Remembering My Grandma

When I was born, I had severe complications, to the point where there was briefly a question of whether I would survive.  Two days of labor, and an emergency cesarian later, and I was a bundle of tubes on a table.  One of my grandmothers, a nurse, had no issue going in to lift me up when I was sleeping, tubes or no; 15 grandchildren in & likely hundreds of babies in similar situations, this was just another day in the trenches.  The other grandma, my Grandma Dorothy, a fifth grade teacher, was not as versed in such things, but seeing her first grandson on the table, my other grandma insisted she hold me.  According to my Grandma Dorothy, that was the moment that I decided to wake up, and I looked at her with wide grey eyes, and she said (and would always punctuate the anecdote that way every time) "we've been getting into trouble ever since."

My grandmother was not someone who enjoyed movies (she couldn't sit still long enough to watch them), one of the few things we didn't have in common, but she loved a good story, and this was from her anecdote greatest hits.  Family events at her house, inevitably, would be a time when a cavalcade of stories would be told around her kitchen table, some stories I was there for, others that I knew by heart but happened years before I had come onto the scene, but all would come to light in the kitchen.  Other people might have gotten bored with this, might not have had the patience to hear the same story a hundred times over and laugh as if it was the first time.  But for me, the joy she brought to those stories...it always made my heart sing.  It was like a secret dance that only a few people got to know, and who wouldn't want to stay up for another round.

Growing up, my brother & I hero-worshiped our grandma.  Going to the farm (until I was a teenager, my grandparents lived on an idyllic old beef cattle farm in the middle of rural, northern Minnesota) was hallowed news. Usually about one weekend a month, and for a week every summer until I graduated high school, we would go to my grandma's house.  It always started the same way, with a drive through the yard, and then bounding onto the steps (and eventually a small porch), usually chased by whatever dog was my grandpa's companion at the time, and a race into the house to greet the grandparents.  Instantly, grandma wanted to hear all about the ride, and we'd try to stay up as late as possible until my parents pointed out "it's past your bedtime" and so we'd go to sleep, the next morning waking before my parents & sneaking into grandma's side of the bed.  One Christmas when my cousin was there, my brother, cousin, & I had all snuck in early, likely with visions of our stockings hanging in the living room, and my grandpa got up super early with a "there's too many kids in this bed" when my grandma protested it was too early to get up.  When I think back on my childhood, so many of my favorite memories come from this time, from this place.

As I got older, she became a sounding-board as I began to learn about the world.  In college, I would live one summer with my grandmother, and would call her every Wednesday night during the school year (which would eventually turn into a sometimes hour-long phone call every Saturday morning when I graduated and had a job during the week).  I remember us working our way through a French cookbook that summer, my first introduction to cooking (and part of why I love French cuisine still), and her watching some of my shows (she liked Lost even though I had to extra-explain every episode...I personally think she loved Desperate Housewives even though she'd proclaim "those women sleep around a lot!" with feigned shock but I think bemused "let's watch one more" intrigue from a woman with a stack of cowboy romance novels in pretty much every room in the house).

She was fiercely political, and a sharp woman when it came to politics.  On our calls, which would've started during the Bush administration, the enemy de jour of the calls would switch from Sarah Palin to Michele Bachmann to Mitch McConnell and eventually stay on Donald Trump, but she knew more about politics than you'd expect from a farmer's wife who grew up in a two-bedroom house surrounded by nearly a dozen siblings.  She famously said when I came out to her, the first person in my family I came out to, "it's fine if you're gay...just as long as you're not a Republican."  She would remain proud of that line for years after, though the one I rarely repeated from the story was what came next.  Me telling her just days after my grandfather, her husband of over fifty years, had passed away, that I was gay, that little boy she had once held wide awake covered in tubes looking at her, scared of what the world was about to throw his way, she stated, choking up a little bit (one of the few times I remember seeing my grandma cry), "this is going to keep me alive John, this gives me something to live for."

She had a curiosity in the world equalled by few.  My grandfather died while I was in college, and he had promised her for years that he'd take her to Washington DC in their retirement.  A teacher who had long marveled at American history, she wanted to see where much of it had been forged, and when my grandpa, whom I'm named after, died before he could take her, I took up the mantle of that promise and after college graduation, we explored DC, and got to see a House & Senate vote while we were there.  My grandmother's penchant for coffee was legendary, and after standing in line for hours to get into the Capitol that morning, she was desperate for a mid-morning fix, so she decided to sneak into a congressional lounge to get a cup of coffee (I asked her "what if we get caught?" to which she replied, "we'll just say I'm from Michigan" an explanation that made no sense and once she'd had her caffeine re-upped, even my grandmother could not clarify though it'd become a running joke).  As she exited, she ran smack dab into (the very tall) Congressman Gene Taylor, then one of the most powerful men on the House Armed Services committee, and rather than call out these two out-of-place tourists, he simply said "sorry ma'am" and she proudly went out of the lounge, armed with coffee & another greatest hits story to add to her kitchen table routine.

As she got older, certain aspects of our relationship changed.  The calls became one-sided, my grandma's ability to focus starting to wane, with me having to remind her that we hadn't talked about my life.  Once someone who wanted to know every minutia of my world, I had to come to terms with no longer being a child, and occasionally it was me watching her on trips or looking out for her in the way she'd once looked out for me.  This is a passage that happens as you go into adulthood, where you take on the mantlepiece of being the parent, where you become the decider in the room, that never feels quite real, and you have to only think in secret because it's too painful what happens.  But through all the years, she still punctuated every interaction with "you and I John...we're always getting into trouble" and a "one more thing...I love you" to end the conversation.

Yesterday night, after several years marred by health issues, my grandmother passed away.  This was not unexpected, but it still breaks my heart to type it.  I do not love easily, but when I do, I love ferociously, and she is one of the few people I can say I've loved, unconditionally, my whole life.  I am sitting alone in my house, her face framed in photos next to me on my mantlepiece, and sharing this with the world because my grandma loved stories, and I needed to find a way to honor that legacy somehow.  My world is always going to feel a little emptier without her expressive face, her side comments, her endless curiosity, but I'm so grateful for the place she's forever etched on my heart.  She may be gone, but Grandma, I'll never stop getting in trouble for you.  I promise.