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Board Administrator Username: mjm Post Number: 4188 Registered: 11-1998 |
Honorable Mention Grandma (mother-in-law) Steve Williams visit 1 In my wife’s old bedroom, pictures of youth on a childhood desk. Out the door, grandpa is dying from an abused liver, dystrophied older brother suffers the tenth year of his flight back home. Grandma Ada shuffles through the house, responds to the 3 a.m. calls for pillows moved, water cup filled; silent in her service. Like two crows squabbling over a fresh morsel, they vie for her attention. visit 3 On a garage clothesline, hang drying sheets of used aluminum foil that float over a freshly waxed concrete floor. Other depression values abound, the one light out of four screwed in over the vanity, the hot water turned down, and the shades drawn to protect green of the shag carpet. A domestic magician, my dirty socks and underwear vanish to reappear folded, ironed. I tell Ada not to darn the holes in the socks— that I just throw them away. The movie house horror on her face convinces me never to return with less than perfect hose. visit 4 to grandma’s now empty house, her husband scattered over the pacific, her son now where someone can lift him to the toilet; ebullient at our arrival, in curlers, hair net and robe, she grasps each cheek and leaves a bright kiss. She went to the card club today; plays poker with her handbag on her lap, feet under the chair, rarely loses. ‘there was a big bluffer today, but we got him!’ visit 7 She doesn’t want to travel, she’s seen the world with the man she loved; twists up her face at the idea of flying alone. Ada refuses sunday mass. The scandals offend her memories of nuns and their gift of an adopted daughter in Hong Kong; her Italian-Catholic childhood. She talks of making meals for her son, ‘he needs a break from the food there’, the nice lady at the bank who balances her check book ‘she sent me the nicest card’, the wonderful neighbors, her beautiful grand-daughter, joining her husband in heaven. |
