I Heart You, Grandma!

You know, I've always loved my Grandma. She wasn't the most approachable lady, and she was always old and gray from my earliest memory. But she always had our interests in mind, and there's no doubt in my mind that she loved us. When I first started taking piano lessons at age 8, she gave me my great-grandmother's piano. My great-grandmother had taught piano and was getting ready to go abroad to study music when World War 1 broke out. Of course, the piano is now at Mom's house "for the family" (read, Mom), and it's probably OK anyway, because I've moved half a dozen times since then, and who really wants to move a piano that many times?

Was my Grandma crotchety? You bet. Hateful? Sometimes. Stubborn? Always. At my dad's funeral, love her heart, she was breaking down on my right side, Mom was bawling on my left, it was truly a terrible moment for me. I put my arms around her and whispered, "It's OK, Grandma, it'll be OK. We'll be alright. I'll make us alright."

And do you know what she said to me?

"Take a tic-tac, honey, before I have to say something."

At my father's funeral. She was her grandma-self to the bitter end. But I knew she loved me. When I got kicked out of the JWs, she never went along with it from the start. When she found out I was pregnant, she called me up and harumphed, "Well, when were you going to tell me?" When I asked what she was wanting me to tell her, she snapped, "Don't be cute with me!" :)

She had a first husband that we never knew the name of until she died. I asked her once, and she brushed me off, saying, "Don't worry about it honey, you didn't know him." Well, obviously!

Her secrets would drive me crazy sometimes. She managed a drunken, abusive second husband, a son who was mentally retarded and who went through electroshock therapy, a son who was drunk all of his life and died young of a drug overdose, and my wonderful father, who was none of those things. All of her pictures look very sad, somehow. Like even when she's smiling, it doesn't reach her eyes. Except for her pictures with her grandchildren.

I remember my grandma on the days I'd pick her wildflowers when I was a little girl, and we all lived out below the mountain. I remember the piano. I was so excited. I remember the desk she bought me because she thought it would help me study better. I remember how sad she was. I remember how stubborn she was. I remember how brave she was in her 80s to stand up to the JWs when they kicked me out. She embraced me maybe even more than she already had.

I was once in The Crucible, a play we performed on campus at the little private college I started out at. I was Goody Somebody, the older woman who gets burned at the stake because of "poppets" or somesuch. I had to put on a lot of pancake makeup and this neat application of a piece of wire mesh and some dark brown makeup--liver spots.

When they turned my chair around, I looked just like her. I wasn't pleased at the time. I've come to smile about it now.

I love you Grandma. Thank you for looking out for me.

--Virgil