legs with a karate chop, and crawling out of my seat when the curtain went down.

“It’s not just a jig. Yet . . . how would you classify Irish dancing?” Christina mused.

“Maybe jumping?” I ventured.

“No,” she said. “I think it’s tap slash ballet slash leaping.”

“That sounds about right,” I said. We were driving out of the parking lot when Christina asked, “Would you like me to paint your nails blue?”

“Blue? I’m already on the la-la list at work. Blue nails might push it over the edge.”

“Why would they put someone on the la-la list just because she has blue nails?” Christina asked.

Why indeed? It was a philosophical question that deserved a practical answer, if only I knew how to explain the logic of today’s older-worker-panic-in-the-work-place syndrome to a 14-year-old.

“Do I look like a blue nail type grandmother?”

“Of course you do,” she said.

I was flattered. Touched. Suddenly liberated. A flower-child grandmother with blue nails.

“OK, I’ll do it,” I said.

Back home, Christina got out her robin’s egg blue nail polish and painted my nails.

I love my robin’s egg blue nails.

I think I’ll keep them.