To the grandmother of my progeny

Anyone who spends any amount of time with us knows within minutes that our feelings for one another are exactly warm. I tolerated you for years because of your son and granddaughter. But guess what? I don't have to do that anymore!

Your granddaughter is old enough now to choose where she wants to spend time, and your house isn't even in the top 50. Rest assured, I didn't say anything to turn her against you. No, my dear, that was all your doing.

I don't take her to visit you. That's your son's responsibility. I don't expect him to take her for visits to my father's house. He's aware of the arrangement. He even signed papers saying as much.

No matter what we do, we cannot change that I'm your granddaughter's mother, or vice versa. However, we don't have to be in one another's faces, and we don't have to be part of each other's lives outside your granddaughter. That's a caveat I am delighted to live with.

So when my phone rang today with a familiar number on caller ID, I couldn't place it at first. Your granddaughter didn't recognize it, either. So I answered.

I recognized your voice immediately. Apparently, you did the same, but you asked who you were speaking to anyway. I gave my name, and you hung up.

Let me add right here that I'm about as delighted to hear from you as I would be to learn that I have rickets. But I'm willing to be nice. If you had been civil and said something like, Oh, I'm sorry! I thought I called someone else! I would have understood. I would have taken the call with a wink and a nudge, and it would have been our little secret.

But you didn't. You hung up instantly. So I'm telling everybody.

I'm telling your hairdresser. I'm telling the ladies in your art league. I'm telling my neighbors. Hell, I'm telling the world right now on the World Wide Web. Guess what, planet? My offspring's grandmother is a rude doofus!

Oh, and before I forget, it's plastic, not plaskick; Wal-Mart, not Wal-Mark; Kmart, not Kmark.