{Life is crazy, busy right now at the home office. We move exactly two weeks from today. Tomorrow we put both of our cars on a big, flatbed truck and wave goodbye to them. They’re the first to go. But don’t worry—I made them promise to write.
Anyhoodle, I probably won’t be a good blogger for a while, so I’m bringing back some re-runs for your summer reading pleasure. I went back to August 2006 and found this one about Ryan’s grandma and thought it was appropriate. It was about this exact time in August 2007 that we lost her. I have a feeling she’s enjoying herself now seeing how it’s all turning out.}
I used to be afraid of the lady in this picture. I’m not kidding. She was the first person over 85 years-old I’d ever met who used used the term “hell” out of biblical context.
“Oh, hell!” she’d say, “We’re going to run out of water if people keep having suh many babies! There’s too many people in the world.” I’d be staring at the floor, wondering how to disappear and free up a little more water.
I didn’t grow up with grandparents. All of mine died before I was very old, and the memories I do have are of their final days in care centers when they were oblivious, toothless, angelic rumples of soft skin and thin white hair. So, I didn’t really know much about grandparents, and I certainly didn’t know that they ever felt the need to profane.
But Ryan’s grandma, Grandma Rees as we call her, has taught me a lot. She doesn’t fit a stereotype. She’s a fantastic riddle. She can bake like Betty Crocker in one moment and carry on a meaningful conversation about Jennifer Aniston in the next. She switches the TV channels between QVC and Nascar. She bakes pot roast and buys Diet Coke by the case. And don’t get all cocky and think you can beat her at video games, because the lady knows her way around a Gameboy. Seriously, have you ever met anyone like that?
She reads everything she can get her hands on and knows more about the world and pop culture than any former piano teacher and Relief Society president in the history of the world.
“That Oprah’s gay, you know,” she said not too long ago. “She and that Gayle are lesbians. And that Steadman is just a figurehead!”
Wouldn’t most of you pay money to have that conversation with your grandma? Ryan is so lucky!
But don’t think you’ve got her figured out. When Christian plays the piano for her during our visits, she beams so brightly, I fear she’ll burst open into pure sunshine. She hugs him and tells him that he’s wonderful. And when Max pushes her around the kitchen in her wheelchair eighty-seven thousand times, she happily shuffles her feet along and says, “Oh, he’s just fine!” when we try to pry his grip.
Her body is old and most of the time she is in pain, though she doesn’t mention it very often. Ryan asked her one time if she wanted to die, to be free of the pain.
“Well, of course I do,” she said.
Ryan looked her in the eye.
“No you don’t,” he said smiling and shaking his head at her.
“You’re right,” she said, “I want to see how it all turns out.”
Oh hell, I want to be just like that when I grow up.
