this one's for grandma

my cousin updated her facebook status today, saying that she had been to see the lion king in a theatre, and the last time she had seen it in a theatre she was with our grandma. she added how much she missed grandma. i ‘liked’ it, and commented that i agreed. then i cried for a while.

my grandma was* the type of grandma who would exclaim how beautiful you were upon walking into the room. didn’t matter how you actually looked.

when i see other people with their grandparents or elderly relatives i have a repetitive cycle of emotions. i’ve had it for as long as i can remember. the, ‘aww, how sweet’ endearment is immediate, but short lived. it’s a coarse thought that i’m not so proud of, but my next immediate thought is sympathetic and sardonic and goes something like this; “that’s sweet. too bad your grandparents aren’t my grandparents because there’s no way those people can love you as much as my grandparents love me. still, it’s nice that you try.”

it sounds incredibly childish, but i feel it solidly. it’s like believing in god. you can’t prove it god exists, but for someone who believes in god, it’s absolutely true for them.

likewise, there is no way that i can prove to you that my grandparents are/were better than yours. but i can tell you it’s absolutely true.

i feel bad for people who don’t/ didn’t have my grandparents. i only had/ have one set of grandparents. my mom’s parents passed before i was born. i think i would’ve liked my mom’s mom a great deal -not so sure about her dad- but i feel that i was blessed with the greatest grandparents alive- and the other grandparents would’ve been a cheaper, knock-off set by comparison. (sorry mom, but when you’re dealing with the ‘superman’ of grandparents, the rules change.)

there were times when my family would get together with aunts, uncles and cousins. sometimes my cousins’ other grandparents would be there. even as a youngster i would size them up. i’d look over at my younger cousins and think, “man, it’s got to be weird having to pretend that you like those people as much as your ‘real’ grandma and grandpa.” other grandparents were stern and cold. my grandparents laughed a lot and dosed out compliments and hugs. my cousins, brother and i were the most talented, intelligent, athletic, and beautiful children.

i sometimes forget that because i’m about ten years older than my cousins, they didn’t get to see grandma the same way i did. i got to see her before she was ill. she was always up early and making a frenzy of work in the kitchen. i wasn’t much of a breakfast person, but upon setting a toe on the floor at the bottom of the stairs she wanted to know what i wanted for breakfast; eggs, pancakes, bacon, cereal, toast. i opted for toast a lot- but that didn’t make decisions easier. “white, wheat, rye, pumpernickel, or cinnamon-raisin?”

you often hear about ‘grandma’s’ recipes from people. ‘oh, my grandmother had the best cobbler.’ blah, blah, blah. . yadda, yadda. (remember always- your grandmother is human, mine is superman.) my grandmother was a good cook. one iconic thing she had was lasagna. i’ve had lasagna here and there. some of it was good, and i’m always thankful for anyone who goes to the trouble of making it. . . . but it. isn’t. my. grandma’s. lasagna. sorry. my grandma’s lasagna had two secret ingredients. one of them was love, and the other i might teach you if i ever make her lasagna for you. even then, it can’t be as good, because she didn’t make it.

she was deathly allergic to shellfish and due to diabetes, there were many foods that she could no longer have. she often said, ‘take a bite for grandma’ when she knew you’d have something she couldn’t have. when i was younger i asked her what she meant. she explained she couldn’t eat it anymore and that if i thought of her when i took a bite then she could taste it again.

my grandmother died a little over nine years ago. i was in grad school, in ohio. my parents called during the week to give me a warning that they expected her to pass soon. i stood outside our main theatre school building shifting from side to side (very much realizing at that moment that shifting from side to side seemed to be something i did a lot, especially under stress). my friends joined me outside and tried to calm me down. i chatted with them through my tears. the week went on. there was a show on. sunday morning my parents called to let me know she passed. we made plans for the week then i got up and went to strike the show. my advisor called me over, wondering if i had heard any news. we were nearly done with the strike. without looking up from the floor i told her that my grandma had passed earlier that morning, and that i would most likely be missing a few days of school that week. then i went to finish the work.

one of the last things i got to tell grandma was that i had gotten an apprenticeship for the summer. toward the end she wasn’t always coherent, but she had some good days. that day was good. i told her i was going to work with an opera company. her eyes lit up wide and bright and watered a little. she loved opera.

she wouldn’t get to know how much that job meant to me. how it spun my world for better or worse. it filled my life with some of the hardest and best earned fulfillment i’ve had. she never got to taste it the way i did.

every so often there was a particularly beautiful aria that would stop me in my tracks. i sat in a quiet corner backstage closed my eyes and said, ‘this one’s for grandma.’ i would envision my ears funneling the sound through me and turning my body into a vibrating loudspeaker to my grandma.

i don’t know if my cousin acted as literally as i did as she watched lion king and thought of grandma. i like the thought though- my cousins, my brother and myself as a combined group feeding my grandma information (through the death curtain- like spies through the cold war curtain) snippets and bites as we continue on through our lives.

i don’t believe in life after death. but i would love to be proven wrong someday if my grandma would meet me on the other side and thank me for the beautiful music.

(of course then i’d have to do some apologizing and backtracking to my other grandparents about this blog.)





-i realize this was grandma centric even though i speak of both my grandparents as being supermen among ordinary humans. . . and sorry for the tense slashing. i still have one grandparent, my grandpa- just as my grandma is better than your grandma. . . so my grandpa is better than your grandpa. did your grandpa hand build a gorgeous cradle for you with hearts cut outs before you were born. .. that’s right. he didn’t. . . mine did.


*i just typed ‘is’ and had to go back to correct it.