Gramps - Chapter 22

 

Gramps

By Karen Singer

 

Chapter 22

 

Thanksgiving Day is supposed to be a time for us to gather together, reflect on our lives, and give thanks for all that we have.  I woke up Thanksgiving Day in a strange bed, in a strange room, in a strange house, and in an even stranger situation.  For the life of me, I couldn’t think of one single thing to give thanks for.  All I could think about was the absolute horror of my situation over the life Kimmie had sunk me into.

Had I agreed to this life?  Yes…No!  The real truth as I saw it was that I hadn’t really agreed to it at all.  It had all really started when Kimmie had put locks on all the bathroom doors, leaving me with no choice about wearing the diapers, and then things had simply gone downhill from there.  Way downhill!

Now look where I was, not in my own home in Tennessee, but up here in Maryland where the entire rest of my family lived.  A family that I would soon be seeing.  But more importantly, a family that would soon be seeing me.  I didn’t want that.  I didn’t want that at all.

All I could imagine about it was the condemnation I would receive for what Kimmie had done to my life.  Or maybe it’s what I had allowed Kimmie to do to my life.  Either way, I knew it was going to be bad.  Very bad.  And that’s despite how weirdly nice my daughter Ashley had been about it yesterday.

But this was Thanksgiving.  This was the day when the entire family would gather.  This wasn’t going to be just one person.  This was going to be everyone…young and old…and me.

I laid in that guest bed staring at the ceiling.  It was only then that I realized I was sucking on my baby pacifier.  I could have sworn I left it out of my mouth after I finished my bottle last night.  I turned my head and glanced at the night table next to me.  No bottle.  Someone, probably Kimmie, had taken my bottle and shoved my pacifier in my mouth instead.  Darn woman!  But what could I do about it?  Nothing.  So I laid there on my back and stared at the ceiling, worrying to death about the day ahead.

The need to pee hit me, but it didn’t hit me long since I automatically let it out immediately.  See Kimmie, I do know when I need to go. 

No.  I couldn’t think of one single thing to be thankful for on that Thanksgiving Day.

Since there was no clock in the room, I didn’t know what time it was.  I always woke up around seven every morning, so I figured it had to be about then.  I was guessing though that neither Kimmie nor her mother had any reason to get up early, so they were both probably sleeping in.  Not wanting to leave the relatively safe confines of the room, I stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, worrying about what was to come.

It seemed like forever before the door opened and Kimmie poked her head in.  “Morning Gramps,” she told me.

I simply turned my head to look at her.  With the pacifier in my mouth, I couldn’t say anything anyway.

“Did you sleep okay?” she asked as she came into the room.

I didn’t answer.  The pacifier, remember?  I noted that she was wearing nothing but a robe over top of some pajamas.

“Let’s get you up baby,” she said as she pulled the covers off my body.

I expected to head toward the bathroom where I could shower before she changed me, but instead she grabbed my hand and led me into the kitchen.  “Sit down for a bit,” she told me as she pushed me toward the table.  For a moment there, I thought she would make me sit on the floor.  I sat in one of the chairs and unconsciously sucked my pacifier while I watched her making a pot of coffee.  Before she was finished, her mother came into the room.

“Hi darling,” Ashley said to her.  I noticed she was wearing nothing but a robe over whatever she had on under it.  “Hi Dad,” she said to me.  Not having my mouth free so I could speak, I simply nodded.

I watched as the two of them went about making breakfast, talking a bit between themselves, but never once talking to me.  Eventually, Kimmie set two fresh cups of coffee on the table for them while Ashley set plates of toast and jars of jam in front of them.  Then Kimmie delivered a baby bottle to me, and Ashley set a bowl of something in front of me along with a spoon.  Kimmie tied a dishtowel around my neck again, then sat down to eat her own breakfast.  The two of them began eating as they continued their conversation, still mostly ignoring me.

I looked into my bowl and didn’t recognize what was in it.  I guessed it had to be more baby food.  Since Kimmie wanted everyone to consider me to be a baby, was this the only kind of food I’d get to eat on this trip?  It was looking like it.  I pulled the plug from my mouth, picked up my spoon, and resigned myself to a trip of culinary misery.  I shoved a spoonful of that baby mush into my mouth.  Eatable, but barely.  I didn’t want to starve to death, so I kept eating, taking frequent drinks from my baby bottle that turned out to contain regular milk.  So far, the best thing that had happened to me that day.  What a sad realization.

After breakfast, I got put on the floor of the living room.  My entire plethora of toys was soon surrounding me, and Kimmie and her mother both left me there alone while they got dressed.  I wondered how good an idea it was to leave a baby alone like that?  Didn’t they know any better?

My mind tried to come up with some kind of mischief I could get into to get back at them, but no ideas actually registered.  I sat and stared around the living room instead.  I didn’t get up to go look, but some of the family pictures Ashley had on the wall caught my interest, so did the closed curtains at the window.  I was tempted to go over there and open the curtains to look out, but what if a neighbor was passing and saw me.  Better not!  So I sat and stared at…baby toys instead.

I had found out last night during dinner that the family wasn’t coming here for Thanksgiving dinner, instead everyone was going to my son Mike’s house.  He had two young kids, and since their toys and things were there it would be easier for everyone.  Not me.  I didn’t want to go anywhere, and I didn’t want any of them coming here either.  I just wanted to go home!  To Tennessee, where I now belonged.

It was a while before Kimmie came out and got me.  She was dressed casually.  Dinner at Mike’s house wasn’t scheduled until about one or one-thirty, so we had time to kill.  Kimmie dragged me back to the bathroom where she undressed me and stuck me into the bathtub.  As always when she gave me a bath, she washed me.  Usually, she would shave me during those baths too, but she didn’t.  No shaving took place until after I got out of the tub and she had put a fresh diaper on me.  Only then was I allowed to shave my face and brush my teeth.

When I was finished, Kimmie stuck a pink bra on my chest and pulled one of her sweatshirts over it.  Just like that, with my diaper fully exposed, I got taken back to the living room to “play.”  Ugh!  This time, I knew I couldn’t get away with just sitting and looking at the things on the walls.  In fact, Kimmie stood there and waited until I reached out and spun one of the colorful shapes on that mega toy before she walked off.  Knowing she would be not only watching, but more importantly, listening, I had no choice but to keep playing with things.  Noisy things.  Noisy things I really had no interest in touching.  But touching them and playing with them was my only choice.

It’s unbelievable how long that morning seemed.  I think those few hours actually lasted about three entire days.  Kimmie and her mother either looked in on me occasionally or walked through on their way to somewhere else.  Ashley brought me a baby bottle of juice to drink once, and Kimmie came through when it was done to collect the bottle…and stick my pacifier back in my mouth.  Mostly though, the two of them spent time together in the kitchen.  Was that so I couldn’t hear what they were talking about?  Maybe I didn’t want to hear.  In fact, I didn’t.  Of course, I didn’t want to play with those toys either.

By the time Kimmie came and helped me up from the floor so she could start getting me ready to go, my diaper was not just fairly wet, but smelly.  I’m sure you can guess why.  Let me tell you, sitting there on the floor, surrounded by baby toys, and actually making an effort to continually interact with those toys…while you’re messing your diaper, can really do a number on your head.  Yeah, it was at that point where I truly felt like not just a young toddler, but an actual baby.  And trust me, I felt like I deserved to be a baby.  But what could I do about it?  Nothing as far as I could see.  So  I sat there in that dirty smelly diaper and…played.

Kimmie led me to the room I was staying in and laid me out on the plastic tablecloth she had covered the bed with.  The sweatshirt I was wearing was removed first, then my smelly diaper.  She cleaned me thoroughly, then put a fresh diaper on me.  I was so glad I didn’t have to sit in that mess until two o’clock.

Okay, here we go.  By that point, Kimmie had started with me wearing a diaper and a pinkish color bra.  A pink pair of plastic pants were pulled over my diaper.  A pair of white tights were pulled up my legs.  And then I got a bit of a surprise.  Kimmie didn’t put those black little girl Mary Jane shoes on me.  Instead, out of nowhere, she was sticking a pair of shiny red Mary Jane shoes that had some kind of fancy decoration covering the buckle.  The shoes I had ordered some time ago but had never seen.  I thought that order had gotten canceled or something.

I started to pull the pacifier from my mouth to ask about them, but Kimmie stopped me.  “Don’t complain Gramps!” she said sternly.  “I’m dressing you like I think you should be.”

Complaining hadn’t been my intention at all, but I shut up and just stared at those bright red shoes as she buckled them tightly.  I had another pair of little girl shoes, and Kimmie had been keeping them from me.  It was a moment before I realized I was peeing.

Kimmie stood me up and went to the closet in the room.  She came back with a dress.  A dress I had never seen before.  A dress with a rather full-looking skirt.  A dress that appeared to be all pink and white with plenty of fills and lace.  With the back unzipped, she had me step into it, then she pulled it up my body and stuck my arms through what little sleeves it had.  She turned me around and I felt the dress grab by body tightly as she pulled the zipper all the way up.  She adjusted the collar and stepped back.  She smiled.  “Very pretty,” she declared.

And then she attacked my hair.  A short while later, I had pigtails with two ribbons tied into it again.

While Kimmie started cleaning up the room a bit, I walked over to look in the mirror that was above the dresser in the room.  I could just see a bit of the ribbons in my hair.  I had no doubt that each of them had been tied with perfect bows.  The dress was absolutely…girlish!  Little girl girlish.  In fact, the more I looked at it, the more it seemed to be…uh…babyish.  I looked down toward my red shoes, but what I was really trying to see was how far down the skirt of the dress came.  It was hard to tell, but I realized my hands could easily grab the bottom of it.  Which meant it either didn’t cover my diaper completely, or it just barely covered it.  Yeah, babyish was more like it.

Kimmie took me back to the living room and helped me sit down with my toys again.  “Don’t mess up your outfit!” she admonished.

Mess it up?  How?

With a sigh, and thinking about nothing but what a disaster this was soon going to be, I started rearranging the furniture in my plastic dollhouse.

It was a while before Kimmie and her mother both came into the living room.  They were fully dressed.  Casual, but nice.  This was just family after all.  I was guessing that I was the only one who was all dressed up.  Kimmie had a large bag in her hand.  I wondered if it contained stuff for me…like she was using it as a diaper bag.  They each put on a coat since it was cold outside.  I didn’t get one.  Kimmie grabbed my doll and my bear from the floor and stuck them in her bag.  Then she took my hand and helped pull me to my feet.  From there, it was straight to the door.

I didn’t want to go.  I didn’t want any part of this.  But I was letting Kimmie lead me to…doom.  Doom and gloom.  Disaster.  I could feel that in my soul.

Yeah, it was cold out.  I got put into the backseat along with Kimmie’s diaper bag.  As usual now, she herself buckled my seatbelt.  Then she threw a fleece blanket over me to help keep me warm.  I was grateful.  Why couldn't she have thrown it around me before we walked out of the house?

Ashley got into the passenger seat.  Kimmie got behind the wheel, and we were off.  What was going to happen?  Why had I agreed to do this?  Actually, I don’t think I did agree.  Kimmie was just forcing this on me.  And now look where I was.

When we arrived, I noticed a number of cars in the driveway and some parked in front of the house.  Kimmie had to park in the street out front.  Just parking there caused my stomach to give a major lurch.  It lurched even more when Ashley opened my car door.  But when Kimmie unfastened my seatbelt and pulled me out of the car, I had to fight to not throw up.  I was beginning to panic.  Thankfully, Kimmie kept that fleece blanket wrapped around me as she took one of my hands and her mother took the other, and the two of them walked me straight towards the front door.  Doom.  Doom.  Doom.

The door was opened before we got there, and my youngest daughter Jennifer (Jenny) came out into the cold.  I could see a few of the other women in the family waiting just inside.

“Hi Mom.  Hi Kimmie,” Jenny called as she walked up.  “Happy Thanksgiving,” she greeted us.  Then she hugged each of them.  Finally, she turned to me.  “Hi Dad,” she said as she looked me over.  Was she trying to keep from laughing?  That’s the impression I got.  “Let’s get in out of the cold,” Jenny suggested.

Like it or not, we followed her into the house where it seemed like the entire world was waiting…to see me.  I heard a number of women greet Ash and Kimmie, but I knew they weren’t the main attraction of this circus.  And then Kimmie grabbed the blanket she had wrapped around me to keep me warm and pulled it away.  I heard lots of strange sounds from all those women.  Oos, ahs and more than a few ohs.  I heard laughing too.  Outright laughing.

As I looked around, it was all the women in the family who were making those sounds and who appeared to be so interested in me.  Further back in the room I saw the men looking on.  None of them appeared happy in the least.  Believe me, I wasn’t happy either.  My oldest child, Mike, looked outright disgusted.  The others appeared to be…perhaps puzzled?  It was difficult to tell.

“Hi Gramps,” Mike’s wife Marie greeted me.

“You look darling,” Jenny told me.

Yeah sure.  I unconsciously sucked that pacifier for all it was worth.  Inwardly, I was scared out of my wits.

“I’m trying to figure out,” Allison, one of Jenny’s daughters said as she studied me.  “Is he cute?  Or just…different?”

“Maybe a bit of both,” Madison, her sister decided.

“I think he looks simply darling,” Jenny told them.

“Well, he is!” Marie agreed.  “Come on ladies.  We’ve got dinner to get on the table.”

As I looked around again, I saw that most of the men were missing.  The few that I could still see got up from their seats and walked out, heading deeper into the house.  Probably out to Mike’s heated back porch.  No doubt, they all left to get away from me.

Turning my head to look around further, I noticed something I had seen in previous visits when Mike’s son Ben had been their only child.  There was some colorful plastic fencing put up in one corner and Ben and Mike’s daughter Emily were inside that fence.  There were also so many toys in there that I wondered if there was a toy they didn’t own.  Three-year-old Ben was standing just inside that fence, sucking on his pacifier and staring at me.  One-year-old Emily was just sitting on the floor playing with…something.  I couldn’t see what.  My son Mike may have been my oldest child, but he and his wife Marie had waited to have kids, so their two were quite young.

“Come on Gramps,” Kimmie said as she took me by the hand.  She led me directly to the fence.  “Get in with the other kids and play.”  She held my hand, and against my better judgement, I carefully stepped over the fence and got inside.  Kimmie pushed my doll and bear into my hands.  As I stood there, I was aware of how I towered over Ben, one of the two other pacifier sucking residents of that little corner of delight.

“You know where you belong,” Kimmie told me.

With great trepidation, and my eyes carefully watching Ben, who was doing nothing but staring at me, I knelt down to the floor.

Little Ben didn’t appear to be disgusted or even angry with me.  He just stood there as if he was waiting for something.  It took me a moment to figure it out.  He was used to grown people playing with him, or more likely holding him…doing something with him.  He was waiting to see what I was there for.  He was too young to realize that I was dressed like a total fool.  He was still young enough that running around naked was probably nothing new.  Clothes weren’t his main interest in life yet.

As for Emily, she turned her head and stared at me.  Watching me for a bit, then she turned back to what she had been interested in before.  Some kind of plastic superhero figurine, probably Ben’s.

With my full skirt feeling strange as it pooled around me, I sat down to take the strain off my knees.  At just barely one-year-old, little Emily didn’t walk, she didn’t crawl either.  Instead, she scooted herself over to me where she put that figurine in my lap.  I started to say, “Oh, thank you,” but the pacifier in my mouth immediately cut that short.  I warred with the decision as to if I should leave it in or take it out, and finally decided that silence was golden.  Especially in that situation.  Emily picked the figurine up, turned it around to look at it some more, then put it back in my lap.  She grabbed my singing doll instead, then scooted a few feet further away to have a better look at it..  She accidentally grabbed it by the hand, activating one of the buttons, and it talked to her.  Emily was immediately captivated.

Ben was still staring at me.  I knew I was a strange sight, but something told me that he didn’t realize that.  I searched around me, reached out and grabbed a plastic car.  I set it on the floor and gave it a shove, making it roll away from me.  Ben watched it, then the moment it stopped, went after it.  In moments he was playing with it and ignoring me.  Much better.

I looked around.  The men were all gone of course.  I was glad, but I worried about later when we would have to face each other again much more directly.  I saw one or two women at a time as they either poked their heads into the living room or walked through for one reason or another, mostly to check on us kids.  The rest of the women I could hear working on getting dinner ready.

I wasn’t in that overgrown playpen too long before Marie and Kimmie were back.  Marie picked Ben up over the fence and put him down.  She climbed inside herself and picked Emily up, then carried her out.

“Gramps,” Kimmie said as she held out her hand.  I grabbed it and let her help me to my feet.  “Leave your bear,” she suggested.  I gladly dropped it back in with the other toys.

Marie carried Emily on her hip while she led Ben by the hand.  Kimmie grabbed my hand and led me into the dining room.  The others were just starting to filter in to sit around the huge crowded table.  Kimmie put me in one of the chairs and tied one of the other kids’ bibs around my neck.  I saw all the other grownups watching her carefully.  Mike looked even more disgusted than he did before.  The other men?  I couldn’t tell what they were thinking.  My best guess was that they were still puzzled.  They didn’t exactly look happy, I can tell you that.

Little by little, we all sat.  Soon we were pretty much elbow to elbow.  Kimmie sat next to me.  Ash was on my other side.

“Kimmie,” Allison said.  “I noticed that you keep calling Gramps…a him.  Since you’re trying to make him a little girl, shouldn’t you be referring to him as…her instead?”

“I guess…” Kimmie replied as she seemed to consider that, “maybe I should.  But I really never thought about it.  I guess he’s always been Gramps to me, and I’m just used to referring to him as…a him.  So I guess it’s just out of…habit.”

“So are you going to start trying to think about him as a girl instead?” Madison asked.

Kimmie shrugged.  “Maybe.  I don’t know.  Like I said, I never thought about it before.”

That was a subject I wished hadn’t come up.  It would be like another piece of my life being torn away.

The suggestion was made for us to say grace so we could eat.  We all bowed our heads and Jenny’s husband Alex said a rather long prayer.  As soon as it was done, people started talking and grabbing food.  Eating.  Having dinner together.  Kimmie started to spoon out some food onto my plate for me.  Mashed potatoes.  Turkey.  Dressing…  She got no further than that when all hell suddenly broke loose.

Mike suddenly yelled, “Hell no!  Oh hell, hell no!”  He stood up looking straight at me.  “I won’t have this.  Not in my house.  I won’t stand for it.”  He pointed angrily at me.  “You’re no father of mine.  Not anymore.  Get out!  Get your fucking fairy ass out of this house.  I don’t have a father anymore.  My father is now dead!  Get out!  I never want to see you again as long as I live!”

I immediately backed my chair from the table and stood up.  I walked away as fast as I could, right out the front door and all the way to Kimmie’s car.  I tried to open it, but it was locked.  I stood there next to the car instead, not crying but breathing heavily.  I was upset.  We never should have come.  I knew this was a bad idea from the start.

Kimmie ran out the front door straight to me.  “Gramps,” she said.  “I’m so sorry!”

I finally pulled that plug from my mouth.  “Don’t be,” I told her.  “Just get me out of here!”

Kimmie nodded.  “Wait here.  Let me get my things.”

I stood there in the cold while she ran back into the house.  And yes, that dress didn’t seem to do much at all to protect me from the weather.  Before long, my arms were wrapped around me and I was bouncing from foot to foot, trying to keep warm.  Nothing was helping.  I briefly wondered what all Mike’s neighbors thought about me standing there like that.  I didn’t see any, but I didn’t exactly look around trying to spot any either.  I just watched the front door, waiting for Kimmie.  Finally, she came out.  I saw a few other women watch from inside as she hurried to me.  She unlocked the car, opened the back door and put her large bag inside.  I noticed my bear and doll in the top of the bag.  She put me into the backseat and surprised me by insisting on buckling my seatbelt again.  I guessed that to her, our little game still wasn’t over.  Ashley came out and got into the front seat.  Two minutes later, we were driving away, back to Ashley’s house.

We weren’t back long before Kimmie took that dress off of me so it wouldn’t get dirty.  I had no men’s clothes at all on that trip, and something told me she wouldn’t let me wear them if I did.  Instead, she stuck me into a skirt outfit and sent me out to the living room to play with my toys.

A little while later, we were all surprised by the knock at the front door.  I wanted to run and hide, but Kimmie ordered me to stay right where I was while Ashley answered the door.  A minute later, Mike’s wife Marie came in with several plastic food containers in her hands.

“You never got to eat anything,” she explained.  “So I brought you some.”  She turned to me.  “I’m so sorry Gramps,” she told me.  “Really, I am.  Mike promised he wouldn’t say anything.  He promised not to make any kind of fuss.  They all did.  But…”  She shook her head.  “I’m just sorry.”

Ashley hugged her.  So did Kimmie.  A minute later, she was gone.

We had our own thanksgiving dinner after that.  I was simply happy that it wasn’t baby food.

After lunch, Kimmie undressed me down to my diaper and bra, and pulled one of her sweatshirts on me.  Then she stuck me in bed for my afternoon nap.  I marveled that after what had happened earlier, she still insisted on treating me like a child.  Okay, I didn’t have one shred of male clothing to make the clothing situation any different, but still, she wasn’t just dressing me like a child, she was treating me like one.

Naptime forced me to lay there in the quiet and think about things.  I had been disowned by my own son.  He  had thrown me out of his house and wanted nothing more to do with me.  And I couldn’t blame him one bit.  I’m only surprised that none of the other men hadn’t spoken up, siding with him as well.  In any other situation, I certainly would have.  I deserved all the blame and ridicule they all could possibly give me.  All of it.  And forget about Kimmie’s involvement.  Forget about the things Kimmie had done to force things on me.  The blame for it all had to go squarely on my shoulders, and my shoulders alone.  I deserved what I had gotten earlier, and a whole lot worse.

But what was I going to do about it?  That was an important question.  The question of the age…and I’m not talking about my age, either real or imagined.  What was I going to do?  The answer was rather blatant and easy.  It was an answer I had looked at many times already and I knew it better than the back of my own hand.  The answer was easy.  The answer was…I wasn’t going to do anything about it.  I was going to remain under Kimmie’s iron hand and do whatever she wanted, whether I thought it was a good idea or not.

Was I weak?  Yes.  Was I sick?  Yes.  Was I nothing but a demented sissy?  Again, yes.  Me.  Bill.  Gramps or Dad to most of the family.  At age sixty-nine, had allowed myself to sink from respectability, down to being a detestable sissy loser.  I deserved all the berating.  I deserved all the ridicule.  And I wasn’t going to do a single thing about it…except suck my baby pacifier and wet my diapers.

I was weak.  Both physically because of my age, and now mentally as well.  Weak…as a child.  I deserved all of it, the treatment, and the ridicule.

Kimmie had reduced me, and despite everything, I couldn’t figure out if I wanted life to be any different or not.  But then, I was a toddler now.  A baby.  Babies weren’t supposed to be able to figure out things like that.

It wasn’t darn Kimmie that was to blame.  It was darn me.