What Would Oma Think?

I often wonder this when I'm at a social event. I've wondered it since my college raving days, when I'd have dinner with my grandmother and then go forth into the nightlife. She was such a proper Southern lady--the white-gloved kind--and owned a rotary phone until at least the '90s. She never could quite figure out her answering machine. It was best to just catch her at home.



My grandmother introduced me to the concept of people-watching. Oma was a first-generation Syrian American, born in Mobile, Alabama in 1910. Her thoroughly American granddaughter was born in an Atlanta suburb in 1980. Oma quit school at 16, even before the Depression, to help support her family by working. At the same age, I was much more frivolous: bumping around town in a vintage Beetle, sneaking a joint while listening to Bone Thugz-N-Harmony. So we didn’t have a lot in common. That we became very close in the last decade of her life is a wonder and a gift. I suspect that at that time, the coin had flipped, and people were watching us.

I noticed her people-watching tendencies when I was a child. To understand how she looked at people, first you need to know how she looked. Oma was an elegant lady who conducted herself with the utmost care. She preferred to wear pink and purple Chanel-esque jackets and skirts. Her wig was always perfectly set. She applied her berry-colored Lancome lipstick with a retractable golden brush after each meal, whether we dined at Piccadilly cafeteria or the relative glamour of Red Lobster. I used to think she was a sissy because she wouldn’t get her ears pierced when I did, like she promised. Now that I’ve inherited her costume jewelry, I see she was actually a bit of a masochist for her image. Have you ever worn clip-on earrings for more than 4 hours? Talk about a dull, throbbing ache.



The 70-year spread between us made her observations difficult for me as an adolescent. This woman was by no means a misanthrope--she was a decorated volunteer at the local hospital for decades--but man, did she love to “tsk” at people. Fat people, mixed-race couples, the unwashed and unkempt. She loved to pass judgment and it infuriated me. How many arguments began from her conspiring to me, “What a shame…”?

But I loved to sit with her and watch the human parade. On a bench at the mall, for hours. At the Chinese buffet, where a dramatic chandelier fractured the Spartan décor into a thousand glimmering beiges. And finally at Taylor Home, the three-in-one living facility that, if you move there, is your last address. I had taken pictures of every room in her house when we moved her out. Here’s one of the strawberry wallpaper in the kitchen. Here’s another of the crystal displayed on a credenza in the dining room, and another of her mint-green brocade couch and tassled hanging lamp.



So the days came when, at the end of our weekly outings, I was leading Oma to a small apartment in the back area of the home. We moved through the lobby and hallways crowded with miserable-looking people in wheelchairs. My 90-year-old grandmother would increase her grip on my arm. Then she would lean in close and whisper: “Tsk…these poor old things.”

object of my affection

“Look at that one,” my mother would say, whenever a particularly unfortunate-looking person made their way across the street in front of our car, having unwittingly stepped within reach of her critical radar.

“That... is someone’s love object.”

I was never too clear on what she meant by this remark, a comment I heard repeated about any number of oblivious pedestrians, over the course of many hours spent running errands in our 1981 Chrysler. The car was a good match for my mother-- having been made at a time when digital voices seemed a foundational building block in our progression to a Jetsons-like future, both the car and my mother prattled along as we drove to Queens and back:

A door is ajar.
Please, fasten your seatbelt.
Headlights... on.

That is someone’s... love object.

Today I wonder whether this statement was quite the judgement it sounded like to me at the time, or whether it was a touchstone worn smooth by her wish to believe that love awaits us all... that even as my father’s death receded further in the rearview of time, she was also moving towards being found lovable again.

I think I learned to watch people from the safety of our car, where at stoplights I caught momentary glimpses of them as actors in their own lives, freeze-framed on street corners or in the dioramas of shop windows. You know when you trip magnificently on an otherwise unnoticeable lip in the sidewalk, or can’t get your foot out of the bike pedal cage fast enough and fall, and how there’s always someone to witness your graceless moment? I think the only reason that seems to be true is that in those moments, you become aware of being watched by others. In fact, there is almost always someone bearing witness-- in some way-- to the miniature dramas of your daily life.

The art of people watching is changing, however. The great irony of debates about our privacy in the internet age is that we are coming to ignore opportunities for the casual invasions of privacy that bearing witness to those around us entails. What could be more private than a subway platform where everyone is staring into the inscrutable glass face of their own cell phone? Ears plugged into those headphones whose presence is now so ubiquitous, it’s hard to remember they were ever called “Mug Me White”. No stolen glances at a neighboring stranger’s book. No eavesdropping on the plaintive lost-love song of someone recounting a breakup.

Instead we are peering into others’ lives at a remove brokered by software that categorizes and tallies interactions, our devices in hand, poised to defend ourselves against an idle moment. Poised to protect us from the vagaries of interacting with people in an unprescribed way.