about my granny.

i’ve written about it here a few times.  of any and everything else, grandmother must have her coffee or else, Katy bar the door.  it’s still that way, but the explosion is different.  before when there was no coffee, she fought.  she screamed and raged and threw things.  now, she settles into anxiety, asks for is on constant repeat and eventually retreats to her room to cry.

you wouldn’t think you’d ever have to supervise someone pouring herself a cup of coffee, but over the past couple of years, we’ve had to.  i’ve noticed the lapses in cognizance creep in slowly.  first, she’d pour a cup and forget to put sugar in it.  then, she’d open every cabinet and cupboard in the kitchen looking for the sugar, which always sits next to the coffee maker.  then she began fixing her cup of coffee and returning to the table without it.  this meant a return to the kitchen, but forgetting on the way that there’s already a cup waiting and getting a fresh cup.  soon, there would be 5 piping hot cups of coffee in the kitchen and a confused 86 year old woman at the table wondering why we’re taking so long bringing her her brew.

prior to that, she forgot how to use the microwave.  my brother, in his days of being an electrician’s apprentice, screwed up the wiring somehow, so we can only use it for 45 seconds at a time because otherwise, it blows the circuit and the electricity goes out in the entire house.  in the beginning, she’d set the microwave for 10 minutes to heat a few swallows of coffee, and we’d have to stomp outside to the fuse box in all manner of weather, cussing and fussing all the way.

then she took to eating an entire spoonful of sugar before pouring one into her coffee cup.  “just to see if it’s sweet,” she said.  since then, she’s had her own personal sugar bowl due to our aversion to having to navigate clumps of sugar likely bound together by an old woman’s saliva. 

 we’re still trying not to do it for her—we want her to be as independent as she can for as long as she can, and when she fell ill, getting her own coffee was something she prided herself in.  so now, instead of doing it for her, we walk in behind her and pretend to busy ourselves with other things—wiping down a counter, pouring a glass of water—to make sure the operation goes smoothly. 

but we can’t watch her every second of every minute, not with other life in the house to live.  last month, my mother told me that my grandmother got confused and poured her coffee into the sugar bowl rather than the coffee mug laid out for her.  that was funny, she said.  they had a laugh about that, and i laughed when my mother told me about it.

a few days later, she said she put flour in her coffee instead of sugar.  we laughed about that, too, but not as hard.

last week, my mother called me with a marked weariness in her voice, saying that this time, my grandmother managed to put a bunch of coffee grounds in her cup and she sat spitting them out, all over the table, all over the floor, for hours.  my mother sat and tried to explain to my grandmother that she really did have to try harder to hold on, and i felt a piercing in my heart.  she spoke with such pleading, such helplessness.  as she spoke, i caught a little of what she said, but mostly my mind drifted, wondering what the scene must have looked like, how it must have felt for them both. 

i tried.  and i think i got it.

———————-

The sound of her spitting is one that drives those around her into an instant rage.  Since her strokes, she doesn’t swallow well, which I understand.  But she spits.  She spits on the floor, she’s spat at me.  I give her napkins for whatever is in her mouth that she wants out, but she wipes her nose with them and puts them in her pocket.  It’s why we can’t take her out to eat anymore.  She chews her food and, best case scenario, she puts it in her hand and tosses it on to her plate.  And we get to try to finish our food looking at a heap of chewed up hamburger or runny, mashed up turkey. 

She has her spot at the head of the table that we walk past in a wide arc because we don’t want to step in whatever she’s spat out onto the floor when no one was looking.  We can’t walk around the house barefoot anymore.  We feel every inch of these small, forced changes every time we hear that ‘p-too! p-too!’ pinging at our eardrums.  This morning, I can’t take it, already.  She woke me and my migraine at 5 am, and I thought I’d be able to trust the coffee pot to keep an eye on her while I went back to sleep.

I stormed out of the room prepared to rage and already feeling bad for it when her face stopped my feet where they were.  She looked confused and panicked, slobber and black stuff waterfalling from the corners of her mouth.  She rubbed at her tongue with a napkin as if trying to remove a stain. 

“Mama?” I said, half alarmed, “what are you doing?”  Was she throwing up bile?  Is this coagulated blood?

“Somethin’ wrong with this coffee!” she said in between spits.

“Wait, wait, wait.  Wait, stop that—let me see your cup.  Mama, stop that!  Stop spitting!”  She paid me no mind.  I grabbed the coffee cup and looked inside.  It was half full of coffee grounds.  Anyone else would have laughed, but I just sighed a tired sigh.  “Mama, how did you even do this?”  When she heard my voice, she turned to look at me and I caught a mouthful of spit and coffee grounds in the center of my t-shirt.  My eyes flashed red.  “Goddamnit!  Look at this!  You do not do that!  You do not spit inside your own house!  Look at this floor, Mama!  LOOK!  Don’t you care about this place?  Why do you treat it this way?? You’re sitting in front of a roll of paper towels and you’re spitting!  Why?  Why?!  I told you to stop!  Stop!!!“ 

She looked sorry, but kept spitting as if she couldn’t help it.  I complained as if she could.

“Why won’t you listen to me, Mama?” I sank into the chair next to her.  “Mama?  Hey.  Hey!  Look at me when I’m talking to you.  Please, look at me.”  She glanced at me for a few seconds and went back to her frenzied spitting and wiping.  I watched her quietly.  She took the napkin that had been in her mouth, on her tongue, and started wiping the table with it, spitting all the while.  I grabbed her hands and held them to the table.

“Mama,” I pleaded.  “You have to help me.”  She looked at me, wide-eyed, confused.  “I want to keep doing this.  Do you hear me?  I want to be here.  I don’t have to be; I am here with you because I love you.”  She turned, spat, looked back at me.  “I want to be here but I can’t keep doing it; not like this.  Not by myself.  None of your other kids are here to help us, Mama.  It’s just me and you.”  She opened her mouth to defend her 5 other children.  I spoke louder because they didn’t deserve it.  “I don’t want to live in a house where we spit on the floors and smear shit all over the toilet seat with our washcloths.  You know better than that.  You’re a grown woman, Mama.  You’re a woman.  Don’t forget your dignity.”  I took stock of my emotions.  I wasn’t angry.  I was tired and defeated and hanging on with the last of my broken fingers and arms and legs and guilt-ridden over it. 

“You just need to try, Mama.  You have to try.  Do you hear me?  I want you to live in this house until the day you die, but I cannot do that if it continues this way.  Try.”

“I do try—”

“You don’t!  You don’t try!  You’ve been here looking me in the face hearing me to tell you to stop spitting for 10 minutes and you’ve done nothing but!  I don’t care that you put coffee grounds in your coffee, but I do care that you’re doing things like this, like spitting on your own floors, the ones you’re so proud about owning.  You can forget how to fix your coffee, but you can not forget how to be an adult.  Okay?  That is not an option.”  I let go of her hands, gave her a new napkin, and she got back to trying to clean the mess she made, still spitting.  Not as much, but  spitting still.

“I’ll get it, Mama,” I sighed.  “Just go to your room.  I’ll bring you some more coffee.”

She toddled off, leaving a trail of coffee grounds in her wake.  I looked at the sunlight snaking through the yellowing curtains that I haven’t had time to wash in ages and angered at this perfect, unusable chance to cry alone.  No one knows that I’m out of tears. 

I set about cleaning the coffee grounds and droplets of coffee and spittle from the table and cursed every curse I knew.  I volleyed between guilt and anger and was not surprised that the fire burned as hot in either furnace.  I know it isn’t her fault.  I know she can’t help it. 

But it’s not my fault, either. 

I can’t help it, either.

——————————

my mother is thinking of putting my grandmother in a nursing home.  it will be the death of us all, but this is something we’ve always known.
like death, it is something we can’t stave forever.

i do not look forward to it any more than i look forward to daily calls from my mother at her wit’s end.  as caretaker, i support her and her decisions fiercely. 
it is my job.  i am dutiful.
it’s difficult, but far easier than having to be the one to make such decisions.  she is doing what we can’t.  i am in awe and unenvious.

it will be a long time before either of us is brave enough to explore the option in detail, to fully accept the reality. 

until then, i have a few fingers and arms and legs in tact, ready to help hold it together.

she sometimes seems to be more frown than smile.  of her reasons to frown, most popular is confusion.  the day of the week, the time of day, the person sitting on her couch.  who is that?  who?  i can’t remember, baby.  i’m sorry.  if you know where to look, you catch the weary sadness that blinks fast across her face before she sends in the heavy artillery—sharp, beaming smiles lobbed like flash grenades at the center of your pupils.  pay no attention to the stooped, forgetful old woman behind the wrinkled curtain of soft, pendulous flesh.  instead, check out this cute, winking queen retired of her throne, resting her cheek in her hand, showing you every tooth she has in her mouth.  how adorable is she?

but there is grief before that smile, unmistakable. the recognition that something is missing, something that will not come back.

it comes to play in longer stretches when the last drop of coffee is gone every morning, or when her company stands to leave at the end of a visit.  where you goin?  why?  when you comin back?  they, like her morning coffee, will return, but for her, every goodbye seems so final.

knowing this, my brother was openly against my mother’s decision to take my grandmother to her nephew’s funeral, my Cousin M.  my grandmother is, and always has been, human-sized heart on legs.  whatever she feels, she feels it with her entire body. it shoots from her eyes springs from her mouth and cascades from her pores and floods the entire room around her.  in church, her voice carried above the choir’s during her favorite songs, and she has one of the worst singing voices i’ve ever heard—flat, obtuse, jagged.  but she couldn’t quiet it if she tried, and she never did. 

and she still doesn’t.

my brother worried that in her fragile state, her heart—which is less than 25% functional—would give out and she’d literally die of her grief.  it was not at all an unfounded fear.  before the strokes and seizures,  back when she was much stronger, i thought i was watching her die the night we told her that another of her grandchildren was dead by his own hand. she screamed, she cried, she gasped for air, briefly found it, and fell hard against the back of her dining room chair.  my mother shoved me toward the phone and told me to call 9-1-1 while she went to find the small vial of nitroglycerine she kept on her dresser.  my fingers managed the buttons.

9-1-1, do you have an emergency?

yes, i think my grandmother’s—

dying?  before i could force the word out of my mouth, my mother pushed me out of the way and took the phone.  i was in college when this happened, so i know i was at least 18 years old, but when i remember it, i am much younger.  9 or 10, small, and completely useless. 

remembering that moment, i got scared and agreed with my big brother.  my mother is unmarried and my brother lives in another city, which puts me at number two in the chain of support.  she can’t afford to push me out of the way anymore because i can’t keep it together; it’s now my job to hold my mother up while she does the same for her’s.

*   *   *

Cousin M. was my grandmother’s sister’s son and he was big into photography.  though he lived nearly 600 miles away, he and his wife were always at every single family function, and he’d barely wait long enough to say hello before he broke out his camera.  the kids—i, my brother, our cousins, and later my nieces—came to loathe that camera and would take off for the basement whenever he’d arrive to try and finish our christmas and thanksgiving dinners before he found us.  Cousin M. didn’t care how hungry you were.  so what if you’d been waiting all day for those yams and dreaming about that macaroni and cheese.  he had a picture to take and you were going to put down the fork and stand next to your mother/brother/sister/cousin and put your hand on his/her shoulder, move closer toward the left, nope, too far, back to the right a little, okay now tilt your head towards him, just a little more, alright, that’s perfect, big smiles on one, two, three, okay now one more.  oh, we *hated* it, and no one was more annoyed by the clicking of that camera than my grandmother.

too bad for her, though, because he and his wife absolutely adored her and spending time with her.  there are countless pictures of my grandmother dressed to the 9s, posed, poised, and scowling the meanest scowl you’ve ever see in your life.  but for every one of those, there is one of her bright-faced and smiling, wrinkle-free, chubby, gold-toothed, and alive, so alive, running around Washington, opening presents, wearing clothes that she herself shopped for, washed, ironed, mended, and laid out.   how amazing it is to have proof of her this way.  how jarring and gorgeous it is to watch her look at herself and remember. 

no one ever figured that there’d be a day when the clicking would stop. 

one of my most important memories came from Cousin M.  my mother’s sister’s branch of the family is markedly different from my grandmother’s.  as my mother and uncle explained, they (my grandmother’s sister’s progeny) were very sweet, non-confrontational people.  my granny’s kids, on the other hand, often went to their cousin’s houses to beat up the kids their non-confrontational cousins had problems with.  their nature, i assume, came from their faith.  they are deeply religious people, the sons and daughters of a pastor, and a few of them pastors themselves.  the second most important thing to them, right after religion, is family, which is why it was nothing for Cousin M. to make the 10 hour drive from virginia to kentucky to see about his folks.

he had done just that for a reason i can no longer remember—another relative was in the hospital, or a baby had been born, or they just wanted to say hello—and they stopped by our house on their way back out of town.

i’d been back in town for a year, maybe two, having moved back home from the east coast to help my mother care for my grandmother.  i was in a horrible space at the time, stressed, angry, resentful, and not sure that i had made the right choice for myself.  i couldn’t find a job, i had no privacy, i was still suffering through terrible writer’s block, and i felt like i’d successfully made every wrong decision possible i could have possibly made to land me in my mother’s attic nearing 30 years old. 

before Cousin M. left the house that day, he walked up to me and asked how things were going.  Cousin M. was a tall man with an even taller presence, and when he spoke, you listened.  i said they were going okay.  i didn’t spill my guts, but i didn’t sugar coat them either.  then he put his arm on my shoulder, looked me in the center of my eyes and said, “i’m proud of you.”  i felt a jolt somewhere in my gut and instantly sat up a little taller.  i thanked him, and he held his gaze until it almost got awkward.  when he finally left, i turned his words and his tone over in my head, and i came to the conclusion that i had won Cousin M.’s respect, and that was a big fucking deal.  an ex-marine, Cousin M. was big on discipline and values, and i knew that impressing him was significant, that it really meant something.

for the first time since i’d given up my life to move back home, i felt like i’d made the right decision.

i did not at all take that for granted.

*  *  *

my mother said she decided to take my grandmother to the funeral because it would be wrong to keep her from it.  if it were one of my grandmother’s children, she reasoned, her sister would be there.  if it’s too much for her and we have to take her out, we’ll take her out.  but we need to give her the chance.

i agreed with her.  i, too, wanted her to have the chance to make it through the funeral, but more than that, i wanted her to have the chance to live normally.  we grieve when someone dies.  we ache, we rage, we cry.  we are loud and inconsolable and overcome.  but how alive we are in those moments, when we feel.  and she is still alive.  she’s in there, and she is still strong and i often resent the velvet gloves we have to don to handle her.  give her the opportunity to be herself.  this isn’t the same as crying over coffee or a broken tv.  let her feel; let her walk through it, and let us help her when she needs it.  give her the opportunity to be normal.  let her have that.

my mother primed her carefully.  she had conversations with her about it every morning during the week prior.  you know the funeral is on monday, right? and you’re going to go and be strong for your sister, right? three more days until the funeral; do you know what you’re going to wear?  do you still want to go?  one more day, mama.  the funeral is tomorrow.

i think she was hoping to give her enough time to get through the bulk of her sorrow, but it didn’t work.  her agony was palpable; it played at the tiny hairs inside our ears and tickled the backs of our necks. we waded through it, dodging shards as her shrieks splintered and crashed against the stained glass windows.  she tried to choke down the screams before they left her mouth, like someone with the flu with lungs too sore to cough, but she only really quieted when the choir sang.  we thought she’d come through the worst of it when someone behind her screamed—Cousin M.’s daughter, i think—and she was off again.  and again when they closed the casket.

i cain’t see M! she said, loudly—a question more so than a statement.  no, mama.  he’s gone now. aw, yes i can! another pleading question. 

once the pastor took to the pulpit and did what he was there to do, i noticed my grandmother’s cries giving way to conversation.

i love you, she said loudly to my mother, but i don’t want you to leave me!  i want you to stay with me for ever and ever and ever! 

and then,

where’s my hat?  i need my hat on my head!

followed by,

who’s that up there?  i don’t know her.

soon my mother leaned over to me and said, “alright, tracy.  she’s getting mean.”  that’s a good sign, i said.  she’s feeling better.

she made it.

Cousin M.’s mother (left) and her sister, my grandmother. photo taken by Cousin M. rip.

i can’t think of a single thing she’s afraid of.  seriously and literally.  i’m not exaggerating even a little bit. 

well, i guess these days, she’s afraid of being alone—she gets anxious when anyone stands from their seat and obsessively asks “where you goin?” when they move to exit a room she’s in.but that’s not her though.  that’s what time and strokes have given to her.  but my *real* grandmother, the her that is buried beneath the anxious obsessions is literally scared of nothing.

she always did the dirty work, my grandmother.  when i was a kid, my mother was too squeamish to pull my teeth when it was time, and i was not about to tie a string to any of my teeth and sit while someone slams a door to yank it out.  so, when my mother couldn’t take any more of my wiggling a dangling tooth, she sent me to my grandmother.

“my tooth is really loose,” i’d say to her.

“let’s see.”

“don’t pull it!”

“i ain’t.  let’s see.”

and every time, i’d open up, point to the tooth, and she’d have it in my hand before i had time to protest.  that happened with each and every tooth.  i’d tell her not to pull it, she’d promise not to, i’d believe her, then she’d yank it.  quick & dirty, in the middle of what ever she was doing.

i feel uneasy remembering this, because something else she isn’t afraid of is germs.  washing her hands was hardly paramount to her, and it really should have been, given her pastimes:  tending to her endless rosebushes she grew in the backyard (without gardening gloves), cleaning the fish & rabbits her brother brought by the house after his trips to the lake; cutting corns and callouses from her feet with her pocket knife; mindlessly picking her nose while watching her favorite shows.  from her hands to my mouth, with no pit stops.  i’m pretty sure that has something to do with my current germaphobism.

i always figured that she wasn’t used to having the time to stop for things as trivial as hand washing—raising six kids on your own, there was always a mouth to feed, a fight to break up, a meal to cook.  i wish she was afraid of them, though.  or at least wary of them.  something i’ve been wanting to write about here is barriers, things that make me hesitant to get physically close to her.  the main thing is hygiene.  we see to it that she bathes regularly, of course, but there are the little things she doesn’t bother with anymore—eating neatly, keeping her nose clean.  but i’m afraid of painting an unappealing picture of my grandmother and of aging:  a weathered, sallow mass, face always slick with unchecked snot, thick streams of chewed food cascading from the corners of her mouth during meals; swollen, leathery fingertips from constant nervous gnawing; the dank smell of who knows what kind of bacteria incubating on her tongue because she won’t wash her hands before putting them in her mouth after using the bathroom.  i don’t want that to be what anyone pictures when they read about her here.  i don’t want that to be what waits for my mother or myself if we are blessed enough to make it to her age.  i don’t want to acknowledge that part.

but i guess i just did.

i digress.

anyway, she’s not afraid of anything, my grandmother, in her youth or today.  that lasting fearlessness comes in handy, because what we are afraid of, she faces for us just as easily now as she did in her able body.  especially various and sundry critters—rodents, bugs, spiders.  i’ve seen her kill huge, menacing looking spiders with the bare palm of her hand without blinking.  and mice.  oh, lord, the mice.

our house is old, and the wooden cellar door had been waiting to die for most of my childhood.  during the cold months, little field mice would gnaw at weak, rotting spots in the door and slip in to try and wait out the winter in our basement.  my mother wasn’t having that, though. the list of things that she is afraid of is very, very short, but mice undoubtedly own the top spot.  so, she’d put down snap traps and sticky glue pads each winter.  i hated them.  it’s not that i liked the mice—i didn’t.  but there are few things more traumatizing than listening to the panicked death shrieks of a mouse stuck on a glue trap while trying to watch cartoons mickey mouse cartoons.  except, maybe, looking around for a barbie doll and instead finding a nearly decapitated mouse head in a pile of blood and guts. 

it became unbearable when i looked at a mouse, frozen prostrate on a glue trap, and noticed that it was actually kind of cute.  i once tried to convince my mother to take one of the poor bastards off the trap and set it free in a park somewhere, not understanding why taking it off the trap was impossible.  i can’t remember if my mother explained it to me, but if she hadn’t i got the message loud and clear after i told my granny about the mouse.  since she was fearless and apparently indestructible, we left mouse disposal up to her.  i followed her at 10 paces as she went to get the trap, then stood in the door watching as she took the mouse out back, leaned over the railing of our deck, grabbed its thrashing tail and ripped half of its body off the trap.  then she very causally tossed the free portion over the fence for the neighborhood strays to take care of, and tossed the trap and its remainder in a trash bin.  then she walked back into the house and went back to whatever she was doing, maybe stopping to wash her hands on the way.  and maybe not.

that insane fearlessness was called upon again this week when my mother walked in the kitchen to find my grandmother poking at a pile of newspaper with her cane.  my mother started fussing about her not cleaning up her dinner plate when my granny pushed back the paper, causing my mother to completely lose her shit.

“OH MY GOD!!  what is that doing in here?!??!”  my grandmother shook her head.

“just a lil’ ol’ mouse,” she said.

“i know!  what’s it doing in here?!?!”

“it’s dead,” my grandmother said, completely not understanding what the hell she was afraid of.  she shook her head again and turned to leave.

“wait!  aren’t you gonna fix it??”

“can’t fix it; it’s dead.”

“i know, but i can’t clean it up, mama!  i need you to do it!”

my grandmother gave a long, exaggerated “tsk, tsk, tsk,” before going to get the broom and dustpan.  i didn’t see her smile, but i can feel it even as i write these words.

she is needed again.  she is still mama, the one who comes to her kids’ defense when they need her, who can still do for us what we can’t. 

on her way back to whatever she was doing before, she grinned a taunting little grin that said “and don’t you forget it, neither.”

(i can’t remember if she washed her hands or not.)

once, when i wrote far more often than i do now, i wrote a series of three prose pieces about 3 different pictures from our old photo albums.

one of those pictures was of my grandmother and her husband, my grandfather.  i don’t have the picture to upload right now, but i want to share the piece that was written of it; maybe i’ll do this with some other pictures, too:

————

i was told that my mother was just a little girl when this photograph was taken. far younger than i. younger even than my niece, her son’s first born daughter. it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the image of my mother so small, still needy. she probably looked like me, or rather, i looked like her when i was the age she probably was when this scene was captured. new & knee-high to a junebug.

but this picture isn’t of my mother or myself. it’s about our rock, our foundation. our reason for life and the man she used to love.

this picture, like the frozen forms housed within it, has lived a long, eventful life. the ridges of an anonymous fingerprint grip the middle of the photo at the bottom, not far from the curling edge, yellowing with age. i like to imagine that this picture has seen more and heard more and lived more than any one person, one tree, one river cld ever dream of living in a thousand lifetimes. i like to think the same thing about my grandmother, too.

she sits close to him in this picture on his left hand side. to this very day, she still has the watch that she wears here on her right wrist; im sure that it doesn’t work anymore, but that’s no reason to throw away the bearer of so many memories. her hair is pulled back, displaying the fullness of her face to the world. her grin is subtle, barely noticeable, much like my mother’s mouth that easter morning in 1988 or 89.

i wish she bore a full smile.

her hands lay serenely in her lap and the both peer assuredly into the camera lens. i wonder what they’re so sure of? maybe he was certain that he, in his white t-shirt, pale cap and slacks, wld be nothing less than debonair in the final print. and maybe she knew that he wld get jealous as other women’s lovers turned to watch her walking down the street on his arm, the whiteness of her dress kissed yellow with time, floating about her hips. my grandmother had all the genuine prettiness of a sunflower that had managed to grow in gravel, drinking only when heaven spared libation. maybe they knew then that their children and their children’s children would see them this way someday and meant to show them what they had to look forward to—stark brown beauty. commanding mouths and knowing eyes for the women. chiseled faces and soft cheekbones for the males.
he wasn’t the most handsome individual, but he is beautiful with her sitting there, so close to him.

maybe they were only sure of each other’s presence.

i think more than anything, though, she was secure and sure in her love for him.

love lives in every corner of this picture and dances on its right hand side, in the extra space on the bench, vacant because my grandmother has positioned herself as close to him as possible. all the mutual adoration they lost, all the sunrises and prayers and silly lover’s quarrels they shed as they watched their children grow older and fall in love themselves, it all thrives in that space next to her here.

i feel almost like a voyeur seeing them this way.

i cannot tell whether my granny is happy here
or if she wld rather ride the first wind out of this picture
but she did love him. the way she leans into him tells us that much.
after giving him 6 children, why shldn’t she?

and after being left to fend for them alone,
why shld she smile?

maybe she knew then that this moment was fleeting. maybe she was sure then that she cld raise three brown boys and three brown girls to be upstanding black men & women on her own. she was sure of her strength. and she loved him, but not more than she loved herself.

he has alzheimers today.
he doesn’t remember my mother, or me or any of his other children or grandchildren.

i’m sure he knows my granny, though. and if he was shown this picture, im sure he’d remember himself, too.

the picture is in black and white.
a sheet hangs on the wall behind them in a pattern than resembles some curtains my grandmother still has today. they, like this picture, are old, tattered, jaundiced with years.

she loves them though.
maybe they remind her of the evenings she hid from the setting sun
& kept her babies still during summer thunderstorms.

and by okay, i mean we’re in a state of stasis, locked into routine.  same schedule.  same places.  same frustrations. 

we’re holding steady, but we’re holding in a very stressful place.  but, it’s better than backsliding.  we complain, but stay thankful.

…but we do complain.

since my last entry, i moved out of the house i grew up in with my mother and grandmother.  it was tough to leave—i know they both missed me very much, and would be sad to go; and i know it’s terribly convenient having another adult in the house to watch after my grandmother when my mother couldn’t due to schedule or stress.  i felt very guilty, and still do, but i had to.

there have been priceless benefits.  i no longer feel like running away and not telling anyone where i am… i’m much more relaxed and i like this city a lot more when i have my own space.  and probably the best benefit is that without having to handle my grandmother every single day—which is exhausting—my patience has grown exponentially.  it’s easier to handle all of the crying fits, the cussing, the turned up nose, the fight over dinner and pills.  but, ironically, what is still hard for me is the obsession with affection.

ive been struggling to find the nerve to write about this for a very long time.  i mean, what kind of cold, souless little imp gets tired of being hugged and kissed and told how much they’re loved?  i want to present it in such a way that it’s easy to understand, buti don’t want to offend anyone who is missing their grandmother, who would give anything for one more hug, one more kiss.  i also don’t want to look like a callous asshole.

these are the moments that i turn to fiction, where i can hide bits and pieces of the truth in dazzling arrays of words and distract with pretty phrases and cheeky dialect.  but even that has been difficult.  

this is why i try not to journal here.  fact is often much more terrifying than fiction.

anyway, this isn’t a flowery prose piece or anything.  just an update.  we are still here, we are still breathing.  we are still nursing calloused hands and hearts and tired smiles.  we’re still laughing to keep from crying and laughing til we cry.  we’re still rioting and against the long days and lamenting the shortness of life.  we’re still trying.  still flirting with dangerous fantasies that we know we all share, but will never acknowlege.

some of us are still praying.  some of us are tired.

but we’re still here, better or worse, fact or fiction.