Moving On
Moving through the cycles of life are sometimes more difficult than other times. I have moved 20 times in the last ….35 years of my existence, which is, most of my life. I had lived in University City as an infant, in St. Louis, MO, and then moved out of there, and into Olivette. In comparison, that was like moving from O4W/L5P/Cabbagetown (ATL) to Decatur/Tucker…
In Ucity, we had had a neighborhood grandmother, Grandma Velma. According to most who understand child-logic, I thought everyone had a Grandma Velma whenever they said Grandma. I didn’t understand the concept of a grandparent being a parent of your parent until much later in life. My Granna was my Dad’s mom and that eventually made sense around late elementary… but early childhood, I preferred my Grandma Velma, she was local and she loved me a lot. I understood that elders had the title bestowed upon them by the children they cared for.
Velma would be our caretaker every so often when Mom needed a break and we would play with her biological grandbabies and other kids in the neighborhood at her house. She had at least one goat who lived in her backyard with a very old swing set. Her biological son actually worked at the same firm as my Dad, so we would play with his kids whenever they had to meet up for information (the days way before the internet or wifi… just at the beginning of emails… My father was one of the first people ever to have a palm pilot or a blueberry…).
As we grew up, the Velma visits got more infrequent. I really missed her more than I thought I would. I recall hanging out with her in the kitchen a lot, as a kid; most times in silence. She would be cleaning or cooking something… and I would draw or color or be asking her questions. She always spoke to me as a respected equal. That always resonated with me. Her house always smelled divine, but especially yummy when she was cooking. I didn’t always like to taste, but I always liked the aromas.
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One of my very first memories was of her house. I think it was about 1989? Thanksgiving. I remember sitting on the floor while there were kids all around me and the furniture was covered in plastic sleeves. The couch and sofa chair were already occupied by other kids. The drapes had a leaf pattern and the walls were a light salmon or a peptalbismal pink…. There was a chair railing all around the room, above it was the monochromatic of vinyl, the texture like that of wood grain, but it was still pink. It had always confused me.
I looked over from the girl Peter Pan on the floor tv (a rather large television that was housed in a wooden box, that could double as a table) and Grandma Velma was in the kitchen speaking and joking and smoking with the rest of the adults. It was hot with cooking heat but coolness swept in from the open windows, bellowing in the new aromas from every prepared dish. My favorite were always the sweet potatoes, nothing but a little cinnamon for me. Velma caught my inquisitive eyes among the chattering Big People and waved at me like Robin Williams in Hook, to the neverland boys. I know that movie probably didn't exist yet, but that’s how my brain describes things… it associates definitions by my observations. A lot of lore and stories around Peter Pan has always resonated with me. Hook is one of my top five, let alone top 3 movies of all time. It flabberghasts me that it was a flop in theaters. Imagine if kids rated kid movies, not Big People. That also never made sense to me. Why would an adult be reviewing a movie that was made for kids?
Grandma Velma waved at me with her fingers, like a secret hello just for me. I smiled and went back to watching the vintage program. My sister never noticed. That moment was just between me and my Grandma Velma.
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I remember being in about 7th or it was probably 8th grade, one of the last times I had seen her when she had exclaimed, “Girl, you up on legs!!” …I had grown at least 3 inches vertically in the month or two leading up to the start of our last year at LJHS…. It was the last year that institution was going to be called that acronym. It’s now LMS and it sounds like it's a new disease, but I digress.
There was another visit, actually. She had moved to Sarasota FL for a time and we had visited her there on the way down to our biological grandparents on the gulf side of Florida.
I had reconnected with one of her biological grandsons on social media and he had informed me she had passed away in 2007. I was already in Atlanta by then, falling in love with the city. Atlanta back then felt like home, it felt like Olivette, circa mid 90s… no wonder I fell in love. The people here are just a little bit more kind, even if they don’t mean it…
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My first memory of my bio grandparents were of the pattern of the chair backs of their large dining room table in their condo on the twentieth floor in their Floridian building on the gulf coast. I can draw a blue print of their place. I recall the number of their condo only because it was the same year I was to graduate high school.
I can still smell their scent, like old people, cough drops, and Love. The main carpet was a short green shag, almost a Kelly green, but a bit more yellow. They were so high up that there were a few mornings we’d awake in the office where there were guest beds and there would be hawks or other birds of prey, seemingly floating there, hovering right outside our window! It was fascinating. We had a completely awesome view of the pier, of the beach, of the parks and the cars that would drive by. My favorite spot was outside on their balcony, having cereal and drinking my juice. It always felt exquisite out there with the gusts of wind and sea air... and my grandfather would be in his boxers and tied robe and slippers reading the newspaper. Sister was more cautious and stayed indoors. I didn’t blame her.
I remember there was a pool on their roof, and you had to walk through odd rooms to get to its access. I think it was a banquet hall and a couple party rooms. The décor was VERY 1980s, maybe a very recycled look from the late 70s. lol. I called one the emerald room and the other the blue room, if that gives you any indication of what they may have looked like.
The pool area had high walls all around except for some peek-through views, but they were heavily barred. The top floor, I believe, was 25th or 30th. Our Dad had more cartilage back then and would play with us in the pool, especially if his younger brother was going in, anyway. Him and his brother and brother-in-law would swim with us and their kids. They’d toss us around. One of my uncles was “very pale” but he was never the same color as me, “pale.” ….my uncle was always some shade of pink or red and then his hair was like a white blonde. He was very loving, but his hugs and handshakes were always a bit too harsh. I didn’t mind being thrown about in the pool, because my Dad always caught me or there was the water itself… but do not pick me up while on land. Too many uncertainties.
My biological uncle always reminded me of a lion. He had fabulous dark locks and a long beard. His hair went all along his face and head. He’s now shaven more cleanly since it all turned a white silver… A Floridian sun is not kind to reflective surfaces. According to him, his beard would blind him while driving! Wow!
My grandfather would swim laps. He had acrylic hand paddles and a swim cap, and goggles. He looked like an overly cautious seal. But he was a nimble, fast swimmer.
When I had become a licensed massage therapist in my late 20s, I remember driving an hour to work on him, he’d always wear his swim trunks. He would mistakingly title me a physical therapist (three more years of school) and an occupational therapist (different from body work all together), but he’s the only human that I would never correct. Compared to other clients I had worked on who was around his age, I recall his flexibility being very good, considering he was in his 80s. I'd always end with a kiss on his forehead.
He's really sick now, though. My last remaining grandparent. He was a marine. He was knighted. He was a newspaper man. He was a pillar in his catholic community. Some of the best stories I ever got from him were of his times from his youth, or stories of him and family. I recall him giving us piggy back rides when we were much younger and smaller, and holding our hands. He gave the best hugs. His long drawls of “Wellll….” before he told the best story ever… he has a bellowing voice that could shake a mountain. There was always a pool wherever they lived. It was Florida, you had to have a pool. I think it was a state law. State bird? The mosquito.
Granna was a marine as well, that’s how they met. I remember their wedding day movie was dubbed “the cartoon” because the playback speed was always too fast, so my aunts and uncle and Dad always called it "the cartoon." She was a captain in the marines. As the story goes, from the poor side of Chicago, Granna had tried signing up for the war effort a few times… but she was so malnourished that they wouldn’t accept her. A recruit had implied that if she ate a sht load of bananas and then was weighed, she’d probably get in. So, she had her friend buy two bushels of bananas, smashed some together and chowed down. She got in.
She started at the bottom rung but worked up pretty easily. Odd how three meals a day and a daily work out could make one better abled and sharp minded. …she was dating someone when she had met grandpa, and he was like, I've met her once, I'm going to marry her kinda romance…. I liked her ring. It was stainless steel, square bezel diamond setting. She had said there were only two choices on base, that one and the traditional claw setting (prongs). She had said she didn’t want to be constantly stuck on sweaters and her hair… she was a very practical lady. When she had gotten married, she was in art school to become a teacher but quit once she was with child with my oldest aunt.
She smelled of oat cookies, raisins, and those weird ricoli throat lozenges. She had emphysema and had had 1/4th of a lung removed in her late 60s because of it. She always had coughing fits and would be stocked with coughdrops all the time. Even though she was sick all the time, her physical strength always impressed me. I remember doing laundry at their place and I told her the washing machine wasn’t spinning out enough liquid before it was done for the dryer. She picked up a damp garment and just wrung like a cup of moisture out of it, no sweat… like, WOW. Ok. Hand strength is high.
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I remember having a dream the night she passed away. I had walked into a large, one-bed hospital room with a large bank of windows with those vertical blinds, slightly open. It seemed like the golden rays of a sunset were shining through the dust particles. My aunts, dad, and uncle were scattered around the room and the doorway, they were all different ages… I was from about middle school, as I walked into the room. The door was on the the corner of the room while her bed was on the far adjacent wall, centered. Next to her bed, in between the wall of sunlight and the bed, there was a round pedestal table, with that fake plywood look. There were cards and small flowers everywhere on the table. All the people in the room were standing still, they were all facing her. Everything and everyone was hazy, like they were out of focus. On the big round fake table, there was a vase of pink Iris flowers… like the purple ones from that Van Gogh painting, but pink. They were very sharp, and they were the only things holding focus. I stared very hard at them and then felt a sudden lift up. Granna wasn’t on the bed anymore and I woke up.
I knew she was gone before I got a call about 6 hours later from Dad. She was the matriarch. She was one of the only people who always treated me with respect. I mean, the whole of Dad’s family treated me with respect, I never questioned that. But as far as my interactions with other older people, even now, she set a high bar. Her and Velma were my grandmothers.
There was also my Mom’s Mom…. But at a certain age, Mom stopped involving herself with her parents and thus, we never really got to know them the way we knew Dad’s… and Grandma Velma.
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Today is Crickets' birthday. I hope he’s having fun somewhere. I’m still mad and it will take a long time to process and for me to forgive him… but in the meantime, I hope he enjoys his birthday more than I have enjoyed mine the past few years.
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Snow.
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