The Good Tired

When I got there the dinner had already arrived and Gramma was sleeping. I woke her and she ate all her fish, cole slaw, and fries. She didn’t say much through dinner, but ate well. She just seemed visibly distracted, or perhaps uninterested, stoic even.

“What is your nurse’s name?” I asked her. These are the things you find yourself doing routinely with an elderly person in the hospital who seems zoned out. Ask questions, see if the answers are timely and correct.

All of us zone out on occasion – after a long day, with something on our minds, or for many other reasons. And we are not given quizzes to make certain our zone out is not some medical emergency. And, yet an elderly person in the hospital is poked, prodded, and quizzed at all hours of the day or night.

“Naomi,” Gramma answered almost immediately and smiled.

“Well, that’s a name that’s hard to forget.” That is Gramma’s name, of course.

I wasn’t testing her, just trying to make her smile a bit, or to say something. Anything. Up to that point I had been doing all the talking. She was reminding me a bit of the “they sayers” about whom I had written a play some years ago. A quartet of men who live in a cave in South Dakota, who sit about and say all those wonderful things for which we later give the tag, “You know they say…” They sayers don’t talk much unless they have something very important to say. Gramma was taking on that look.

She ate, looked pensively out the window, and ate some more.  I squatted beside her bed and she looked at me.

“They need some chairs in here,” I said.

She laughed out loud.

“What did you do today?” I asked.

“There is no worse place than this,” she said.

“Well, sometimes that’s just the way the place seems that makes you feel strong enough to go back to the better place. Seems like the worst place. But the worst place only makes the better place better.”

She said nothing. She simply ate, looked out the window, and ate more. When the meal was complete and I wheeled the food tray away from the bed, I finally took a seat in the only chair in the room and wheeled it over near her bed. And in her sight line. So, instead of looking pensively out the window, she was looking at me.

She looked at me with about the same interest she had in the window. Not much. I looked back at her, without talking.  Very soon, if anyone had entered, they would have thought my grandmother and I were in some sort of staring contest. In a way, we were.

Finally – she cracked first – she asked me, “How many children do your parents have?”

I held up three fingers.

“Well, that’s not so many,” she said.

I laughed. “No, not so many. How many children do you have?”

“Three,” she said.

“Your parents did…a pre…”

“A what?” I asked.

Now, I was beginning to think the little scamp had tried to get out of bed to go home so many times, they’d finally sedated her to keep her still. She was having a tough time getting the words in her head to come out her mouth.

“They’ve got a good family,” she finally said, in the way Porky Pig might shorten or convert a thought just to get it out.

We smiled at each other.

“Are you tired?” I asked.

Gramma nodded.

“Me too,” I said, and leaned back in the chair.

In a few moments she was closing her eyes in sleep. For the next few moments I just watched her sleep. Peacefully. And I thought of the night we called the ambulance that brought her to this hospital stay. That night she was curled up in nearly a fetal position beneath her covers, exhausted and soaked with sweat from a UTI induced fever. Tonight, she was lying peacefully against the pillow, her body comfortable and warm.

Today, she had physical therapy in the morning and occupational therapy in the afternoon. She, like me, had a very full day of work. Yes, sometimes it is necessary to see red flags in silence or sleepiness. However, sometimes, it is a great joy to know the sleepiness and the zoning out is just a “good tired”.

 

The Breakfast Nook

breakfast nook - a place for light meals (usually near a kitchen)

A breakfast nook is a small area in the home that is dedicated to informal dining. It is usually located within or adjacent to the kitchen. As the word “nook” implies, this area is generally small and compact. In older homes, the breakfast nook often has a secluded and private quality and can be the perfect place for a child to do homework or for mom to grab a quiet cup of coffee. In newer homes, a contemporary breakfast nook could involve a space that is a little more open and connected to the kitchen than the traditional carved-out corner or separate, if small, dining space.

Okay, now that we’ve got that settled, Gramma has herself a breakfast nook. It is the space just outside the kitchen and her bedroom – and a bathroom for that matter. It’s a short walk to the nook for her breakfast of Bran, toast and coffee.

Now, although, the nook itself is the space involved, however, the table within the nook is very important. The table that previously occupied this space, as far as I am concerned, would not and could not have qualified as breakfast nook material. In fact, it hindered Gramma’s movement (and everyone else’s)  to and from the important places in the house. That table not only took the “nook” right out of the space, it actually was more of an obstable. And, in my humble opinion, obstacles are not allowed to be furniture in breakfast nooks. So, when that table was given away, I took the opportunity to find Gramma a table that would be more compact and more to her size – a table that would give the nook in which she had her breakfast a proper nook look.

Okay, now that we’ve settled that. Let’s talk about the table I got. Small. I mean Alice in Wonderland small. The first few days Gramma sat down to eat her breakfast there, she laughed out loud.

Mom told me the first morning, before I rounded the corner to actually see Gramma sitting at the table, “She can’t stop laughing over that table.”

And then I saw her sitting there sipping her coffee, and enjoying her breakfast, and laughed myself. “It looks like she’s having a tea party.”

Indeed, it did. I even mentioned that it looked as if she was waiting on the Mad Hatter. The first time I looked at it I thought it might be a little small, and laughed at the idea of it being an Alice in Wonderland or a dollhouse sized table.  But, then I couldn’t help but go back to my friend’s store to get it. When I told him for what I wanted it, he laughed out loud. And then he gave it to me free of charge. (Maybe he thought I’d be right back to return it had I paid for it.)

But, as the days with our dollhouse table passed, the laughter faded. Not because the table got bigger, or the rest of us got smaller (although we will all shrink as my grandmother has if we are lucky to live that long). No, it was none of that. No, it is simply because the table I just had to go back to get for Gramma really does render that space a breakfast nook.

She enjoys her breakfast unimpeded by the obstacles that might impede her, or obstacle she might become, with a larger table.

And I can say that I too have enjoyed sitting across from Gramma at her table, as we have done many times before at coffee shops in the past, sipping a cup of coffee together chatting and laughing, oblivious of the activity around us – content in our nook.

gram_table

Priceless

“Where is your mother?” Gramma asked.

I explained for the second time that Mom was eating at Bob Evans with some friends and would be bringing a plate home for Gramma when she came home shortly.

Fifteen or so minutes passed while Gramma tried to figure out what the weather was like based on the weather of the football game we were watching – early snow there in New Jersey this afternoon.

“Open that blind,” she instructed me, “I want to see if it’s snowing.”

I opened the blind. No snow.

“What is today?” she asked, unconvinced what was blowing all over the television wasn’t outside as well.  “And not the day¸the date?”

“October 29^th.

“Oh my,” she exclaimed. “This is too early for snow.”

“Yes,” I assured her. “Even there in New Jersey.”

Fifteen or so minutes passed while Gramma tried to decide where she would sleep for the night. (A routine that always ends in her deciding to sleep in her own bed, in her own room.)

“I don’t think it’s a good night for me to sleep outside,” she said.

“Why would you sleep outside?”

“Well, is that place I sleep inside?”

“Of course it is.”

“But it doesn’t have any air.”

“Air?”

“I mean heat.”

“Yes it does.”

“Does it? Good.”

Okay that’s settled. She’s sleeping in her room, in her bed, with much heat. There will be no sleeping in the television’s snow globe of which she apparently felt involved.

Fifteen or so minutes passed in silence. The game was back and forth, seven lead changes up to that point. Finally, our team had a decisive lead, and all was looking good.

“Where is your mother?” Gramma asked me again, easily the fifth time she’s asked since the second half of the game began.

“Bob Evans!” I said, shortening my answer out of frustration at being asked so many times, and to perhaps spark her memory of the rest of the answer.

“Oh, that’s right, she’s supposed to bring me a plate,” Gramma said, answering her own question.

Fifteen or so minutes passed as she described the weather conditions under which she has driven in her life. Snow continued to fall at the football game on television. And, by the way, Gramma has driven in all kinds of weather, but she didn’t consider it wise to be out on an evening like this one.

“Where’s your mother?” she asked again.

Slowly I turned.

I stared into Gramma’s questioning eyes. I raised an eyebrow in a you-did-not-just-ask-me-that pose. Gramma looked confused, waiting for me to answer her question.  I raised both eyebrows in a where-do-you-think-she-is pose. Gramma started giggling. And then I shook my head a little in a come-on-you-know-what-I-mean pose.

Gramma started laughing out loud. Soon it escalated to what would surely qualify as LOL if Gramma were telling the story via text message.  Finally, she could hardly speak for laughing. (LMAO, if you ask me.) Finally, she did manage to say through her laughter, “I’ve asked you that…over and over.”

“Yes, you have. Luckily, my answer has remained the same as well.”

Gramma laughed even harder (ROTFLOL, no doubt.)

I love to watch my grandmother laugh. And, every time she does so with such gusto and abandon, I think (IMHO),  having someone to make you laugh is wonderful, but, at any age, having the ability to laugh at yourself is priceless.

 

Hepzibah

“Let’s drive passed that house where I know Raymond is,” Gramma said while we took the freeway back from her weekly wash and set.

Raymond is her late husband (who passed in 1989). However, he has been brought back to life in Gramma’s memory for several months now. There is absolutely no reason to try to convince her otherwise, as she will just have to live the pain of it again. Even if you think that to tell her he has passed might alleviate some of the pain of wondering why he doesn’t come to see her think again. After all, in her head he lives just down the street somewhere.

Even if you want to say, “Gramma, he hasn’t forgotten about you. He’s passed away,” to help her passed thinking he no longer cares about her – you would be wrong. There is no way to get her through those moments by saying something genius or reassuring. She always navigates her way through it on her own somehow. You just have to go with it.

“I don’t know where the house is,” I told her.

“I’ll show you,” she said.

“Okay.”

We drove a few more miles into town and she said, “Well, we better not do that. He might not like it.”

“Okay,” I said and continued to drive.

A few more miles down the road, she said, in a matter of fact tone, “Well, we might as well go on to Hepzibah.”

She said it with a mischievous grin and just that tone that makes you know it is a phrase she and others around her have uttered before at some point in their lives. Hepzibah represented to her a particular type of place. Perhaps it is a place just outside of the realm of possibility. Or perhaps it is a place that can’t be found.  Or perhaps it is more like a Land of Oz or a Narnia, a place where dreams come true, or where nothing bad happens and everyone is good.

I’m sure it simply means, for the person saying it, that they think the trip a particularly long one. And, “since we’ve come all this way, we may as well go on to Hepzibah.”  But, why Hepzibah?” It does have an intriguing quality to its name – Narnia-esque, if you will.

“Where is Hepzibah?” I asked.

Gramma laughed. “I’ve never been to Hepzibah. But I always wanted to go just to see it.”

She got such a grin on her face when she said it, I was intrigued.  Why not, I thought. So, as I had videos in the back seat to return to Blockbuster, I decided to take them back with Gramma and drove on passed our exit.

After a moment of silence, Gramma said, “We may not make it there before dark.”

“Yes we will,” I assured her.

Then she began looking at the road and the signs in order to help me navigate. As we crossed the Kanawha River on our way to (South Charleston) Hepzibah, Gramma said, “It should be the next exit.”

At the next exit, I got off and took 2^nd Avenue around so that I could drive through the middle of South Charleston. It is a perfectly laid out little grid of streets shared by both residents and businesses. Of course, the city itself extends up into the hills on one side, but the little stretch of South Charleston proper is so nice a little community to find at the foot of the hill upon which so many residents live.

“I don’t recognize any of this,” Gramma said.

“That’s because you’ve never been here before.”

“Where?”

“Hepzibah.”

“So this is Hepzibah,”  she said looking around at the houses and businesses we passed.  At this point I think we were just sharing in the fun of it. I think she was well aware that the numbered and lettered streets of South Charleston, WV was not Hepzibah. But, if Hepzibah represents that  which is just beyond your destination, then South Charleston was, at that moment, with those thoughts, absolutely Hepzibah.

I drove through Blockbuster, dropped off the videos and took the main road back to the freeway.

“You’re getting back on here?” Gramma asked.

“Yes,” I said and pointed up into the hills of South Charleston. “My house was right up there on the hill.”

“I was only there once,” she said. She is right. She was there only once. The steps were too hard for her to climb, so the once had to be enough.

Once on the freeway back to Charleston, Gramma looked at the sky and the remains of a beautiful sunset, and said again, “We’re not going to make it back before dark.”

“Yes we will,” I assured her. “It’s not even a hop, skip and a jump. It’s just a hop and skip. Hop on the freeway and skip over the river.”

Gramma laughed.

As we pulled off the freeway onto our exit, and everything began looking familiar to her Gramma smiled. Holding up her fingers just an inch or so apart to show how close we came, she said, “It’s this much dusk.”

“Yep,” I said. “We made it.”

To Hepzibah and back again, we went. Just because she’s nearly 91 and “just this much dusk” doesn’t mean Gramma can’t do something she’s always wanted to do, right?

When I got home, I Googled Hepzibah (using various different spellings before I found the right one), and found it to be a small unincorporated town that occupies only one square mile or area (situated on both sides of Route 19) 6.5 miles from Bridgeport, WV. Less than one thousand people live in this little town, and no one is really sure how it got its name.

It was established by a land grant in 1775. It’s still there, and still unincorporated. Thus, if you Google it, you will see several entries that say Current Population: 0. Or – Estimated Current Population:0. And yet, nearly 1000 people live there, happily co-members and owners of their own little space in the world.

Hepzibah – our own little space in the world – a perfect place for me and Gramma to visit on such a beautiful evening.

It’s a phenomenom!

When I was in the restaurant business, I had an employee come to me one day with a particularly embarrassed look on her face. When I inquired as to what was the problem, she explained that she had a couple walk out without paying their bill.

“What table?” I asked, and she indicated a vacant table on the far corner. I looked at the table, where I knew an elderly couple had been sitting not too long before, then back to the server. “Do you mean to tell me that elderly couple got all the way out the door and off the lot from that far table without you seeing them?”

With a shrug, she replied, “Yeah.”

I looked again at the long walk our couple would have had to walk to get to the door. “Did you check the-?” I started to ask.

“Yep,” she said. “I checked the ladies, and sent Chad in to check the mens. Not there. And I asked everyone. No one saw them leave.”

“The hostess?”

“Doesn’t remember them leaving.”

The server started to relax a little as she watched me checking out the possibility of two people in their eighties, moving slow, getting from their table to the door without a sole not only noticing them, but apparently not wishing them a good night, or asking them if everything was okay. Like slow moving vapor, they had apparently just floated to the door.

Finally, I began laughing. The server joined me.

“Now that,” I pronounced, “is a phenomenon.”

And that is what Gramma used to say every time she emerged from the bathroom to find me waiting there for my turn. “It’s a phenomenon,” she would say.

That is what Gramma used to say when I would meet her head-on in the doorway between the dining room and the kitchen of mom’s house. “You want through here,” she says, and tries to hurry. “It’s a phenomenon.”

Telling Mom of the times Gramma has called our meetings a phenomenon, I got this reply, “ I know. The same thing happens to me. Every time I need to get through there, there she is.”

And then I got to thinking about it. There are many times in the day I go through that doorway unimpeded by Gramma walking through it. There are many times in the day I go to the bathroom without finding out she is in there. However, there are few times that she makes her way through the house without running into one of us. That is the phenomenon. To Gramma.

We wonder how, if she moves that slow, do we several times a day end up meeting her at the doorway or are just behind her at getting in the restroom. She wonders, if we move that fast, how is it possible for her to always be in the path to where we are going, or in the place where we need to be.

What is baffling to me is the number of times I meet her in the doorway when I was certain she was somewhere else in the house. There have been many times, while meeting her coming from the kitchen side of the doorway, I have been shocked by the direction in which I find her moving. I have, many times,  actually looked behind me toward the living room, convinced I had just left her sitting in her chair.

“So you got to the bathroom and are now heading back without me seeing you?” I think as I check the chair just to be sure some glitch in the space time continuum does not have Gramma in two places at once.” And as slow as she moves, how could –“

“It’s a phenomenon,” her voice echoes in my head.

This I also tell Mom, to which she replies, “Yeah, it happens to me all the time.”

Indeed, the true phenomenon is not about her moving slow. (Using the number of times I walk through that doorway in a day versus the number of times she does, the odds are simply pretty good that I’ll run into her on the few times she crosses the threshold.) The true phenomenon is about how fast we are moving. We are moving so fast, we feel that we either can’t keep track of her, or she’s constantly in the way. We move so fast, we don’t even register the moment we passed Gramma as she was heading toward the bathroom. We only remember the shock of meeting her in the doorway on her way back– when we had to slow down enough to see what was right in front of us.

Yes, that elderly couple walked a perfect path through the pinballs that were my restaurant staff without running into a single person who might remind them they hadn’t paid. And, I can only imagine the conversation they had on the drive home if one of them remembered.

“George, we didn’t pay for our food.”

“Yes we did. We always pay.”

“No we didn’t.”

“Well, why didn’t someone catch us on the way out?”

“I don’t know. I guess they were all just so busy they didn’t notice us.”

Gramma Unplugged

“What did you give me?!” Gramma exclaimed in question at lunch today as she heartily ate her salad.

She doesn’t care for salad, but she was leaving the meat alone (fried chicken – her favorite) to concentrate on her salad.

Okay, let me back up. How did we get here, where Gramma is eating a salad with such voracity, and asking what in the world I gave her? What in the world have I done to her?

Two days ago she sat down to lunch and said, “I know what causes these things,” while indicated the small rash-like bumps she gets on her face at times. For two years or more all I have heard is how she has no idea what causes those bumps.

“What?” I asked.

“Constipation. A doctor told me that,” she said as if she’d just spoken to a doctor yesterday on the subject.

As she has never once mentioned this before and has suffered from constipation her entire adult life, I had to file this information under “google it” to check its veracity.\

For the next few days she see-sawed between eating little of her meals and saying she was hungry. Just as soon as the meal was over, with her plate still in sight, she would lament over being hungry. I have never suffered from constipation (knock on wood) so I could not justify being hungry incessantly and then eating little of what you’re given to eat.

Then, last night, as I was dressing her for bed she mentioned the bumps again. “I know what causes these,” she said, rubbing the raised part of her cheek. And then it left her. “Oh…oh…you know what I mean.”

“Constipation is what you said the other day,” I told her.

“Yes!” she said.

“Have you gone since then?”

“No,” she answered. “I know what the problem is, and there is nothing I can do about it.”

“What’s that?”

“Vegetables.”

“I made you a salad yesterday and the day before for that very reason, but you wouldn’t eat it,” I told her.

“I know,” she relented.

“Well, I’ll put some Metamucil in your coffee tomorrow.”

“Yeah, that’ll be good.”

“Okay. Just remind me to do that.”

LAUGHTER

All tucked in, Gramma went to sleep quickly and I went to the computer to google what I should have googled two days before: Constipation and facial rash. Well, imagine my surprise when in fact there appeared many links to support the notion that facial rashes are caused by constipation.  Well, well, well…who would ever make that link. But, the body God gave us is an amazing thing, and it reacts (gives signs) to problems or concerns in amazing ways. A slight facial rash is beautifully nonintrusive way to give evidence of constipation. Gramma has known that for years that the bumps on her face are a sign of constipation. And, but for a moment a few days ago when she was certain, it is something she has forgotten she knew. But, in that moment of clarity, she gave that information to me.

This morning I fixed her breakfast for her while she was in the bathroom. Bran Flakes with half a banana cut into it, coffee, water to take her pills, and her pills. I got the Metamucil out of the cupboard and looked at its directions, ingredients etc. Orange flavor, it was. Putting it in the coffee is not good. She doesn’t drink all the coffee all the time, and adding an orange flavor is not a good surprise. So, instead, I leveled out a teaspoon and stirred it into the water se uses to take her pills. She doesn’t always drink all of it either, but, hey, I told her I would give it to her.

After breakfast, when I came to wash her, she said, “I ate all of it,” and motioned to the kitchen table. All the cereal gone. All the coffee, gone. All the water with the Metamucil gone. I smiled.

Lunch prepared (chicken, lettuce salad, and a cucumber and tomato combo) I called Gramma to the table. She attacked the salad and the cucumbers and tomatoes like I’ve never seen her do before.  And left the chicken for last.  In the middle of the meal, as I too was eating my salad with chicken, she exclaimed in question, “What did you give me?!”

I admit I was a little shocked, and completely unsure of what she meant. And then she said, “My bowels moved already.”

“Oh,” I said. “I put Metamucil in your water.”

“I’ve tried that before,” she said. “I’ve tried everything.”

I shrugged. And, as she continued eating her salad and chicken eagerly I thought to myself, “ Yeah, but you never tried a Not-only can- I- not-I remind-you-but-I’ll-forget-you-told-me-you-were-going to-slip-me a-Meti-in-the-first-place Plan.  :)  

Gramma Duty

“I know what’s going on here,” Gramma said to me while we were sitting on the porch yesterday. “You’re babysitting.”

“I’m babysitting?” I asked, astounded.

I wasn’t astounded that she said that. Nor was I astounded because what she said was untrue. I was astounded that she could tell the difference. After all, I am there all the time. But, this week Mom was at church camp, and so I was on Gramma duty. I don’t call it babysitting, or even Gramma sitting, I call it Gramma duty. The honoring of one’s mother and father, and their mother and father, etc, is a duty. that duty must be honored.

I wasn’t astounded that she called it babysitting. I was astounded that she saw the subtle differences in my behavior which apparently distinguish my “hanging with Gramma” from my duty to her. I’ve done Gramma duty before when Mom was away. And, yet, it was not until this time that Gramma somehow sensed the difference that changed our hanging out into me babysitting her.

“Yeah, you’re babysitting,”

I paused for a moment to consider how I got busted “babysitting”. Could have been Tuesday, when I had to go to the grocery store when Gramma was already outside on the porch.

There have been many times, while Gramma and I were “hanging out” on the porch that I have had to help her out of the chair. And there have been many times when I have lifted her lazy right leg onto the landing by simply placing my foot beneath hers and guiding it into the house. Even if she knows I am right behind her, she doesn’t know it’s my foot that is lifting her leg into the house. So, when I went to the store I asked one of the ladies in the food pantry to keep an eye on her, and to make sure she got back in the house if she chose to go in before I returned.

Perhaps the lady who sat with Gramma when I was gone mentioned that she was watching her for me. Not good, but possible.

Maybe it was the heat.  The current heat wave may have melted all my “hanging out” faces away and left an irritated face in its place. If so, I wouldn’t be irritated with Gramma, only with the heat.

However it happened, I got busted doing Gramma duty.

“Okay,” I said to her. “But I don’t call it babysitting.”

“What do you call it?” she asked.

“Gramma duty,” I answered.

And I held my breath. There were so many ways she could take that. So many graves I might be digging by disclosing the code name to other  covert operations of “Gramma duty” to Gramma herself.

She didn’t say anything for a moment.  Finally, I turned to her and smiled a “because I owe you” smile.  She smiled back. And nodded.

“Okay,” she said.

I’ll Keep Watching You

“You’re a good washer,” Gramma said to me today while I was washing her. “I don’t know what they really call those people.”

“Granddaughters,” I replied.

And then I sang as I continued to wash her, “I’ll keep washing you.” To the tune of a song I heard on the car radio earlier today.

She laughed just at the words I was singing, so I told her how I came up with them. “I heard a song on the radio that said, “I’ll keep watching you,”  so I changed it to “I’ll keep washing you.”

She laughed harder.

She responded by singing a few notes from a song from her early days.

“I used to be able to sing at the drop of a hat,”she said. “At reunions, family picnics, and on the radio. Then there came a day when they just said, ‘Shut up’.”

“Well, you can sing here anytime you want to.”

“Thank you.”

I continued to wash, rinse and dry and she moved as necessary for SWP (Standard Washing Procedure). And I sang repeatedly the line “I’ll keep washing you,” as that was all of the song that had stuck in my head.  And she continued to sing her dittie from way back in the day.

Finally, I said, “Okay. Stand up.”

Like the SWP trooper she is, she complied.

“My mother was hard to wash,” she said matter of factly.

“She was?”

“Yeah. She’d say, ‘that woman wants to wash my ass.’ I told her, ‘Mother, you just need to let her wash your ass.’”

I laughed out loud at how matter of factly my grandmother was giving her mother and herself use of the word ass. I couldn’t count the use of it in my presence by either of them on one hand.

“Okay, you can sit back down now,” I said finally. Gramma did.

While I was drying her off, and getting her clothes on her, I told her the story of the last time I saw my great grandmother before she passed away.

I was visiting her at her home in Hundred, WV with my parents when I was in college.  Sleeping on the couch, I was awakened very early in the morning by a suspicious noise. I slid my hands into Gramma’s slippers there in the bathroom, and demonstrated the noise by sliding them along the floor.

“Sha, sha, sha, sha,” I said as I did. “I half woke up, and thought, what in the world is that noise….Sha sha, sha sha, sha sha….And it was getting closer and closer….sha sha, sha sha, sha, sha. My eyes shot every direction trying to find the source of that noise. Finally, after several long moments, I shut my eyes, thinking I was either imagining it, or it was the house’s natural noises. About that time, Great Grandma leaned over the edge of couch into my face (eyes closed) and said, ‘How did you sleep honey?!’”

Gramma was laughing throughout the story, but this really cracked her up.

“She nearly scared me to death,” I said.

“My mother was very funny,”Gramma said.

“Yes, she was,” I answered.

Very funny, she was, indeed. It wasn’t until the last several years I figured out how my Great Grandmother knew I was awake even though my eyes were closed. I’ve watched my grandmother walk through a room (sha sha, sha sha). She can take over five minutes to walk across a room. And I have watched my grandmother check out everything in the room thoroughly between sha shas. Though my great grandmother’s sha shas were steady, with only minute pauses between, the simple truth is she was already in the room when my eyes were searching for the noise. She was already in the room when I closed them to feign sleep.  She knew I was awake.

“She knew she was going to scare me,” I told Gramma. “She scared me on purpose.”

Gramma laughed and laughed, until tears of laughter escaped from her eyes.

While I dressed her with fresh clothes, I sang it again, this time with its original lyrics, “I’ll keep watching you.”

Gramma giggled.  I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again – there is no greater sound than a 90 year old with the giggles.

Bring it on, Gramma.

My Imaginary Grandmother

For months a friend of mine has not been certain of Gramma’s existence. Well, that’s not entirely accurate. At first, he thought when I spoke of Gramma I was referring to my mother. I, of course, assured him that, yes, my mother lived there, but my Grandmother also lived in that house. After that, I think he just assumed I was making it all up as I went along – or was referring to things that happened when my grandmother was actually alive.

After all, she’d be like –

“She’s ninety years old,” I told him.

“You’re not forty yet, are you?”

“And you are a sweet man. I am in my forties.”

For anyone taking notes, that is what you say when you are closer to fifty than forty. (Especially when they’ve estimated younger than forty.) You say, “I’m in my forties,” and let them decide which of the forties you might be.

Still, he doubted Gramma’s existence in Mom’s house. Well, in his defense, he had never seen her. A near daily patron of the restaurant that literally sets in Mom’s backyard, he saw Mom and I come and go, but he never saw Gramma. He’d even come over and sit on the porch with me after eating at the restaurant – but he never saw Gramma. Until yesterday.

I was sitting on the porch yesterday in the late afternoon, when Mom’s back door opened. There stood Gramma with her walker and a piece of peanut butter fudge in one hand. As I was thinking how in the world she was going to get down that step onto the porch with a piece of fudge in her hand, she took a bite, looked at the step down in her path, and handed the fudge out to me.

“Will you hold this?”

I held her fudge as she navigated the step down, and moved to her seat on the porch. I went in the house, got us both a cup of coffee and returned to the porch to sit with her.

As Gramma and I were talking of this and that, I noticed that Bubb’s car was parked at the restaurant. Pulling my cell phone from its holster, I said to Gramma, “This is just too good to pass up.”

I sent Bubb a text – Come over and meet Gramma when you’re finished.

OK, he replied.

In case you were wondering, he is in his fifties (early fifties), which may be evidenced by his text answer. Those of us over 40 still spell out you’re, still use words like finished instead of done or thru and we still put the O in OK.

In a few moments, he came walking across the mission parking lot, to the porch.

“Hey, Yvonne,” he said as he approached.

“Hey, Bubb, this is Naomi.”

I didn’t mention how Gramma doesn’t like to be called Gramma by anyone but her grandchildren. I guess it makes her feel older than she prefers. Well, and me not introducing her as Gramma was, I admit, part of the fun.

He walked right up to Gramma, extended his hand, and said, “Hi, Gramma, I’m Robert.”

“Hi Robert,” she said. “I’m Naoma”

She calls herself Naoma – but that’s another blog.

“He thinks I made you up,” I told Gramma.

“The Imaginary Grandmother,” Bubb said.

Gramma pointed to me and said, “That’s my….”

“Your sister?” Bubb asked.

“Oh, heaven’s no,” Gramma said. “She’s my…”

“Aunt,” Bubb suggested.

Gramma laughed.

Well, well, well. Methinks he might be paying me back before the fun even gets started.

“Your granddaughter,” I said to Gramma before Bubb had our roles completely reversed and I became my grandmother’s grandmother.

“Yeah,” she stated. “She’s my granddaughter.”

At that, Bubb sat down. We talked of his day – he’s just acquired a new business in town. We talked of this and that.

“Nice day,” Bubb said to Gramma.

“Yes,” she said. “But a little chillier than I’m used to.”

Bubb  turned to me. “Where does she live?”

“Here,” I said.

“No, where is she from?”

“West Virginia. She was born in the northern part of the state.”

Clearly, not certain I was telling the truth given Gramma had just mentioned that the upper 70’s was a little chillier than she was used to, Bubb asked Gramma, “Where were you born?”

“I was born in Deep Valley,” she said. And then she checked herself by looking to me for confirmation. “Is that it?”

“Did you say you were born in Big Valley?” I asked.

“Ah huh,” she said.

Now Bubb was beginning to look mystified.

“No, you were born on the Ponderosa,” I said.

“That’s it,” she confirmed.

I think I’ve mentioned that Gramma has not lost her sense of humor. Gramma is hooked on Bonanza and Gunsmoke reruns on TVLand in the afternoons. Just today I walked through the room as she was watching her cowboys, and she said, “It’s about to get messy.” With my mention of the Ponderosa, she was all in on the fun.

“There are some of the best looking men you’ll ever meet on the Ponderosa,” Gramma told us.

Bubb gave me a you’ve-coached-her look. I shook my head, and laughed. There is no coaching Gramma on what to say – never has been.

Bubb spoke softer then, giving me a few details of his new business and how it’s going. I gave him the rundown on the new building to be erected at the mission and how the it was progressing. And we spoke of this and that.

“I know one thing for sure,” Gramma pronounced suddenly. We turned her direction. “I have three children, and they all went to school in West Virginia. Everyone said they were the top at everything.”

Bubb smiled. I grinned.

“Gramma’s looking to buy a car,” I told him.

He gave me another look – you’re not seriously going to let her drive, are you, it said.

“Gramma? Do you see that white car setting over there?”

She looked where I pointed – to Bubb’s white corvette. A few days ago he mentioned selling the ’95 Corvette he had and getting himself a new one.

“That’s his car. He wants to sell it,” I told Gramma.

“I’m looking for a car,” Gramma said, and sat up to get a better look. “That’s a nice one. Everyone should have one like that. And then have a…”

“Truck,” I finished her thought for her. She’s always wanted a truck.

“Yeah,” she said. “I had three brothers. They were all interested in cars. So I got interested in cars. Do you have a hard time keeping it warm in the Winter with that top on it?”

“I don’t drive it very much in the winter,” Bubb told her.

“It’s a nice one,” she said. “How’s the gas mileage on it?”

Bubb shot me a new look – am I having this conversation, for real, it said. I nodded.

“Not great gas mileage for what you’re looking for,” he told her. “It’s just a great toy.”

“Yep. Men will have their toys.”

I’m not certain, but I really thought I heard someone hit a gong at that moment. I busted out laughing. Bubb worked hard at restraining his laughter. And, my mother, who had been studying throughout our time on the porch, suddenly opened the back door.

“Well, hello, boys and girls,” she said.

“Bonnie!,” Bubb said. “You are so beautiful.”

“Yeah,” my mother said on her way to the car. “And you are full of it. I won’t say what it is, but it’s piled high and deep.”

Bubb got to let loose his laughter then. Some over what Mom said, some built up from his time on the porch with me and Gramma.

Through the laughter, Gramma said with absolute authority, pointing her crooked finger from my mother to me, “That’s my daughter. That’s the reason she’s my granddaughter.

And there you have it.

Bubb had to go, so he wished us all a good night, and went to his car. On the way out, he drove it close to the porch for Gramma to see and waved to her from his toy. She waved back.

He is a sweet man.

“Everyone should have one of those,” she said to me.

“Indeed,” I said.