REMINISCE

After sunrise, I drove to pick up my cousin and we took off for grandma's. I hadn't seen Grandma for a while. She looks older. Although I recognized her face less, her eyes are the same; as clear as July sky. We sat around her hand-crafted Swedish table, the one I put a two-inch wide scratch in the day after she had it assembled, and passed stories back and forth as we sipped coffee. Grandma's philosophy on coffee: 'I like to have a little bit of coffee in my milk.' According to Grandma, 'Grandpa was always making himself half a cup of coffee.' Sounds like me and my pa. 

Francis is a storyteller. I could sit at the table for hours listening. In fact, that's what I did. I knew while I listened, that this was a precious time. This sitting so close, in a home filled with memories, listening. Listening to stories about my great-grandfather John who was raised in the mountains of Sweden, my great-grandmother Nettie and her gardens... reminiscences, sweetly and tenderly spoken. She'd tear up, recalling her children's first steps. She shared about the trials and joys of raising nine children, about saving her baby's life when it turned blue, about Grandpa saving their baby's life when it had a convulsive fever, about her best friend Gwenevieve and her cancer and death, about depression and how good it is for us to cry, about marriage and how it is about sacrifice and giving to the other, about parents who selflessly raised children of special needs, about suffering with diabetes, about Sweden, about the beauty of the simple things. I am proud to be her granddaughter.  

As I scrubbed the kitchen floor while she napped and my cousin vacuumed, I couldn't help but cry to remember of all that I could: that kitchen floor my cousins and I tripped over each other on when we scattered outside to play in the woods or capture the flag, the kitchen floor I collected misplaced and fallen crayons off of after scribbling in Lion King coloring books, the kitchen floor my aunts did yoga on when one flew in from L.A.--a home so filled, so filled with family, so filled with memories that don't exist anymore, except for these glimpses. 

She listened to us too. It was a good time. Good, as in, I won't forget it.

On the drive back, my cousin and I detoured on a side-road and for the first time, I drove my car on adventurous terrain. We basked in the pastel dusk over the lake until we became numbed by the biting November wind. 

now to finish, Huxley's incredible Brave New World,
m

P.S. Have you ever showed up late for a surprise party on the wrong day? Imagine that. I don't think we'll live that one down, at least until dementia.