Tag: Gramma Betty

Everything is Upside Down

On By Alicia McCauleyIn The Junk Drawer6 Comments

Everything is upside down because you are not here.  It hits me in the most unexpected places, on the most unexpected days and today is one of those.  I can’t call you and tell you about the books I’m reading, about the speakers I’m hearing, or about the big thoughts I’m thinking.

I thought about you as I slid into the cab and the driver spoke in a thick Eastern European accent.  His voice was so deep, so low that I had to lean forward in my seat to hear.

“Where to?”

“MGM Grand Conference Center, please.”  I hold my bag on my lap and look out the window at the drizzle raining down on the Strip.  It’s not enough to fill puddles, just enough to give the street the illusion of being clean.  It’s the quiet of morning, no flashing signs, no men snapping fistfuls of paper women at passerby.

“Where are you from?”  I ask, watching the corners of the windows etch with steam.

“I live here.  Where are you from?”

“California.”

“Los Angeles?”

“No, Northern California, the pretty part of the state-with lakes and mountains.”

“I lived in California many years ago.”  He waits for the light to turn from red to green.

“But where are you from?”

“Romania.”  He clips the word and I hesitate for a moment, wondering why he left Romania, wondering what he isn’t saying, always wondering, always wanting to know the rest of the story.

“I’ve been to Romania.  My grandmother took me on a bus tour of Eastern Europe for my thirtieth birthday.  Romania is beautiful.  I always had my nose pressed to the bus window when we drove through Romania.”  My rush of words fog up the cab window.

“What towns did you visit?”

“Oh, I’m terrible with names.  Say some of the names and I’ll tell you if we visited the towns.”

“Romania isn’t very big.  Only the size of Oregon.”  His eyes meet mine in the rearview mirror.  His are brown almost black and mine are turquoise today.  “Of course there’s Bucharest.  And there’s Brashov.”

“We visited Bucharest, but Brashov was my favorite.  I prefer smaller towns.”

“I am from Brashov.”

“Do you visit Romania often?”

“I haven’t been back there in twenty-six years.”  He says, the decades stacking in his throat, the lapse of time thick in his tone.  He pauses and I don’t say anything.  “But I’m going back in March.”

“This March?”  I resist the urge to ask this stranger about the long stretch of years between homecomings.

He leaves me wondering and asks another question instead, “Why did your grandmother take you there?”

“For my birthday.” I repeat.

“But why Romania?”

“She loves,um, loved-” I correct your life to past tense and it stops my heart for a moment.  “She loved to travel to places she hadn’t been before.  She had a heart for meeting people all over the world.”

“She gave this to you.”

“Yes, it was a present for my birthday.”  I fiddle with my wallet, slipping out cash, guessing at the number of bills I’ll need to pay when we arrive at my destination.

“No,” his eyes smile in the mirror.  “You’re here.  She gave you a love of travel.”

“Yes, I suppose she did.”  I smile back.

“Her heart is your heart.  Her blood is your blood.”

The taxi comes to a stop at the curb.  I hand a wad of folded up bills over the seat, more bills than I’d first counted out, still a paltry offering for this taxi driver who has walked the same streets you and I walked, an entire ocean and calendars of years away.

I think about how the cash I give him isn’t nearly enough for the man who reminded me that you’re still here, that my blood is your blood, that your heart is my heart.

“Thank you.  Have a safe trip home.”  I say to him.

“You, too.”  He tucks the bills in his back pocket and flashes a last smile.

I step out onto the curb and I no longer feel so upside down.  The rain holds its breath and I begin to feel righted again.

My Grandmother’s Skirt

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Christmas16 Comments

A tiny crack splintered through my heart when I hung my grandmother’s skirt up in my closet this Christmas.  It’s a red and green plaid skirt that sits perfectly on my hips and floats at my knees, a traveling pants sort of miracle being that I’m 6′ tall and my grandmother was 5′ on a tall day.

The skirt is one of two items I took from her closet when she passed away.  The other was a bland oatmeal sweater that smelled like her.  I kept that sweater on for days after she died, breathing in her smell even as I laid in bed nights, listening to the sounds that felt all wrong in her house.

But the skirt went unworn.  Last year I couldn’t put it on without crying and so it hung at the back of my closet, its red and green merriment lost in a dark corner.  This year I was able to wear the skirt with only the slightest quiver in my bottom lip when I looked in the mirror.

I paired my grandmother’s skirt with a green cowl neck blouse, a black jacket zigzagged with zippers, black tights and tall black boots with the skinniest of heels.  For good measure I added my favorite leather studded bracelet.  I remember my grandmother wearing the skirt, so proper in her heels and nylons and a red sweater on top.  She would have laughed and shaken her head at her modest skirt paired with my hints of edginess.  A thousand times I wanted to send her a photo.  I wanted our pictures to stand next to each other, each of us wearing this magical skirt, her red lipsticked mouth smiling out at my own pale grin.

Every single time I took her skirt out for a spin, I was showered with compliments.  I’m not fashionable or trendy in any sense of those words.  I’m gangly and awkward and when I can find pants that don’t look like I’m readying for a flood, well, that’s a fashion win in my book.

When I stepped out in my grandmother’s skirt, it was a whole new experience.

“I love that skirt.”

“That is a fantastic skirt!”

“You look radiant in that skirt.  It really brings out the color in your cheeks.”

Needless to say, I felt great in that skirt, so great that I carefully put it in my clothing rotation as often as possible.  The skirt is so unabashedly red and green that the only possible month to wear it is December and so I decided to make the most of my month with my grandmother’s skirt.

I took it to see ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’.  I wore it to three Christmas parties.  I wore it to the Christmas sing-a-long on the last day of school.  And finally I donned  it for our Christmas morning church service.

As we read the Communion passage, I held the plastic Communion cup, complete with wafer sealed on top, and swirled the grape juice so that it coated the sides of the cup red.  I thought about how Christ’s sacrifice covers my sins and I thought about how if I peeled back the wrapper on that cup and poured it on my skirt, the red wool would soak it up and nobody would even notice.  For the record, I didn’t pour it out.  I savored the wafer on my tongue and washed it down with the bittersweet juice, running red down my throat.

After church and after all the gifts were opened at my mom’s house, a knot caught in my throat when I hung my grandmother’s skirt up that Christmas afternoon.  I ran my hand over the wool and slipped the skirt back into the recesses of my closet.  I squeezed into Spandex for a Christmas bike ride.  Under a blindingly blue sky and with the taste of Communion still on my lips, I thought of all the gifts I’ve received this past year, both tangible and not.

And I smiled because somehow in spite of her passing my grandmother still manages to give incredible gifts.

In her skirt I felt vibrant.

I felt confident.

I felt beautiful.

And the most magical gift of my grandmother’s skirt is that when I took it off, all those feelings remained.

Letters to Gramma: You’ll Never Guess

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Letters to Gramma4 Comments

Dear Gramma,

You’ll never guess what someone asked me for today.  Never in a million, katrillion, quadfillion years.

I was quietly checking my e-mail this morning while walking to work.  And there it was staring at me in my inbox.  A request from another teacher.

Know what she needed?  I’m in fits of giggles just thinking about it.  Seriously, you’ll never guess.

She needed to borrow a mini trampoline!  Can you believe it?  A mini trampoline of all things!  I know, I’m dying laughing, too.

In about 0.2 seconds I e-mailed her back telling her she could borrow yours mine yours.

After school she drove me home and on the drive I told her about how you used to “train” for your trips by trampolining.  Sorry to put “train” in air quotes, Gramma, but I just can’t say it with a straight face.  We were cracking up just at the thought.

When you died, that’s why I wanted your trampoline so badly in the first place.  It makes me smile every time I look at it and remember you bouncing, ahem, “training”, on it.

Wait, I’m snickering too much.  I have to stop and take a breath for a sec.

Ahhh.  Better.

After hearing the story of how I came to possess your trampoline, my colleague said she didn’t want to take the trampoline because she was afraid something might happen to it.  I told her that’s the very reason she should take it.  Something might happen to it.  Something laugh out loud hilarious might happen to it.

You see, my colleague is going to use it in a spirit assembly that involves kids wearing superhero capes and doing silly tricks and eating disgusting foods.  I told her that assembly is just the kind of thing that would’ve made you laugh.

So you should know that on Friday afternoon a bunch of middle school kids are going to be jumping and bouncing and having a ton of fun on your old trampoline.

And when I get it back I might just take a jump or two before putting it back in the closet.  Gramma, you always made me laugh.  You’re still making me laugh.

I love you like crazy,

Alicia

Letters to Gramma: Envy in Grief

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Letters to Gramma4 Comments

Dear Gramma,

I had a dream this morning, a nightmare actually.  I dreamed that it was the day you died and I was alone in your house.  I’ve had this dream before, a memory that comes back to me at night sometimes.  But this time I was in your old house, in the house I visited as a kid, not the house you lived in when you died.  I was walking through the house, crying up the creaky stairs.  In the face of such a devastating loss, I crammed myself in the little closet that used to be a telephone room and I closed the door.

Your doorbell rang and I untucked myself from the corner of the closet.  Out on the front steps was a real estate agent and a family ready to look at the house.  In my dream I didn’t even know the house was for sale.  I explained to the agent that you had just passed away that morning and it really wasn’t a good time.  The agent pushed the door open and showed the family in.  The mother started asking me all these questions.  I gave them a tour of your house, staggering through the rooms of memories with a lump in my throat and tears welling in my eyes.

My alarm clock sounded and I’ve never been so glad for it to go off.  I woke with that lump in my throat and swallowed it back down.  My pillow was wet from crying.  The dream felt so real that it took me a few minutes to realize it couldn’t have been real because you haven’t lived in that house for over 20 years.  I swept away the cobwebs of the dream and pulled the covers up under my chin, wiping my eyes with the sheet.  I miss you so much that sometimes it’s a physical ache in my chest.  This morning was one of those times.

I got up to ride my bike with Terry and Nick.  A good hard ride was just what I needed.  I pedaled up and across Shasta Dam, the water in the lake blue and glassy.  We followed a new piece of trail and at a split I jumped on the old the river trail and Terry and Nick followed the road back home.  I wanted to be by the river, to be near something beautiful.  I rode fast, pushing a big gear, passing everyone I encountered.

I reached the Sundial Bridge where there was a breast cancer awareness walk.  I got caught in a crowd of people dressed in pink.  I felt the lump rise up from my belly and bob in my throat.  I saw people walking in memory of loved ones lost and the ache stabbed at my chest.

Then I saw people walking with the word “Survivor” pinned to their shirts.  There were stickers and pins and hats and everything else rightly proclaiming survivorship.

White hot envy bubbled up.  And I know I shouldn’t be envious that they survived and you didn’t, but sometimes I am.  Most days I think you won, Gramma, that you lived the best life of anyone I know.  But some days I feel like cancer won, that it’s unfair that other people survived cancer and you didn’t.  It’s the ugly part of grief, Gramma, the part I hate the most.  It’s not that I wish these other people didn’t survive.  It’s not that at all.  It’s that I wish you were still here, too.

I tried to get out of the crowd of walkers, but no matter how many times I called out “On your left!” or “Coming through!” they didn’t move aside.  The entire bridge was filled from one side to the other with walkers and survivors and pink shirts.  I felt the tears pricking my eyelashes.  I needed to be anywhere but there.  I unclipped and walked my bike through the crowd, keeping my head down until I got to the road and onto the trail that would lead me home.  I rode uphill, stomping on my pedals, crying until hot snot ran with my tears.  By the time I got home I’d stopped crying, but the sadness remained.

Gramma, I don’t mind dreaming of you.  In fact, I love it when you talk to me in my dreams.  But this dream was different.  You weren’t in it at all.  And that’s what makes the sadness stay, the fact that each day I get further and further away from the life that had you in it.  Sometimes that loss devastates me all over again.

Come talk to me in my sleep, Gramma.  Sidle up next to me and drawl “Hi, honey.  How are you?”  Make me watch Jeopardy with you while we eat ice cream for dinner.  Come back, for just a little bit, even if it’s only in my dreams.

Love,

Alicia

Letter #9: Whisper To Me

On By Alicia McCauleyIn Letters to Gramma2 Comments

Dear Gramma,

You’ve been gone over a year now.  In some ways it feels like you were here just yesterday.  Other days it feels like eternity has spread out in between us.  I’m starting to forget what your voice sounded like.  My heart breaks even typing those words because I need your voice in my life.  This week I needed your warm Texas lilt to whisper in my ear.

I needed your voice when cancer took my friend’s mother.  I needed your words when cancer crept back into the brain of another friend’s mother.  In their sadness, my grief for you welled up in my heart and broke it all over again.  My words of comfort were such a meager offering in the face of staggering loss, in the face of fear come to life.  And yet, I feel like you would have said just the right thing.  Once again I find myself wishing I was more like you.

Last night I prayed that you would come talk to me in my dreams.  I long for you to sit down next to me, pat my leg and tell me everything will be okay.  I dream every night.  Most mornings I wake up recalling a fistful of dreams.  But not last night.  Last night was void of dreams.  You were silent and I woke up alone in bed, missing you more than ever.

It’s almost Easter and my memories of last Easter are snapshots flickering in the forefront of my mind.  I remember singing in your church Easter morning, painfully aware that you weren’t there next to me.  I cried through worship, both for the beauty of Easter and for the agony of loss.  I remember riding my bike up through your mountains, my heart bobbing in my throat.

Cancer is such a cunning thief.  A year later, I still feel hollowed out.  And maybe that’s why I don’t have the right words to say to my beloved friends.  Maybe there aren’t words to fill the cavern of loss.

Gramma, words never seemed to fail you.  You could strike up a conversation with anyone and build a friendship in mere minutes.  As for me, my words choke up behind my tongue and come out all wrong.

But this I know for sure, when my words fail my actions speak for me.

So when it comes to cancer, I’m letting my legs do the talking.  With every spin of the cranks, I say no to cancer.  When I stand and pedal up hills, I’m standing with my friends.  And maybe one of these days when I’m riding through the plains and the wind is whipping through the wildflowers, just maybe it’s your warm Texas lilt I’ll hear on the breeze.

I love you so much.  Come talk to me soon.

Alicia