There’s a way with grandparents that I don’t comprehend because I am just this side of it, still mothering children who are inch by inch reaching my height and forget to brush their teeth and pick up dirty clothes.
She’s smiling and directing traffic in the midst of the clean-up frenzy. Bodies are moving around picking up scraps of paper and ribbon. She began this big family over 60 years ago and says each time all gather that she is amazed. Sometimes the words are laced with tears of awe and other times she simply shakes her head because she knows she’ll never be able to wrap her arms all the way around blessing.
When she grabs me, here in the middle of all this, I feel as I’m six and tiny, below the 50% mark on the doctor’s chart, despite the fact that in heels I tower over her.
“I saw you in there cleaning and washing dishes,” she grins at me. All I can do is nod with that bit of uncomfortableness that comes from attention.
“You always jump in, don’t you?” she jostles me as if a babe on her lap then pulls me in tighter. “You are a blessing to our family. A blessing,” she draws out the words loudly. “God brought you to us, our family, and into Terry’s life. Such a blessing.”
And here is where I melt. Here is where that little girl inside this woman body, the same one who on her sixth birthday ran to the bathroom overcome because all were singing Happy Birthday, simply turns to watery puddle.
I had not heard this said outloud specifically to me before until I met her years ago, when I still had that new girl shine and all questioned permanancy. I was undone and overcome that day too with strangers, her family, standing around in clumps. I felt as if the whole room shone with a light bright on me even though no true attention was given except by this woman.
A few years ago on Christmas Day, she sat next to me while I ate dinner. Others had finished and were picking up stray napkins and forks and clattering plates into a heaping sink. My small portion of this gathering, that 0n a full Christmas Day is nearly a hundred, were finished also. I watched my husband stand with a boy leaning into his side, talking with his mom and others. I shook the lonely from my head, I remember, and the toxic observation ”Only you would be lonely in a crowd.”
“Here I’ll sit with you. Nobody should eat alone. Especially on Christmas, huh?” she said. Then she talked about the week and the tree. Her face was in her hand and she leaned over the table smoothing the gold cloth. She smelled of garlic and something sweetly feminine. I remember wondering what perfume she had spritzed on wrist and neck that morning inbetween the shuffle of dishes in and out of the oven.
A few weeks ago, I stood in her doorway and heard my name mentioned. I smiled, twisting my foot into door jam. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she Joe?” and she winked.
I huffed and twisted my face to match my foot to toss off the compliment. And she huffed back solid loud. “Ah, just accept it,” she said turning towards the kitchen then she sung it not once but three times in that heavy French accent.
I am travelling with her this weekend. It is the first time we will be together for days constant, not the scheduled pop-in or holiday celebration that contain a departure time before setting sun. And I am afraid. The “What If” questions began rolling in weeks ago and have picked up speed because I know I’m not that great. I know I’m not a blessing some days. I know all of this and can list each non-blessing out and have before and others still do and I don’t want her to find out.
Then I remember, even though the pull of those hard calloused questions is steady urging me to roll into them, that there is a way with grandparents, a mysterious God way, that knows there are places murky and shadowy – they’ve heard of them in others and have them too - but sees around them. Or is it through them?
