Basically, Mum is orderly and Granny is chaotic. Elsa once read that “Chaos is God’s neighbor,” but Mum said if Chaos had moved onto God’s landing it was only because Chaos couldn’t put up with living next door to Granny anymore.
Mum has files and calendars for everything and her telephone plays a little jingle fifteen minutes before she has a meeting. Granny writes down things she needs to remember directly on the wall. And not only when she’s at home, but on any wall, wherever she is. It’s not a perfect system, because in order to remember a particular task she needs to be in exactly the same place where she wrote it down. When Elsa pointed out this flaw, Granny replied indignantly, “There’s still a smaller risk of me losing a kitchen wall than your mother losing that poxy telephone!” But then Elsa pointed out that Mum never lost anything. And then Granny rolled her eyes and sighed: “No, no, but your mother is the exception, of course. It only applies to . . . you know . . . people who aren’t perfect.”
Perfection is Mum’s superpower. She’s not as much fun as Granny, but on the other hand she always knows where Elsa’s Gryffindor scarf is. “Nothing is ever really gone until your mum can’t find it,” Mum often whispers into Elsa’s ear when she’s wrapping it around her neck.
Elsa’s mum is the boss. “Not just a job, but a lifestyle,” Granny often snorts. Mum is not someone you go with, she’s someone you follow. Whereas Elsa’s granny is more the type you’re dodging rather than following, and she never found a scarf in her life.
Granny doesn’t like bosses, which is a particular problem at this hospital, because Mum is even more of a boss here. Because she is the boss here.
“You’re overreacting, Ulrika, good God!” Granny calls out through the bathroom door just as another nurse comes in, and Mum again writes on a bit of paper and mentions some numbers. Mum gives her a controlled smile; the nurse smiles back nervously. And then things go silent inside the bathroom for a long while and Mum suddenly looks anxious, as one does when things go quiet around Granny for too long. And then she sniffs the air and pulls the door open. Granny is sitting naked on the toilet seat with her legs comfortably crossed. She waves her smoldering cigarette at Mum.
“Hello? A little privacy, perhaps?”
Mum massages her temples again, takes a deep breath, and rests her hand on her belly. Granny nods intently at her, waving her cigarette at the bump.
“You know stress isn’t good for my new grandchild. Remember you’re worrying for two now!”
“I’m not the one who seems to have forgotten,” replies Mum curtly.
“Touché,” Granny mumbles and inhales deeply.
(That’s one of those words Elsa understands without even having to know what it means.)
“Does it not occur to you how dangerous that is for the baby, not to mention Elsa?” Mum says, pointing at the cigarette.
“Don’t make such a fuss! People have been smoking since the dawn of time and there have been perfectly healthy babies born the whole way through. Your generation forgets that humanity has lived for thousands of years without allergy tests and crap like that before you showed up and started thinking you were so important. When we were living in caves, do you think they used to put mammoth skins through a scalding-hot machine-wash program?”
“Did they have cigarettes back then?” asks Elsa.