Nine years ago my grandmother passed away on this day. I used to spend this anniversary day in a cloud, a fog, a haze…tears traveling down my face. My heart and head heavy. In 2013, I suddenly said, “No more.” I planned my three-week solo trip to New Zealand in December of that year, and from that point on I made sure to spend this day doing something grand. In 2014, I had a spa day with a close friend, getting nails done along with a facial and a mud massage before eating pizza and cake. In 2015, I weighed in for my last powerlifting meet and prepared for the next day of breaking previous personal records. In 2016, this day fell during my solo vacation to Cancun…a break away from everything and anything that did not include reading, the beach, and a Bellini or three. But this year, I made no plans. I had horrible dreams last night, and a part of me worried about not making plans to turn today into a celebration instead of a mourning. I worried I would be sucked under the covers of depression like the early years after she passed away. But I also purposely didn’t plan anything for today because I know I am making a trip to Oregon for the first half of January to start a new chapter, one that would make my grandmother beam and brag.
She always loved my writing. Always wanted me to do something spectacular with it. Always wanted me to share it with the world. She always believed in me. She was always there for me. She loved me to the depths of her being. She was me: just a little skinnier in the legs, a little taller, a little less filter on the mouth (I was always telling her, “you can’t say that out loud in public!”), a lot more red in the hair, and a love for gefilte fish that I could never understand. She saved me time and time again in life, as she and my grandfather paid off my student loans while I was teaching so that I wouldn’t have to get a second job, giving me their old Pontiac so I wouldn’t have a car payment on a teacher’s salary, helping me out of a really tough situation after my marriage when even my parents chose not to help me. The list goes on and on.
There are so many things I could say about her being so much more than a grandmother to me, so much so that she was actually a second mother to me. But I am not ready to be outrageously public about the things that were missing from or incredibly hurtful in my childhood and teenage years. But here’s one thing: her face always lit up when I entered the room. Her voice always brightened when she realized it was me on the other end of the phone. I have yet to have another single soul in my life who has matched her in personality, creativity, uniqueness, and love for me. When she died, a void was born, and only after I planned my trip to New Zealand did I realize that no one else in this world will ever fill that void…except for me. Because I am her. And sometimes when I lose esteem, fall into old habits, tell myself hurtful things, I remind myself that if I dare tell myself I am ugly, then I am saying she is ugly too…and that’s not fair.
It’s interesting because she used to always say she knew she wasn’t beautiful, just interesting to look at. (To me, she was beautiful…looking like a Lucille Ball and aging with grace.) She felt that it was her personality, her ability to make others laugh, her social skills, her creativity, her intelligence, her way with words and way with threads, her delicate fingers that shaped clay and porcelain and held paintbrushes and fixed the shattered remains of broken statues that others from all over the country brought to her to fix…she felt that it was these qualities that made my grandfather and her friends fall so deeply in love with her. What is funny is that I feel the same way about me, except I don’t know I will ever find a man in this day and time who would ever resemble my grandfather, for he too embodied so much special that I just don’t know it could ever be replicated.
My grandmother. My “grand”mother. She was there for me in my first breathes, and I was there for her last ones. I spent my summers growing up at her house in Skokie, Illinois. I saw her at her highest and at her lowest. I helped carry her, helped put make up on her, helped make her laugh, and I certainly made her cry a bunch (I think I have an innate ability to make anyone cry…and laugh). I talked back to her. I bickered with her. I wrote poems for her. I lectured her. I listened to her lecture me. I watched her draw her eyebrows on and spray enough AquaNet on her hair to kill a small Texas town and listened to her lecture me about sunscreen and taking care of my skin. I watched her face when she ate ice cream. I remember her splitting her pieces of Trident gum into thirds and drinking 7-Up and Ginger Ale. I remember having chocolate Italian soda with her for the first time and eating peanuts at Wrigley Field while we watch her Cubbies play. I remember her throwing jinxes and hexes at the TV when she watched both the Cubs and the Sox play. I remember when she took me before I started ninth grade to get my eyebrows waxed for the first time and get my hair cut and done up nice after my mom didn’t take me to a hairdresser for over a year. I let her teach me how to sew and do needlework. I remember the little butterfly cross stitch kit she got me and how happy she was when I finally got hooked on something needle-and-threadish.
She didn’t understand the powerlifting or bodybuilding or muscles on girls thing. She actually said to me, “You feel like a rock. Women are supposed to be squishy.” I laugh as I type this. In all honesty, she hated the muscles on me and once told me I look like a man. Ironically, that was back when I was going on stage at right around 100 pounds. She eventually apologized and never said it again. She watched me perform at every show she could attend and no matter what she thought of the muscles, she always told me, “You were the most beautiful one up there.” As she sat in the audience, she would tell everyone around her about her granddaughter. She would find out who they were there for and would make a deal to cheer for their loved one if they cheered for hers. That was my grandmother. She would talk to a stranger and about a stranger with no hesitation and no filter. The things she would say! (As I mentioned earlier, I was constantly telling her, “you can’t say that in public!”) I still hear her when she used to tell me, “You need to learn how to small talk,” and “Poems should always rhyme,” and “If I were a boy, I’d date you,” and “Put your sweater on; I’m cold,” and “As long as you are happy, I am happy.”
Do you know our last words were “I love you”? How many people do you get to say that to in their final hours before they slip away from you forever? I got to say it to the person who impacted my life the most, who steers her soul through my bloodstream.
May I make you proud, Mama Delle—more proud than you already are—as I open my own soul, throw away my ego, strip down to the barest of my being, find the esteem to understand that I really do belong in this graduate writing program and find the belief that I will not fail and will instead rise like the golden Phoenix bird you made long long ago that now sits on my living room wall. My writing and my happiness will always be dedicated to you.
