2000-12-10 | 20:34:29

i talked to my grandma way far away today. she is 91 and getting a bit senile. fortunately, she is still happy and comfortable thanks to a wonderful live-in caretaker. unfortunately, i don't call or visit enough, which is a shame because it makes my heart happy to hear her laugh and to fulfill some granddaughterly responsibilities.

my sister and i grew up with our mom's mom next door in our duplex home, so she was the grandma who patted our heads when we came crying and kept our baby bird mouths full of home-baked goodness. our dad's mom was the grandma who we only saw twice a year on family trips since she lived at a distance. my little sister christened her "grandma way far away."

my grandma way far away has had a tough life. she grew up poor in the south and was raised by a mom who didn't seem to care for her much. fortunately, she was daddy's girl and she admired her father greatly. he's the one who kept her spirits up, but their homelife was still pretty miserable.

as soon as a nice young man paid her some attention, she married. anything to get away into a home of her own. she used to tell us about how her mother-in-law would sneak into their house to eat while they were out working. my grandma figured this out when she hid outside the house one day and saw the mother-in-law climbing in a window!

my grandma and her husband had four sons and a daughter. they were migrant workers, so they left oklahoma during the dust bowl and ended up in california. when my dad would tell us his "walked miles to school, uphill both ways" stories of childhood, he explained that when he was a toddler, he came down with the scarlett fever and his mother, unable to miss a day of work, laid him on a burlap sack and dragged him behind her as she picked cotton.

grandma way far away married three times and survived each of her husbands. after the third passed away when she was in her seventies, she told us she wasn't going to mess with men anymore. she still has elderly suitors at church, but she's stuck to her decision.

whenever we visited my grandma way far away, she'd cook us up the best fried chicken ever. oh yeah, and she raised those chickens herself in a backyard coop. she never sat down, preferring to pinball her way from counter to counter in her kitchen or to work in her huge garden--the size of an apartment complex. she was a workhorse of a woman, part of why she's stayed so sturdy in her old age.

about five feet tall, she'd hug us growing kids hello and ask, "are you trying to get bigger than your grandma?" every birthday for years, she send us a card with a dollar bill taped inside. every christmas we'd get a multi-pack of j.c. penney cotton underwear. every aunt, uncle and cousin got the exact same gift...in their appropriate size, of course.

at night, my sis and i would crawl into bed with grandma and she'd read us "the little engine that could" while her cuckoo clocks would tick away the hours.

today my grandma told me about the house she is staying in, describing the fruits and vegetables on the table. she laughs a lot and uses southern phrases like "reckon." when i ask how she is feeling, her response:

"ah well, i don't let myself think about it. i just get on with it."

wise words, i'd reckon. you can learn a lot in 91 years.

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today at girlboy, juli makes a list and checks it twice...

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