Living beyond 89
My grandmother visited my new house today. She's 89 and frail with senility nipping at the fringes of her once sturdy mind.
It was an odd thing to show my first house to my grandma. Now you must understand that this is no ordinary grandma. (As if there where such a thing?) This my grandma, the one who served as the only reasonable facsimile of a mother figure in my life. I lived with her for two years, from age 5-7, and have always thought of her as something much more than a grandmother.
Showing her my first house, I felt like a peacock despite my best efforts to not strut or spread out my new home owner plumage. Funny how hard it was not to beam with an embarrassing glow of pride as she looked around my home and smiled at me with the knowing smile of those who have lived long and right and know better than we, the young and blissfully unaware, the importance of simple joys like a first home.
My Aunt, Uncle and their three granddaughters who had been left in their care for the day accompanied my grandmother. As the kids played a game on the floor, I sat by my Mama to chat. The conversation meandered, sometimes amusing me, sometimes lifting me up, sometimes saddening me. The senility is there one moment and gone the next, but everyone know it will only come around more frequently now that it has made its first appearance. Like someone befriended out of pity who grows ever more addicted to your kindness begins to call more and more often once welcomed to do so, her senility is now a part of our lives.
As we sat there on the couch, she felt it necessary to tell (or remind) me that Sheri - my cousin and the mother of the three girls playing Monopoly on the floor - has three girls and so does Teresa - my other cousin and the mother of her other of her three grandchildren. Unsaid but implied by her look is the question, "When will your contribution to the family tree be forthcoming?"
Her next spoken question: "How old are you now, Danny?"
"33. 34 in a couple of weeks," I say.
"Hmmm..." She says, allowing me to read whatever I want (and precisely what she intends) into the nonspecific sound.
I take the kids to the park down the street to play, willingly (albeit surprisingly) abandoning the playoff game on the TV. Something deep within aches as we run through the park.
Where are mine? Will I not have the peacock proud pleasure of introducing them to her? Her seventh and eighth great grandchildren?
A shame that is...
And then the day is over, and she is gone. Her warm glow still floats around the house. As I type this, my kitten Nut (newt) sits in my lap fascinated as my fingers move over the keys. Earlier today, I picked up Nut and took her over to Mama.
Mama isn't know to be a hater of cats, but she is also known not to be particularly fond of them either. "There fine as long as they don't walk up and wrap their tail around my leg," she's said on more than one occassion.
On this occassion, as she strokes Nut's small, tabby head, she says, "If you love Danny, then I love you, little one."
Perhaps that isn't as interesting or intense for you to read as it was for me to hear, but it just makes me love that great old matriach even more, and I didn't think that was possible.
Sadly, little Nut may well outlive my dear grandmother. While I hope she makes it to 110, she grows ever more fragile with each passing year. Her heart's arteries demand yearly cleansing, and her age threatens to make such invasive procedures impossible very soon. Then she will just fade away from us, as if an angel of a woman with six great-grandkids who is so loved by every branch of her long family tree deserves to fade away.
How can a heart so full of love and spirit just slowly decline and stop? The world of the physical just refuses to model itself after the spiritual, doesn't it? I suppose if the latter determined longevity, my dear grandmother might just outlive us all.
And yet she may still: here sits little Nut, fascinated still by my fingers flashing across keys, now the unwitting bearer of a cherished memory across years to come.
It was an odd thing to show my first house to my grandma. Now you must understand that this is no ordinary grandma. (As if there where such a thing?) This my grandma, the one who served as the only reasonable facsimile of a mother figure in my life. I lived with her for two years, from age 5-7, and have always thought of her as something much more than a grandmother.
Showing her my first house, I felt like a peacock despite my best efforts to not strut or spread out my new home owner plumage. Funny how hard it was not to beam with an embarrassing glow of pride as she looked around my home and smiled at me with the knowing smile of those who have lived long and right and know better than we, the young and blissfully unaware, the importance of simple joys like a first home.
My Aunt, Uncle and their three granddaughters who had been left in their care for the day accompanied my grandmother. As the kids played a game on the floor, I sat by my Mama to chat. The conversation meandered, sometimes amusing me, sometimes lifting me up, sometimes saddening me. The senility is there one moment and gone the next, but everyone know it will only come around more frequently now that it has made its first appearance. Like someone befriended out of pity who grows ever more addicted to your kindness begins to call more and more often once welcomed to do so, her senility is now a part of our lives.
As we sat there on the couch, she felt it necessary to tell (or remind) me that Sheri - my cousin and the mother of the three girls playing Monopoly on the floor - has three girls and so does Teresa - my other cousin and the mother of her other of her three grandchildren. Unsaid but implied by her look is the question, "When will your contribution to the family tree be forthcoming?"
Her next spoken question: "How old are you now, Danny?"
"33. 34 in a couple of weeks," I say.
"Hmmm..." She says, allowing me to read whatever I want (and precisely what she intends) into the nonspecific sound.
I take the kids to the park down the street to play, willingly (albeit surprisingly) abandoning the playoff game on the TV. Something deep within aches as we run through the park.
Where are mine? Will I not have the peacock proud pleasure of introducing them to her? Her seventh and eighth great grandchildren?
A shame that is...
And then the day is over, and she is gone. Her warm glow still floats around the house. As I type this, my kitten Nut (newt) sits in my lap fascinated as my fingers move over the keys. Earlier today, I picked up Nut and took her over to Mama.
Mama isn't know to be a hater of cats, but she is also known not to be particularly fond of them either. "There fine as long as they don't walk up and wrap their tail around my leg," she's said on more than one occassion.
On this occassion, as she strokes Nut's small, tabby head, she says, "If you love Danny, then I love you, little one."
Perhaps that isn't as interesting or intense for you to read as it was for me to hear, but it just makes me love that great old matriach even more, and I didn't think that was possible.
Sadly, little Nut may well outlive my dear grandmother. While I hope she makes it to 110, she grows ever more fragile with each passing year. Her heart's arteries demand yearly cleansing, and her age threatens to make such invasive procedures impossible very soon. Then she will just fade away from us, as if an angel of a woman with six great-grandkids who is so loved by every branch of her long family tree deserves to fade away.
How can a heart so full of love and spirit just slowly decline and stop? The world of the physical just refuses to model itself after the spiritual, doesn't it? I suppose if the latter determined longevity, my dear grandmother might just outlive us all.
And yet she may still: here sits little Nut, fascinated still by my fingers flashing across keys, now the unwitting bearer of a cherished memory across years to come.
posted by Danny Henley at 1/17/2005 12:51:00 AM
1 Comments:
Ah, now you've done it... Got yourself set up for this blog thing... it can reel you in, man, believe me. But it's a good place to pour out whatever's on your mind. Sometimes an email to someone is a rather random way to do that, so I like having a forum like this.
I will, of course, stay tuned.
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