help me to help you

Come wednesday morning my possessions and I will be packed away neatly into Kenny's (my second grandfather's) maroon Saab and whisked away to some pre-ordained carpark behind an old train station, about an hour away, where the changing of the sides will take place. This, of course, means that i will be passed rather tearfully to my first grandfather and Pam, my second grandmother. This is all quite confusing to explain to people, but simply put, my grandparents divorced and married different people over twenty years ago, before I was born. At the time it was a situation of great significance, creating bitterness and unhappiness all over the place - between my first grandparents, between my father and his parents, between my grandfather and my second grandfather, etc etc. Messy messy messy. Growing up two decades after the event, I felt nothing more than shadows of the mess, subtle hostilities, and I only knew that my grandparents were different than other grandparents, because while most people had four, i had six.

Anyway that's all very boring and not the point. The point is that I dread this swap of my person every time I come to visit. I hate leaving Nanna, and I always cry, but at the same time, even when i was very young, I knew what my crying would show to my first grandfather, and so I'd try very hard not to (unsuccessfully, of course, never being much inclined in the direction of controlling my emotions) and so feel very stressed throughout the ordeal. I never cry as much when i leave my first grandfather, because he is a man, and gruff and strong, while Nanna is teary and sad, a woman, hugging me and drawing tears out of my scrunched up face. But there isnt really any alternative. The crying begins in the car on the way there, while I will try to say as much as possible in this, our last hour together, and laugh too easily, and smile too brightly. I wish I could take Nanna with me, wrapped up in a box, and the nice kind of delicate paper that you use for special gifts.