Lara Drexell continues to give herself a real pat on the back for an 11-minute phone conversation between Drexell and her grandmother last week.
After forgetting to call her grandmother for over a year, Drexell claims she had changed when she “remembered that [my] birthday was coming up fast, and knew it was time to act.”
“We chatted about the weather, about how Grandpa’s not alive anymore, and mostly about those Wheel of Fortune reruns,” recalls Drexell. “Then she told me she wanted to eat her sandwich and we said goodbye.”
“I totally said ‘I love you’ first,” says Drexell. “I’m pretty in awe of how brave that was.”
Since the call, which Drexell’s father describes as “very thoughtful”,, what was meant to be a singular reward for a good deed has spiraled into a week-long self-congratulatory mega-binge. To reward herself, Drexell says she left the grocery store with three boxes of frozen yogurt bars and more than two dozen mini-pies.
“I think those sales were karma,” says Drexell. “It was like the universe was rewarding me for being nice to old people.”
The next morning, Drexell skipped work to get her hair cut and blow-dried at the salon, where she also scheduled a manicure appointment. She followed the salon visit with an upscale lunch at Le Pain Quotidien, where she cheerily rehashed the conversation with her grandmother. “I thought about how upbeat Gam-Gam has stayed without Grandpa, and it really gave me the strength to decide to order a large watermelon juice instead of a small one.”
That same week, Drexell purchased a $200 monthly membership to Flywheel, “to help me live a long, healthy life, like Gam-Gam.”
She adds that she has put a calendar reminder in her phone to call Gam-Gam again once all the trees have changed colors, “so we have something to talk about.”
