the old people who can stand do , and all of them begin to congratulate me , which quickly yields to stories of grandchildren who never visit-these tales are accompanied by endless wallet-fold pictures that show the grandchildren at various stages of their lives and are presented ( usually ) in chronological order , one picture per each year the child has attended school-talk about the cost of grocery items fifty years ago , the weather over the last eight odd decades or so , homemade arthritis remedies , the inadequacy of social security checks , who died this week , and , of course , recapping the trickier jigsaw puzzles recently assembled .