Many thanks to Sioux for making me think of a memory. I read
her wonderful
Mother’s Day post while eating my grandmother’s soup out of a bowl I bought because it reminded me of my grandmother’s dishes.
Those dishes really captured her because we usually sat at
her kitchen table. My grandmother was the kind of woman who was always doing
for others. That is how I remember her—bustling. Cooking, tidying, moving.
Always moving.
And then advanced age forced her to sit still. Forced others
to do for her for once. It was hard for her, I’m sure, but that, too, she
handled with grace. Even though it would be easy to say she’d earned the right
to be waited on, I never got the impression that sitting still was any kind of
reward for her.
Instead, the reward was mine. My grandmother had a live-in
caregiver then, but when the caregiver was off on Sundays, my grandmother
needed someone to sit with her. I lived out of town at the time, but when I
came to visit, I’d sit with her on Sundays.
That was how I got to know my grandmother—really got to know
her—after she’d turned 100 years old.
Because for the first time ever, we really talked. Not only
did I get to ask her what she needed,
I got to know her as a human being and not merely as a caretaker. I was
surprised to learn just how smart and funny and wise she truly was. We chatted
and conversed and giggled and gossiped a little. We reminisced. We debated and
discussed. And when she did pass at 102, I felt those last two years had been
the most precious. For me, anyway.
Here’s hoping you, too, have good memories or make good
memories that last through the centuries and beyond. Happy Mother’s Day.
Who else but a
grandmother ever fried bologna? ~Cynthia
Kaplan, Leave the Building Quickly
