The Sour

As with all things be careful of boasting about good things, because there is always that curve ball waiting (a trench coated curve ball waited for me in a foggy alley last week). During our family vacation I learned that my grandmother passed away. I was looking for a way to describe how I feel about all of this to the people around me and I still haven't a clue. I expressed to a friend that I lost her. "Yes, I set her down in the park and some strange bird swooped down and picked her up and carried her off.." I didn't lose her - I lost something much more valuable, time. The time that I could have spent getting to know her as an adult sloshed through my fingers and I feel the loss of it. I regret it. I know too that I feel like a fraud. Admitting to people that this is going on in my life feels like I am not being respectful of people who were close to their grandparents and then lost them... (there it is again) I don't want to say died.

The last time I saw my grandmother I thought about her hands. Throughout the years I have watched her hands age and become the high contrast map of her. Her nails always nicely done courtesy of my sweet and endlessly patient Aunt. The pale pinks and sculpted nails of her, always carefully filed to just the right height. A tissue sometimes tucked in her sleeve. The smell of pot roast and potatoes boiling. I can remember looking down at my hands with their grimy nails and chipped cuticles and thinking that I had better go wash before she caught me. I didn't want her to see me lacking. There were so many other grandchildren who were the epitome of perfection. Now looking back I wonder how is it that the slippers and socks that she bought me as a kid are now the only thing I ever ask for at Christmas but the last thing I wanted then? I think that Dumbledore was right....You can never have too many warm wool socks.