up to the cuse this weekend for a wedding of someone i haven't seen since our friend clint's graduation party, 1996. i'm clint's "date". have been informed that my duties include telling girls how nice he is, what a great artist is and how amazing the house he owns looks. i'm the flavor flav to his chuck d. his hype woman.my last trip home was a disaster. cell phone died. no car charger. couldn't buy a car charger at wegmans or price chopper at midnight. people looked at me like i was insane for using a pay phone!
got locked out of my friends' house and, not wanting to wake her dog or her twins, slept in my rental car in the driveway. that was after driving downtown and walking in bars i thought friends of mine should be in, to no avail. it was too late to just turn up on someone's doorstep, even if that someone was related to me.
i have hope for this trip. i think.
sunday i go see my grandma. she's amazing. 87 years young. the rock star of her "assisted living community". elvira. (not the mistress of darkness.)
she walks with a walker now. insurance for the place she lives. she's broken and had both hips replaced. but even though she moves slow she still plays piano. by ear. like no one i've ever heard. johnny, patsy, church songs, old standards, you name it. i could put any song on, she'd listen to it twice and nail it. gram played in a jazz band back in the day. she was a piano teacher. could've gone to juilliard.
but she doesn't regret not being a musician professionally, instead being a mom to 5 kids, being a teacher, owning an antique shop. gram has the most amazing stories. from seeing the brooklyn dodgers play to watching the beatles on "ed sullivan", (my mom got to stay up late that night. she was the youngest.), where she was when the first man walked on the moon, and on and on and on.
growing up so close to three grandparents who were raised in the depression, who've seen war, real war, not snipets on CNN, has given me a different perspective than most of my peers.
it wasn't "cool" back in the day to hang out with my grandparents, but now i value that time more and more each day. when my friends' grandparents have passed away i hear again and again how they wish they would've known them better.
elvira and i know each other. through and through. her mom lived to be 101, so i enjoy our time together and can't wait til the next visit.
-mjm
post script...
while my grandma doesn't appreciate the musical stylings of ozzy, i do have a trapper keeper folder somewhere at my mom's. ozzy "bark at the moon". i'm bound and determined to find it! that and my duran duran puffy stickers. i already rescued my wham! shirt. yes, my taste in music is all over the place.
"i've seen your face a hundred times
every day we've been apart"
my dreams are usually really vivid and detailed. i can remember almost all of them. but not lately.
remembered last night's dream. for the first time in weeks.
sleeping in my new bed. i dreamt about my mom.
for vi. even though you don't know how to even turn on a computer! sometimes i wish i didn't either...
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