Loads of love, Grandma

The first thing I thought of when my mom and dad told us that we were moving to Italy was: What about Grandma and Grandpa? I was ten years old and, in my ten-year-old opinion, terrifically mature, but I still bawled my eyes out at the airport when we left. I can still see my grandfather getting out his white handkerchief and waving goodbye as we walked down the jetway. That was the last time we saw him.

After that, it was just my grandma. In the summers we stayed a few blocks away from her house (My parents, opting to save their sanity, bought a condominium after staying with her during the first summer.) Grandma had always been nearby. She'd sewed our entire wardrobes for as long as we we'd been alive. She kept us stocked in puffy elasticized sleeves and smocking and frilly underpants for every holiday. I had an entire dresser full of clothes she'd made for my Cabbage Patch doll. When we came home in the summers she fed us ice cream cones every night and let us watch anything we wanted, although if she was going to sit with us we opted for Shirley Temple and Fred Astaire movies. She taught (or, in my case, tried to teach) us embroidery and simple sewing projects. She knew some of the cookie dough wouldn't make it into cookie form, and she always let us lick the frosting off the beaters. I could show off my tap dancing steps on the kitchen linoleum and she would clap; I could play 'Red Roses for a Blue Lady' into the ground and she'd say "That was beautiful, Maggie!" after every rendition.

My grandma is very much the sweet little white-haired old lady, the kind who offers you a fourth piece of cake and sends you $5 checks for Halloween. She's kept every single letter and card and picture her grandchildren have ever given her. She has pictures of us nailed to every wall in her house, and snapshots of the great-grandchildren cluttering up the kitchen. My grandma has always been old (what grandma isn't?) but now that I am closer to 30 than 20 and there are three great-grandchildren and it's been years since she's made a flouncy Easter dress, she seems so much older. She'd make me an ice cream cone if I asked, but now she just wants Phillip to fix her email and me to help find a knitting needle. I swear she shrinks each time I visit. She used to be in charge of me, but now I'm the boss of her. Last weekend I made her tell me what to bring for lunch, then I talked her into buying flowers at Home Depot, then I made her come outside to tell me where to plant them.

When there's nothing on the agenda we sit. Most of the time I will talk. And talk and talk and talk because either she doesn't think anything I have to say should be dignified with a response, or she just likes hearing the oh so melodic and comforting tones of my voice. She says she doesn't have much to say, but I can ask a question and settle in for an hour to hear about The Good Days. The good days are:

1. When her kids were little and she took care of them.
2. When her kids' kids were little and she took care of them.

I ask her to tell me about how she received her engagement ring (in the mail, from her future mother-in-law in Chicago) or how she met my grandfather (when she worked in the Army finance office) or how she picked the names of her children (my aunt is named after a soap opera character) or how she managed to survive walking up and down all of Tacoma's hills in stockings and pointy 1940s heels. She talks about the bright red hair my oldest uncle had when he was a baby, how the whole family just thought he was precious. She talks about the dance costumes she sewed, trying to get a curl to stay in her daughters' hair, how she didn't think it was right for my grandpa to do any chores after he got home from work.

And then sometimes she'll tell me about babysitting me and my brothers and sisters. How Alex could be a holy terror and Grandpa would have to stick him in the bedroom. How our parents made sure we were perfect angels in public. How we used to like to go to the lake and feed the ducks. Oh, those were good days.

I've spent a lot of time with old people, ones who've spent years in bed, sick ones, dying ones, the ones who have no family, the ones who have pets, the ones who can never remember I'm married and keep trying to set me up with nephews they think are my age, but are probably in their 50s and 60s. I've always compared my grandma to these people and felt a little bit proud. She turns 84 today. She lives alone and makes her own dinners and deadheads her own rhododendrons and maybe she's a little bit fuzzy about where she keeps the Christmas decorations, but she knows who I am. She is the daughter of southern Italian farm kids who immigrated after the first World War. Her mother grew vegetables in the yard and raised chickens and her father earned a living digging ditches. My grandmother was sent home on her first day of school and told not to return until she learned English. When she grew up, she waited four years, four months and one day for the guy who did the Army payroll to return from the South Pacific. She had no promise, just stacks and stacks of letters in my grandfather's lilting cursive. When he came home they got married and had a bunch of kids- those were the good days. These days? Not so much. She's gone sixteen years without her husband, sixteen years longer than I want to go without mine.

I've heard her tell me how excited she was to get her ring in the mail about 400 times. I've seen the remains of the box it came in, glued carefully into one of her scrapbooks. And every time she tells the story there's a different detail and every time I know I'll want her to tell me again next time.

She remembers who my good friends are when I talk about them. "I'm going to visit Malia," I told her, "in Hawaii, remember her?" and she said, "Oh, that Malia is a sweet girl." She dove in for a hug the first time I brought Phillip to meet her. When I bring her See's chocolates she's like a five-year-old with his very own chocolate cake. She adores my brother so much I occasionally consider that I may be wrong about the "obnoxious nitwit" label I've stuck on him. She loves when I call, she loves when I visit. She tells me that she knows how hard it is to drive down there, how terrible the traffic is, how much she appreciates seeing us, like we should be nominated for sainthood for visiting our old grandma. It's like she hasn't met our grandma, who has always welcomed us and smothered us with presents and kisses and space to zone out and watch crappy television, thinks we're the smartest and the most talented and future Nobel prize winners, and, best of all, thinks fourteen chocolate chip cookies are not enough for one sitting. Who would not want to tell the entire Internet about THAT lovely and amazing grandma's 84th birthday?

Happy birthday, Grandma. I'll tell you about the Internet next time I see you.

Comments

[orangepaas]

Maggie! Now I'm really crying. I'm going to go call my grandma right away. Yours sounds like the best grandma ever. Except for mine :)