I shuffled my child’s feet close to hers in the kitchen until I was so underfoot that she could no longer ignore my presence. I waited until the exchange became as one we’ve had many times before.
“Is there something you’d like?” She looked at me seriously, but I could tell she already knew what I wanted, but she waited patiently to hear me say it again.
“Can I have some cheese and crackers, Grandma?” I asked in what I attempted to be my sweetest voice. I saw the knowing smile come across her lips while she considered my request.
“Well, I am not sure. Let me see if I have any.” I grinned, running off to play, knowing my Grandma wouldn’t let me down. She never did, even if the cheese she resorted to putting on the plate was chunks of sliced Velveeta.
My grandma always had my favorite snack available.
I was never quite sure of the color of my grandma’s hair back then. I am now fairly certain her hair was a natural brown, but I only remember the short tight curls being a deep auburn red, but with Irish in our family, perhaps the red was natural. This is a question I will have to remember to ask my mother some day. Her stature was rather thin and petite, and although she sometimes appeared delicate, I always thought of my grandma as a person of powerful strength. Her hands holding secrets that I knew nothing about. I remember her clearly in the L-shaped kitchen, sporting her apron and looking quite at home in the kitchen during family get togethers, and her eyes always wise, seemed to hold secrets about life that I hadn’t yet realized how much I wanted to know.
My grandma cross-stitched me a picture one year for christmas. I was thrilled to get it, but as she pointed out the intricate details and the date of my birth that she had no doubt spent hours stitching into the center, I laughed. Of course my child’s mouth didn’t yet have a filter and I giggled saying, “But Grandma, that’s your birthday, mine is on the seventh.”
I continued to giggle even as my grandma fussed, taking it away from me and fixing the stitch before she would return it to me. My grandma’s birthday was two days after mine, so it was a simple mistake to make, but now as an adult, I wish I had kept my mouth shut. It would have been wonderful to have had her birthday stitched to the framed piece rather than my own.
Other moments with my grandma were just so special that I am so glad that we had them, like the time she french braided my sister and I’s hair. It was something only my grandma seemed to have the talent for and once we learned she could do it, we didn’t hesitate to ask her to repeat the look for us again and again. Sitting at the desk chair beside the kitchen, while she braided our hair and peering into the tabletop mirror, which you could flip to magnify your face to gigantic proportions used to be a highlight of my time in the chair.
But what really interested me about my grandma was her secret self. These were the hints of the woman she was that separated her from being just my grandma. Occasionally I would observe that I couldn’t find her anywhere in the house, and would become curious about where she was discovering later that she had vanished for a private moment into the single bathroom in the hallway. When she emerged looking somewhat disturbed that I had discovered her, I would take her place in the bathroom. The sweet smell of a freshly smoked cigarette and the tell-tale butt floating among the toilet water would give away my grandmother’s secret past time. It also made me wonder about all the other secrets my grandmother kept hidden from me, things that were just hers alone. She fascinated me, and my imagination would go wild pursuing various wild ideas of what kind of woman my grandma was when she was younger. Time has done nothing but increase my curiosity about my grandma and to this day I still believe my grandma held many secrets close to her soul. I am quite convinced that my grandma’s calm demeanor was a carefully orchestrated version of herself that she chose to show her grandchildren. Inside, I believe my grandma was a wildly passionate woman with secret dreams and desires that she felt too grownup for our young ears.
I became convinced at a young age that I have the same hands as my grandma and that life would then concede that the two of us have the same fate. I felt that one day I was going to be the grown woman my grandmother was with secrets of my own. As curiosity would often get the better of me, it wasn’t too surprising then to know that I often went through drawers and cupboards, bedrooms, and photographs trying to discover the secrets of my grandma who remained so mysterious to me. Wild ideas would pop into my head based on what I would find, convincing me further that my grandma was indeed a wilder woman than she ever portrayed herself to her grandchildren.
I was a young teenager when we discovered that my grandmother had been diagnosed with cancer, and still a young teenager when we lost her. It was my first experience with loss and I cried significantly. A large part of those tears were fear over not knowing how to react to this news. It seemed years later before I really understood what losing her would mean to me. I have never lost the sense that my grandma held secrets deep within her soul, a woman’s secrets. Secrets that I could see in her eyes then, and now understand to be more than just secrets. Instead I see that my grandma’s eyes have always held wisdom, the knowledge of a full life lived, and all the struggles therein.
