GRANDMA

Grandma called this morning.  Pangs of guilt soared through me when the first words that came out of her mouth were, “Just checkin’ up on you boys. Ain’t heard from you in a while. Thought you’d done packed up and moved back to California. How ya’ll doin’?” 

I’m guessing it’s been about two weeks since I last checked in, and I chastised myself for not calling more.

“Hey you! How’s the coolest Grandma in the whole world doing?”

“Oh I’m doin’ alright, better than the last few days, feelin’ pretty good for an old lady,” she laughed.

“I’m sorry I haven’t called. I reckon’ I could make excuses like “oh life is busy and crazy and all”, but there is no excuse.  I’ll do better, k?”

“What are you boys doin’ for Christmas? We’re gonna have it here. Ya’ll are welcome.”

“Who’s all gonna be there?

“Well,” she replied, “your dad and Ruth and Janet and . . .”

I stopped listening at that point.

I paused for a minute and tried to think about what I wanted to say, doubting whether I should say it or not . . . but I wanted to, and so I did. “Grandma, I don’t wanna do the family thing this year. I’d rather come up the day after Christmas, and spend the night, and you and me just have our own Christmas. Would that be okay?”

I could hear in her voice a tinge of disappointment but understanding, “Oh . . . okay. That’d be all right. Guessin’ you and Sergio would like to have the day to yourselves.”

What came out of my mouth next was part truth, part fiction, mostly truth: “It’s just that when the house is packed full of people, I don’t feel that I have much time with you one on one. I just want it to be you and me if that’s cool with you. Sergio is working that whole day, and well . . . I want you all to myself.”

She laughed. “Oh okay then . . .”

I’m not sure why I went there but I did, “Grandma, Janet doesn’t like me very much.”

“Gene, you cain’t worry about what nobody else thinks. You just gotta live your life and be okay with you. I understand how you feel.  if I was gay I’d feel the way. But you cain’t worry about nobody else’s opinion. You just gotta live your life and be happy.”

I stepped out on the deck to have a smoke, looked around, and started making a mental list of all the things that needed to be done. The gutters need cleaning, the chimney needs cleaning, and the leaves have taken over . . . “Dang it grandma, I’m ready to sell this house and buy a trailer in the woods. We don’t need all this.”

She laughed.

“Nah seriously Grandma, I hear what you’re sayin’ and all, but it’s hard for me to be around people who are so anti-gay. And it has nothing to do with me personally . . . well . . . maybe it does. Heck Grandma I don’t know what I’m trying to say . . . except . . . well, I’m cool with me. I’m cool being gay. And I don’t have a problem with what anybody thinks. Believe in whatever you want I don’t care. That’s not the problem.  The problem is when I scroll through Facebook , or I read the news, or expose myself to Fox TV just to see what they’re sayin’, and I see all this hate about gay people and how we don’t have the right to marry and how we are part of the moral decay of America and on and on . . . Janet agrees with those people, and it’s so obvious and I just don’t wanna be around it.”

“Gene, don’t let nobody else upset you. You’re gay, and if you’re happy, that’s all that matters. I love you and Sergio, he’s like another grandson to me  – live your lives and don’t worry about what nobody else says or thinks.”

“Grandma, you’re cool. It’s just that this hate that spews from these people, it’s so damaging. And it’s hard for me not to take it personally. Especially when it completely destroys these young gay kids, and makes them hate themselves.  I take it very personally because I’ve been there.  I know their pain. Anyhow . . . I hope you’re okay with just and you and me having our own little Christmas.”

“Of course. Gene I just want you to be happy,”

“I am Grandma. I’m cool with me. Do you think God made me this way?”

There was such a sweet, genuine tenderness in her voice, “Yes, I do.”

The conversation shifted to Black Friday and Cyber Monday, and the ridiculousness of it all.

“Grandma, Serge and I ain’t buyin’ nothin’ this year. We’re baking  . . . Brooke is coming over next weekend and we’re gonna spend the whole day in the kitchen makin’ cookies and banana nut bread.”

“You know when we was kids, all we got at Christmas was some candy, some oranges, and if we was lucky, your Aunt Ruby would manage to get me and Charlotte little baby dolls. That’s all we got.”

“But wasn’t that enough Grandma?”

“Mama, would start bakin’ the week before, make about six different kinds of cakes from scratch. We didn’t have no cake mixes back in them days. We’d keep ‘em down in the cellar ‘til Christmas mornin’ so they’d stay fresh.  And we always had a hen. If Grandma and Grandpa came over we’d have two hens. We didn’t have no store bought turkeys then. And then after  we were done  eatin’ me and Daddy would go off into the woods and go rabbit huntin’.”

“Were you happy?”

“Oh yeah, we was happy. Us kids didn’t have much, we was poor. We had it rough, and we worked hard, but we always had fun playin’. We didn’t have all these toys, and video games, and fancy phones, and computers they have nowadays. We made up our own games. And Daddy would get out there and play with us. I remember those days he didn’t shave and had a little scruff and he’d get down on the ground with us, all of us rasslin’ and laughin’ and carryin’ on, and I can still remember the feel of his whiskers. He was a good lookin’ man, my daddy, tall, dark hair, blue eyes. I loved my daddy.”

I let Grandma continue to share stories, trying so hard to remember every single word that came out of her mouth, thinking to myself that I need to start recording these conversations before it’s too late.

When we said our goodbyes, she said, “Gene I love you, and don’t you tell nobody else this, but you’ll always be my favorite out of all my grandkids. Now you be sure and tell Sergio hello for me and tell him to come see me.”

“I love you too Grandma, you’re the coolest, most awesome Grandma in the whole world. And I promise I’ll call more.”