After a much needed chiropractic adjustment and a quick trip to the grocery store for flour and chocolate chips, my mother and I headed to Grandma's house for a visit. Oh joy of joys!

She lives 10 minutes from our house, in old people apartment land, but I see her about once a year, which is more than enough. She's never been a great grandmother, or even a good one. While my friends' grandmothers made them cookies, gave them dressup clothes and were doting, in my family once you hit 4 feet you were off her radar. I don't think I've gotten even a birthday card from the woman in 10 years.

I find myself uncomfortable around her, not knowing what to say or do. Tonight while sitting in her apartment amid needlepoint cushions and tacky knick-knacks, I realized that a) I know nothing about her, and b), I have no feelings towards her. I don't love her, I don't like her, I don't dislike her. Okay, the odd times I feel anger towards her, for being such a shitty grandparent, but as I've gotten older those feelings have faded.

Of course, she would be the only grandparent alive. My paternal grandmother was the loving one, the doting one. She passed away when I was 7, and about the only memory I have of her is eating a cup of blueberry yoghurt she gave me, then throwing up all night. I haven't been able to eat yoghurt since...oh, and apparently once my parents and my brother and I visited her in the hospital after she got really sick, but refused to go back because a man thought our table was the bathroom and pulled down his pants and sat down.

We were only there for 45 minutes but by the end I was ready to gouge my eyes out with a knitting needle.