The Week 24 prompt is called Beggars’ Night–the night before Halloween that we called Mischief Night. The prompt calls for writing to describe refusal. I thought about the time my parents stashed me at my father’s father’s house a block from our house in May 1965 while they took my sisters to the World’s Fair in Queens. All because I had fallen down our front brick stairs to show off my brand-new black patent leather shoes to the neighbors. I ended up with stitches in my right knee for the second time that year and lots of bandaging. Obviously, my parents argued, I would not be able to do all the walking necessary to view the fair.
While my sisters traipsed around the fair from the Kodak pavilion to the World of Tomorrow pavilion, my step-grandmother Ruth plied me with chocolate milkshakes and advocated for me when my grandfather wanted to watch Lawrence Welk instead of Disney’s Wonderful World of Color. I watched her knit yet another outfit for my Barbie. At first, I hated that she did that. Even with the little fur collars, the outfits reeked “homemade.” My uncle, her stepson, owned a toy store, replacing the general store my grandfather and his first wife, my grandmother Eva, owned. I could get all the Barbie clothes I wanted.
But by the time my parents picked me up, I knew those knitted Barbie outfits were my Grandma Ruth’s language of love–that and her chocolate milkshakes.
The Whole Megillah 
Oh the silvery lining to have been left behind. I love this story – the grandparents were the best.
I know those bangs! Good grief, what were our mothers thinking?
Thanks so much, Deepam! Indeed, my mother cut those bangs straight across. At least she didn’t put a bowl over my head like my paternal grandmother did to my father.