I am and always was a total grandma’s boy. They’re my favorite kind of family member. Like most humans, I had two grandmas, both of whom are gone now from this earth but I hope are waiting for me somewhere.

Obviously I inherited different genetic traits from each of them. But I ended up having a personality that was a perfect match to one of them. To put it in the bluntest terms, one of my grandmas was nice, and the other one was like me. Or I was like her, whichever. I’m talking about my mom’s mom, Grandma C.

I remember the way Grandma C. always answered the phone with a quick, suspicious “Hay-lo,” with the stress falling on the first syllable, “hay.” I surmised recently as I thought back that she was imitating someone, maybe some long-gone Swedish-American farmer neighbors back in Iowa where she grew up. Mocking them, still, belatedly, she forgot why, just force of habit.

When I called her on the telephone, we always went through the same opening dialogue:

“Hay-lo.”

“Hi, Grandma.”

(Suddenly very perky but tentative-sounding:) “Hi!….” (pause)

“….It’s Scott.”

(Same perky voice:) “Hi, Scott!”

It was almost as though she wanted me to think she didn’t know which grandson was calling, even though I have my own rather distinctive voice, and I’m sure she knew it was me at “Hi, Grandma.” And it wasn’t old age, either, she was sharp till the day she died. She just wanted me to have to clarify who I was on the phone for some reason.

One time I picked up the phone at my parents’ house and was greeted with this odd, high-pitched breathy voice I didn’t recognize, and then the roles were reversed.

“Hello?”

“Oh, hello, is this Scott?”

“Yes.”

“Uh, hi, honey, is your mom around?”

(In genuine bafflement:) “No, she’s not. WHO IS THIS?”

“It’s your grandma!”

Later I said, “Mom, Grandma C. called for you earlier and she used this really weird voice, like a disguise voice. I had to ask who it was.”

My mom looked off into the distance and muttered in a dark, kind of melancholy and worn-down tone that I had never heard her use before, “Yeah, she has a lot of voices.”

One time not too long before she passed away, Grandma C. said chummily and heartily to me and my brother: “All my grandsons are good guys,” as she put her arm around him. “Even Scott!” and she looked over at me with mock-innocent wide eyes.