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[letterstomygrandma]

Wind It Up

Scrambled eggs.

Scrambled brain.

80s child.

Reagan reign.

You had Woodrow and Harding.

I haven’t the slightest what they did.

But they shaped how you lived.

Years and years between us.

I lay in bed next to my daughter.

She’s sleeping while I hear your clocks

Now my mom’s clocks chiming

Every fifteen minutes.

My daughter loves the cuckoo clock.

I pick her up so she can try to touch the beak of the tiny bird.

She smiles and laughs.

Two years old.

Me 43.

So many years of chimes and winds.

[letterstomygrandma]

Older Better

Walking by shop fronts

Judging items on display

Knowing some are not made well and woven with toxins

Another store full of old nostalgia

Assuming better made

But who knows the materials

Materials could be toxic too

A time when we didn’t know better

Or did they?

Just like today

The cutting of corners to make ends meet

To feed a family

To keep a business growing

To keep up in a world where resources

Are becoming more scarce

I always loved your things

But eventually most given away or sold.

The ice aluminum tray

I know may not be the best to use

Glass, but glass without lead is good

Like the milk bottles that were once delivered to doors

Stainless steel.

Silicone or maybe not.

The clearer a material the more transparent

The more you can see the toxins

But who wants to see all that?

My brain can only handle so much

Yesteryear was simpler

The best I can do is make my life simpler

When wading through decisions for my family.

[letterstomygrandma]

The Wobble

If nothing is right

And nothing is wrong

Then where does that leave us?

The slight wobble

Of a perfect universe

Whirring around and around

Until chaos becomes synchronicity

And tumbles into uncertainty.

Again and again and again

Until we meet again.

[letterstomygrandma]

Forgive Accept

Forgiveness seems ancient.

Like it was invented before the Old Testament.

Forgiveness means something was wrong

Rather than something just being what it is.

Forgiveness feels more painful.

It feels like something you should do rather than what you want to do.

It’s said the act of forgiveness is freeing

But I think acceptance is better.

There is more fresh air.

There is more water flowing.

More moving with what is

Rather than pushing back into what will never be.

[letterstomygrandma]

Grooves

Your mind and mine crossed paths.

The left handedness.

The Tom boyishness.

The fierce love and stern expression of it.

These paths are grooves made deeper.

My mother connecting us.

Generations wearing away the trail

Into another tale.

Another story that echoes.

And eventually lands on a chorus.

Of being one with the universe.

The paths. The entropy. The Big Bang.

All of it culminating

Into us.

[letterstomygrandma]

Together

Why does it sometimes take tragic events to be together?

I’m glad that you and uncle Kent started talking again before you got sick. You got some good years in before the tough one.

People are stubborn. That’s the excuse. That’s why people who love each other stop talking.

The reason can feel so burned into your heart. A certainty that seems so damn sharp and painful. Then, time begins to twist the memories as to the reason why you stopped talking in the first place. The memories may not soften, because sometimes people still feel that immense pain and can’t pinpoint why.

Just lean in and let go of the pain. If there is love there, it’ll pass.

Time is said to heal. I’m not sure about that. The older I get, the more I think time just provides us with more lenses to look through. It’s more complicated. More blurry less healing.

Healing looks like action. A growing together. My mom has always had her forté in that arena. I’m sure I get part of that from her. But I also get the part where I just want to be left alone to soak in the hot springs of Oregon. To gaze upon the water as it gently shifts back and forth when my toes wiggle. Then again, that sounds exactly how my mom would like to enjoy herself and how we could both heal.

My mom helped you and Uncle Kent heal. But you two also needed to be ready. I miss you both deeply. You both felt things deeply too. In a silent and ever-present way. A way where whenever I looked at either of you I knew I was taken care of. Just like my mom was able to take care of you.

[letterstomygrandma]

Love

If we were only put on this earth to love

Love is such a strange word

I feel that if I begin to describe it

That it would take what makes love out of love

The magic

The part that makes the world go round.

[letterstomygrandma]

August Bell

I gave you bells

When you died I got some of them back.

Not because I asked for them

But because I gave them to you.

One of them was an antique porcelain bell

With August written in script and yellow flowers.

August was your birth month.

Selling it seemed too transactional.

Donating it seemed too random.

I wanted it to be with heart and personal.

More than 20 years later it happened.

I did an art show my garage.

In which stories were traded for items.

My neighbor chose your August bell.

When I began telling her the story behind the bell

She told me her grandmother also loved bells and was born in August.

That’s why she chose the bell.

Teary-eyed. It was a moment. Much better than trading for money or in the Goodwill bin.

Memories attached to objects can feel like a way to still be connected with the ones you love.

They can also feel like a weight. Because you can’t ever ask that person permission to get rid of it if they’re gone.

You’re not gone. You’re with me. Always with me.

[letterstomygrandma]

Grandma’s

I visit your house

It helps me sleep.

Always starting to enter from the back side door.

Opening the metal screen door.

And skipping every other step

Up to the converted sun porch.

Take a left to the kitchen.

Where I get some saltines out of the metal canister.

Remembering cutting my finger badly behind the fridge. Who knows why my little fingers were back there.

The gray and stainless steel kitchen table.

The sink where many children took baths.

There was the door to your room, the bathroom, and the hall living room from the kitchen.

Your room was sweet. It was my mom’s when she was a child.

The bathroom connected to many rooms. To the room where you and grandpa used to sleep. It used to be where your two boys slept too.

That room was the biggest. I remember sleeping in there with the fan on smelling the humidity of summer. Looking at books my mom used to read. Some of real life like monkeys on the cover.

The mirrored dresser with a stool and a pineapple lamp. That pineapple lamp is with me now. With the constant need to super glue the amber beads upon it. It’s in a box in Oregon.

The living room with the secretariat, the upholstered rocking chair, the glass topped wooden table. The record collection and record player.

All those are elsewhere now. I gave the rocking chair to my postpartum doula. The table sold to an antique shop. The record collection now sold or donated…or maybe some my mom still has. The record player we kept trying to fix but no one had the needle for it.

The orange couch with one arm I had through my 20s. A flowered sofa that I don’t know where it went. On the mantel was a 50th anniversary gift to you from the kids. A little room with a glass top on it.

The grandfather clock. My mom found a note upon it after you died that wrote that it was for her, “when I’m no longer needed.” My mom still has that clock. My daughter loves clocks because of that clock and points out “ghi-ga” every time she sees one. It means tick tock.

Winding back into a hallway and dining nook. Where the hand blown glass my mom brought back to you from Paris when she was 16 resided.

On the small table there were always placed candles or salt and pepper shakers for the holiday. I remember turkeys.

Back through the kitchen…take a right down the stairs and to the basement where a treasure trove of memories reside. I spent a lot of time there. As a child I would always seek out the basement and attic of houses. Something secret. Something quiet. A place to stare off. A place to peer in.

When entering the basement on your right was the study. A typewriter from what I’m guessing would’ve been the 40s. A red glass vase full of coins. Quaker oatmeal containers full of native arrowheads found on the farm.

In the main basement area was the shower. It was kind of in the middle of everything, but it worked and had hot water. There was memorabilia of decades past including a cardboard crocodile from my mom’s prom. Around the corner were more dressers with other things. I can’t remember as much of what was in them now.

Near the front of the basement was grandpa’s tools. Small drawers.

When you leave the basement you can take a right…

And find yourself on the concrete patio with the smell of spearmint. Walk toward the backyard down the concrete path with the laundry drying. The path ends where the old white shed and pear tree are. Memories of Sugar, my mom’s dog seem to creep in. Also, a memory of my mom doing a back handspring in the grass when I was a child. Me, with awe and disbelief while I watched her. She may have been 40.

Meander to the other side of the yard, where the huge rose bush grows. Light pink flowers with the best perfume. My dad over the years taking a piece and replanting it at each home that we lived. It grows in Oregon today.

The garage didn’t stand out to me. Except for the blue and white toddler carriage that my mom and I used.

There’s more. Much more. What I have with me today are your wedding ring, your scarf that still smells like you, and a costume diamond snowflake pendant. After recounting all of that I’m beginning to feel sleepy. I love you grandma. Night night.

[letterstomygrandma]

42

When you felt lost in your life

What did you do?

Sometimes I feel as though it's just a part of me to feel an existential crisis every few years. To question deeply what I'm doing. To be tired of something and want to move on to something new.

Having the energy to have an existential crisis is a privilege. So, maybe it's a good sign that I have the energy to grow.

In your life, I bet you felt lost. You lost your mother at five years old. She died of lockjaw. Apparently, there is an overhanging hearsay that you may have left a toy out that led to her falling and becoming sick. If that were the case, I don't know how you coped. After she died, you moved in with one of your older sisters. Her daughter was about your age. Your sister became your mother. Your cousin became your sister.

You were the youngest of nine children. My mother, the youngest of three. I am the youngest of four. The baby of the family typically comes around when the parents are older and have more resources. Parents are more certain about who they are, and how to raise children, and may have more to give.

When you married my grandpa and moved to Eureka, I bet you felt more grounded. Although that was also during the Great Depression, and I know that shook you to your core.

Then, having two beautiful boys. One of which you would lose to polio. The other boy would feel lost without his brother for the rest of his life, too. That took more of a piece of you. You never recovered. Nor should anyone fully recover from that type of grief. The loss of your mother so young also left an imprint on your being, but who knows how since you were so young and all the people around at that time are gone. No one to recollect how you may have changed from age five.

I would have to say that when I've had times of grief in my life, I didn't feel loss. There was no time for it. It was always trying to move on and make a better decision for the next day. Attempting to survive.

So, I will ponder my existence, but try not to get stuck in a loop of worry that sometimes shows up. Because thinking about the meaning of life means I'm doing well. And, I might as well contribute to the world while I'm in that space.

I love you. I miss you.

[letterstomygrandma]

What I remember

I don’t remember the year you died

I remember the day I found out you were gone

I was in Mr. Buster’s physics class.

Mr. Buster went to school with my mom.

He said I was welcome to go home.

I didn’t take him up on his offer

Thought it best to just keep going

To be distracted.

That habit has followed me since.

If grief arrives I tend to find work to put it out of my mind until I’m ready. This sometimes takes years.

I remember the day I drove to your funeral.

I got a speeding ticket by a man who was my Spanish teacher’s brother. I told him it was my grandma’s funeral and started balling. He probably thought I was lying to get out of a ticket.

I remember at your funeral I was trying to hold it in. Then I let out this loud sound. I couldn’t stop it. Embarrassed. It was a sound between a sob and a snort I think.

I remember moments not dates.

[letterstomygrandma]

See you later for coffee

Today I was walking down Korunní Street

The sun was out and the first time it’s hit above 50 degrees in weeks.

Before the crosswalk to get to the library with a cup of coffee in hand I thought damn I’d love to have a coffee with you.

You donated books and money to the library.

You loved mystery novels.

Your dictionary was filled with highlighted words…dare I say on every page.

I don’t believe I’ve ever had a coffee with you since I was a teenager when you died.

I’d imagine a stimulating conversation without too many words served up. About sports, politics, and family with a helping of music.

Whenever I visit a good friend, I typically say to them, “See you later for coffee,” as my goodbye.

So I say it to you in hopes I may see you again. Not necessarily in Heaven…but maybe in my dreams. Although I don’t remember a lot of dreams, so for all I know we’ve had coffee and infinite amount of times.

[letterstomygrandma]

Cemetery Visits

I used to visit the cemetery with you and my parents during the holidays and also whenever we felt like it.

We placed flowers and decorations to replace the old ones to honor grandpa and your son.

I’d take clovers and use my fingernails to push them into the lettering on their names. My mom let me know clovers were grandpa’s favorite flower.

Makes sense since grandpa was a farmer and planting clover in a field meant potentially more yields in the crops. But they were also so damn beautiful and intricate with their petals. And you could make necklaces and bracelets out of them too.

Christmas and Easter were the times I most remember visiting the cemetery. I didn’t realize until later that there may have been more meaning there since grandpa died the day after Christmas.

You died the day after Easter.

The cemetery is a mixed bag of emotions for me. Full of fond memories of being with you while you lived so fully…and then the memory of you being buried there.

I didn’t like it. Still don’t. Tears rush to my eyes just thinking about it. I still want you here with me to talk to. You got me and you didn’t have to say anything at all.

Even though I don’t like it it’s the one place I want to go now to see you. To talk to you about whatever is going on in my life. To cry. To laugh. To just be.

It’s a pilgrimage now.

My parents have plots of land reserved in that cemetery too. Not quite sure how I feel about that. But time doesn’t stop, does it? And we can’t predict where any of us will be later as much as we may like to.

I wish I could’ve gone to the cemetery once more to say goodbye to you before moving to Europe. It’s a missing piece for me.

I’ll return to Kansas though. It’s my touchstone. My grounding. A place where I’ll never belong but will always have my heart.

[letterstomygrandma]

Brandi

Your first great grandchild

Named after your maiden name

Named after a dear uncle who died young

When she smiles you know she’s up to no good

But in the best way possible.

Ornery streak like the rest of us cousins.

She lived on the family farm as a child.

She called you great grandmother.

I called you grandma.

We loved you dearly.

She is older than me

Showed me around Eureka as teenagers.

Cruising through Sonic…

I remember you getting me a chocolate dipped cone.

Brandi and I listening to Jimmy Buffet with Mountain Dews and beef jerky that was a yard long.

I wonder if she goes to the cemetery like I do.

To pay her respects…to reflect.

I wonder how she remembers you.

Perhaps a phone call is in order.

[letterstomygrandma]

Your Hair

You were born with blonde hair.

My mom a towheaded child too.

I was born bald.

Jokes that when my hair began to come in it looked like grandpa’s.

Grandpa started to lose his hair in his twenties.

In your love letters to him you’d suggest he massage his scalp more.

When my hair came in, it was with a vengeance.

Tight curls and dark brown.

My other grandma I have to thank for that.

I thank you for your left-handedness.

Teaching me how to scramble eggs.

How to listen.

How to be direct.

How to tell’em whose boss.

How to say Missouri the way it’s supposed to be said.

[letterstomygrandma]

You and I

Like two peas in a pod.

Stern and reserved with our love.

My mom is open and loving with a smile.

Lucky her.

[letterstomygrandma]

Name

You named your first son after your last name.

Your daughter’s middle name is your first name.

Smart.

Your name carries on three and four generations after you.