There is something fundamentally different about being with
grandparents when you live out of state and don't get to visit often; something
profoundly deeper when you have planted your crop elsewhere and come seven
hundred miles to water the window box flowers.
She picks me up near to or shortly after midday in one of her
string of perpetually maroon cars, and we sit in the driveway while she tells
me about her morning. Grandpa is in a mood today and will not stop tinkering
with a mower that’s been dead for years, or she brought home some frozen salmon
for Uncle Bear and he is having a fit because it wasn’t fresh from the deli.
The black cat is in heat and won’t stop howling, something like having
teenagers again. Tom, the tabby, is well-behaved and respectable. There are
updates on the extended family’s collective health to be heard, but those are for
while we drive, and we still haven’t decided where we’re headed. Acme is the
best place for what we need since they have a deli (with fresh salmon) as well
as light bulbs, and also a current sale on MiracleGro potting soil for the
kitchen window plants.
She always has something in her cup holder, and if it’s a can,
there’s probably a straw in it. She never drinks all of anything in one day,
whether it’s a can of SlimFast or Sprite or even a tiny bottle of water. Slow
sipping is her religion.
While we drive, she tells me about recent forays into the world of
health care and health insurance and changing pharmacies. She paints pictures
of her husband’s brothers and sisters doing their best to care for the woman,
their mother, who has always been defined by her caretaking; the matriarch of a
family of needs. We talk about aging and decreasing physical abilities, and our
conversation turns to our own immediate families.
After endless deliberation in the grocery store about whether or
not an egg slicer is necessary for my slowly growing kitchen, or whether anyone
at home needs a baking dish or shoe shining kit, we make our way to the front
of the store. Everything moves more slowly than I remember it, and we hold
hands more often. She deliberately forgets her cane and she holds my arm
through the store. I laugh at her and she laughs at her and we hold hands while
we can. She makes conversation with the checkout girl and talks about her cats
and fishes through her pocketbook for a coupon and just the right change for
our salmon and light bulbs and the new battery for the persnickety smoke
detector, and then I fight her to let me carry the bags.
On
the way home we stop at Taco Bell to get hard tacos for Grandpa. We used to go
to Arby’s but the meat looks like an oil change the way it shines, he says. We
pull in the driveway and she immediately puts the car in park and gets out to
retrieve the mail. She tosses it onto my lap, making a joke about how her mail
used to be more fun, and continues up the driveway. Parking is always a task
because of other drivers’ slowly deteriorating driving skills and the need to
park out of their way, and there are rules about which grass can be parked on
and which cannot. Also somewhere there is a pine tree that will drip sap on the
car if we park under it.
After
dinner and the third daily cat feeding, we set up the new phone that I made her
buy the day before. Grandpa is unhappy that the phone they had didn’t last the
25 years it should’ve, and also disgruntled that they will now have a phone in
the bedroom, the living room, AND the kitchen. He’ll come around when the phone
rings in the middle of the Daytona 500 on Sunday and he doesn’t have to hurry
up off the couch to miss the call after the second ring and then lose the
message due to the faulty answering machine. I tell him at least this way
nobody has to break any hips getting to the phone, and he makes a growly
comment about everything being made to break and taxpayer dollars and things
not being how they used to. I raise my eyebrows at him and he raises his
eyebrows at me and we let it go together and laugh.
He watches the news every night, as
loud as it can go, and with the doors and windows open and box fans running, we
can barely hear it anyway. He complains about the black cat outside making a
racket again. I tell him she’s a hussy and he shouldn’t mind her, and he says
he always knew she was a hussy because she never cleaned her fingernails. I
laugh so loud he jumps a little and his eyes crinkle at me again, the
crinkliest treasure I have.
When
the 11 o’clock news is over, Grandma fusses at me about brushing my teeth and
finds me an open outlet to plug my phone into. She brings my pillow and lays
out blankets for me on the couch and when I am finally lying down, she comes to
tuck me in and tell me about some dreams she keeps having. She squishes onto
the couch with me and tells me what she wants to tell me, and then she holds my
hands as tight as she can and I pray for her. In these moments, we are children
together before a different Father, sisters instead of grandmother and
granddaughter. We share common weaknesses and a common Hope.
In
the morning she wakes me up to ask me if I have had any breakfast yet, and
tells me I’ll surely need to water down the coffee Bear made. It’s much
stronger than coffee should ever be. I tell her with a mischievous smile that
it’s not likely, and she says I am a stronger woman than she is, and laughs at
me.
Getting
dressed is a slower process than it used to be, and takes more steps than
before. Remembering where things are is a step now, and figuring out how to
accommodate for a slow loss of flexibility takes up more steps than ever.
Grandpa comes in to the living room with his socks in his hand and sits right
down on top of my pillow to put them on. He fusses for a little while, doing
his best, and I tell him to put his foot on my lap. He says his foot has no
reason to be in my lap, and I take it anyway. He grins at me and surrenders the
sock. I put his sock on and then his shoe while he feels around in the couch
for where the shoehorn could possibly have gone. I move his legs so I can have
the other one, and I make sure not to tighten his shoes too tight. They bite
and choke him, he says, and I believe it. I straighten his pant legs when I am
finished with the shoes, and then I raise my eyebrows and grin, “That’ll be
$15.” His eyes crinkle up like mine do and his dimples come out the same, and
he laughs at me while his cheeks turn a little red. He says, “Sometimes your
brain says to do something and the signal doesn’t come through.” And we laugh
again.
I
am eternally grateful that this feels like Tuesdays with Morrie and not a death
sentence.
We
sit outside in lawn chairs at a white plastic table with our breakfasts and our
coffee and we watch the wind play with the trees. Bear and Grandpa talk about
the gutters and the roof and the lawn and I think about how the wind keeps
changing to blow Bear’s cigarette smoke into my mouth along with my bagel. This
is what I want, always. Minutes like this that happen and they get to happen
all the way. No one who is here is anywhere else.
Later
in the day I go and get Bookerp and we help Grandma to organize some of her
basement that the cats disorganized for her. We throw away some things and
organize others, and the therapy happening is real and difficult and messy and
good.
I
get a call right before dinner that a friend would like to pick me up and spend
some of her time with me, and because I am only home for a time, and that time
is all I have, I cannot say no. I want to gather all of the moments I can and
store them. I want to collect them and treasure them up. They are precious and irreplaceable.
And so after a few moments of indecision, I tell grandma that I have to go. We
eat our dinner and my friend comes to pick me up and I am walking out the door
with all my traveling-home-bags when Grandma stops me with a hand on my arm and
says, “Say goodbye to your Grandpa.”
She
always tells me to say goodbye to my Grandpa but she’s never said it like this
and I can hear the difference. I drop my bags and go back into the house and he’s
down deep in the couch grinning like anything because he knows he can’t get up
and he knows I don’t mind. He puts his arms straight up in the air right around
me and pats my back like it’s his job. I tell him I love him and I’ll see him
later, and I know both things are true, but it doesn’t make it any easier to
say it.
I
say goodbye to Grandma three or four times every time we talk on the phone. There
are always more things she wants to say and it never takes less than ten
minutes to get off the phone with her, but I have stopped minding. These
goodbyes are all we have. There will be a day when she doesn’t have any more
goodbyes to give me, and so I will say goodbye a hundred times over if that’s
how many she wants to hear. And I will listen about her cat every time, and I will
hold her up in the store for however many hours we have. I will pray for her
when she wants prayer and I will answer the phone when she calls at one a.m.
because she lost her medicine and needs someone to help her come find it. And I
will never stop kissing her on her pretty little head.
And
when she is gone, because that time will come, I will smile my biggest smile
and tell her to dance her heart out until I get there.
