Update April 5th, 2024: My grandma’s obituary was published today. For the past week or so, I kept thinking about a day that she and I had a few years ago, when I’d been considering moving in with her. We had gone for her daily walk around the neighborhood, and that evening I’d shown her an episode of Love on the Spectrum, and she didn’t understand why it made me cry. Then she reviewed her cursive list of who had called her that day and checked the locks ten times before hugging me goodnight. I thought that we’d lose her last fall, but she kept breathing, blinking her eyes open, and smiling through last Thursday. Over the past week, I’ve been wanting to write about that day— and then recently, I found this post again and remembered that I already had. It’s crazy to think about how much has changed between then and now. I’m glad that she is resting; I’m glad to be born into the love of the family she began; and if pain must be a part of life, I’m grateful to it for emphasizing the connections I’m lucky to have.
Scuttling
I used to tell myself that I called my grandma to be a good granddaughter. But now that I feel like her again (locked inside with enough energy to do the dishes, and then do them again in a few hours), I remember why speaking with her brought me back to myself.
When stuck in traffic, I saw the same kind of tree on the side of the street that my grandparents had in their yard. I don’t know what it’s called.
The last time I visited my grandma, we took walks around her block, and that same tree would drop its brittle leaves for the breeze to scuttle them over the sidewalk like hermit crabs. My grandma trundled her legs along and pointed out where the sidewalk rose up so I would take care not to trip. And I, supported by nature’s conversation facilitators, tried my best to infuse her days with more meaning than the daily news.
It was easier for her to go back in time than remain in present. A house reminded her of the style she grew up with in Missouri. She spoke of ice skating in the Ozarks but scoffed at the idea of a money-laundering television show with the same name that I was all too amused to tell her about. Her family dynamic’s narrative could be opened and closed like a book: her parents worked hard; they were kind. There were many siblings; they never fought.
I understand why older people return to early memories. When our bodies fight against us, we want comfort, and heaps of it, to cancel out the suffering. I can only imagine how far back I’ll want to go when I’m not looking forward to what still lies ahead. (But I hope that when I’m old, I’ll have figured out how to look forward to death and every day that comes before it.)
Although I usually try my best to build the world I want to live in, I sing a more nostalgic song in weaker moments of honesty. I only want leafy trees. Sunsets that turn the world pink and blue. Smells of lavender and vanilla. Piano.
A Random Afternoon in a Cake Shop
Here’s a day that I randomly miss, today:
I walk into a bakery that has since gone under with whoever drove me there: my mom, my brother. (It’s not that I couldn’t drive. It’s the luxury of sitting passenger in the car.)
The bakery has survived for decades on a cake recipe so good it joined communal knowledge among chitchatting neighbors. That plus an emporium of every random cake object ever thought up.
We’re in line, and there’s the shared joy of picking a baked good from the display case charged with bits of adrenaline released with every customer that brings us closer to the cash register, the final decision. How well do I know the sibling or cousin or friend that the cake is for? Would they prefer the round chocolate cake dotted with confetti sprinkles? Or are they more of a sheet cake kind of person with the risky raspberry layer in the middle?
We deliberate. We take side quests from the line to explore creepy cherub cake toppers.
We walk into the late afternoon holding the paper bag by its U-shaped handles. A family celebration: something to mark an otherwise random weekday of a sleepy season. Does anything feel that normal anymore?
Old Woman
I sit at my kitchen table in the mornings, and I want to call my grandma. I know it’s for me, and not for her. If she does remember me, she’ll forget that I called by the time she hangs up. Still, for some reason I get the feeling that a part of me can only be understood by her, just as other parts of me can only be understood by the other people who share them.
I don’t call because I’m not certain if she would enjoy my call. I’d rather her be comforted by the people around her than confused or alarmed at the ringing of a phone and the effort needed to present for whoever is supposed to be on the other end. We all deserve comfort.
The comforts that I crave now — memories, smells, colors, thoughts of people — remind me of Baby Suggs in Toni Morrison’s Beloved, who “craves” color over food and water at the end of her life, and is rewarded with it:
Suspended between the nastiness of life and the meanness of the dead, she couldn’t get interested in leaving life or living it…Her past had been like her present – intolerable – and since she knew death was anything but forgetfulness, she used the little energy left her for pondering color (4).
“Bring a little lavender in, if you got any. Pink, if you don’t.”
And Sethe would oblige her with anything from fabric to her own tongue.
…
Now I know why Baby Suggs pondered color her last years. She never had time to see, let alone enjoy it before (237).