From Hays to Tucson

All along, my grandma had the grip of my attention, even from the moment I was born, I believe.

In fact, I believe I have followed in the footsteps of my grandmother. She was an English teacher, and I became one, too. The only difference is that she taught English grammar to teenagers who already spoke English in Kansas. I, on the other hand, teach it to foreigners who don’t speak it very much, if at all.

I split my childhood, living in Utah and New Mexico, but the grandparents lived in Kansas. That’s where my parents are from. Many of my fellow classmates in school would talk to me about how much they hated their grandparents, some of whom lived next door to them, and I never understood that disdain because I looked forward to going to Kansas just to see mine so much. Some summers, Mom would suggest that we go to Kansas in August for wheat harvest. I gleefully jumped up and down at the idea. Still, really the reason wasn’t because I liked being in the pick up truck as the tractor poured freshly harvested wheat over our feet amidst 104 degree temperatures. Nor was it because Grandma made the best chocolate chip cookies--slopping five pounds of pure butter in the recipe and keeping each individual cookie wrapped in wax paper in a plastic ice cream container in the upstairs freezer; on numerous occasions, Dad even mentioned that Grandma’s cookies were gooder than anybody else’s--a point of pride for Grandma. Nor was my joy even the prospect of watching a loud summer storm crawl over the prairie from the west, bisecting a yellow heatwave-whipped sky with a dark bluish gray rug that stretched from the horizon to the heavens, a Persian style rug decorated with streaks of lightning and the perfume of fresh rain hitting asphalt and bluegrass.

What I most looked forward to were two grand aspects of my grandmother’s personality, particularly those attached to her English teacher persona: word games and sentence diagramming. First, she was a word game player. We played Scrabble and Probe and Boggle a lot. I begged her to play all day long, and sometimes she actually acquiesced, joining me for as many as seven hours of word game playing. When we weren’t playing games, she gave me sentences to diagram. I had a Magic Slate. I don’t know if you remember these, but they were gray pieces of plastic with a carbon-type of background. When I pressed the red plastic pen included with the package onto the gray top sheet, I could write anything I wanted to. Then when I lifted the sheet up, I could erase my message. Each day, she would write 20 sentences, and I would diagram them, placing each word into an appropriate grammatical category. I would practice diagramming a word on the Magic Slate, and then transfer the final answer in pen onto a sheet of clean white paper. Then Grandma would check them for me. She could have wallpapered her kitchen with the many answers we constructed.

Grandma didn’t have the greatest sense of humor. She didn’t even begin to understand sarcasm or dry wit, unlike my mother, my father, my brother, or me. When we visited, we often teased each other with sarcasm—sharp, pointed, and wicked. We always edged our comments with smiles and supported them with laughter, but Grandma never caught on; poor thing! She was a serious type. She took everything literally. She never once used a colloquial saying, since it wasn’t formal English. And if I called my brother a “silly billy,” she would chastise me for being mean, shouting, “Shame on you!” I think one day, I counted 25 “shame on you’s” from Grandma. Then Mom would tuck me in and say, “Honey, tomorrow I don’t want you to tease Dane because it upsets your grandma too much.” Then I’d say, “But Mom, Dane doesn’t seem to mind and he’s just as bad as I am.” Mom would say, “I know, and you’re not doing anything wrong. Still Grandma doesn’t like it, and there’s no reason to make her feel bad.”

Grandma really did take to heart everything people said. She watched the news and believed the severity of every story. She told me, “I would never go to a bar because someone might shoot you there.” She also spent time working on people’s grammar, even when I wasn’t the guilty mis-speaker. At a family reunion once, somebody answered a debate question, “Well, whose fault is it then?” with “Well, it must have been them!” The debate was actually pretty hot and the two people there were ready to duel. I guess Grandma quelled the dispute pretty quickly because she stuck in her two cents, saying, “Uh, I was always taught that a BE-verb takes nominative case, so wouldn’t be better to say, ‘It must have been they?’” How does one respond to that in the middle of a debate? The two arguers just looked at her as if to say, “What does that have to do with anything?” They were so thrown! They just shook their heads and left the room, and the argument was over. At first, I thought that maybe my grandmother had just committed some slick trick to prevent further unrest during the family get-together, but honestly, I think she felt she was doing her civic duty by keeping her loved-one’s grammar straight. I’m not sure, but I think for Grandma, grammaticalness was next to godliness.

I felt sorry for Grandma. She loved everyone so, and she so wanted everyone to do right. And yet, people hid from her. Mom and Dad hid their collection of alcohol in a suitcase in the furnace room when Grandma came to visit, leaving the two cabinets that usually stored the bottles completely vacant—a curiosity for Grandma, that was! At church picnics, people would excuse themselves from lawn chairs in the middle of conversations with her because she would correct their grammar or comment on the level of morality their conversation had. When I visited her once in the early 1980s, she watched the new phenomenon of music video with me and was appalled that the lead singer for the Human League, a man, would dawn make up. She said, “That’s terrible! A man should be a man!” She paid for me one afternoon to go see a movie, and I chose to see Flashdance. When she picked me up, she asked me if I like the movie. I said that I did, and probably to break the ice and get conversation going, she asked me if there was any part of it that I particularly liked. I said that there was a scene where the main character went to a Catholic confessional and said, “I’ve been thinking about sex a lot recently. Oh sorry, Father, I guess you’re not supposed to think about sex too much.” Grandma took a deep breath and said, “You know, Eric, I’m so pleased that sex hasn’t been a part of my life.” That comment killed that conversation as quickly as the nominative pronoun comment at the family reunion! When I told Mom of this, she said, “Yes, there are times when I think I am the most recent immaculate conception, but with my mom, that’s not necessarily a positive.” Grandma warned me not to walk in the alleys of Hays, Kansas because she thought they were dangerous. She told me once that a man with long hair at the bus station scared her. At a clothing store, she told the shopkeeper that she didn’t like one dress because it looked too niggerish, a comment that irks me to this day. And once, she told me that it was wrong for me to have ambitions to travel because she was always taught to stay put.

And yet, I felt sorry for her. Her comments and her desires for those she loved to fly right pushed all she loved away from her--all except me. She was a grandmother that only I could love--perhaps because I was the only person she knew who would diagram sentences with her and hug her for her chocolate chip cookies. I was the one in her life that took her advice to heart. She gave me my first coin purse to save dimes in. When I was ten, she said the dimes were for me to ride the toy mechanical horse at the Dillon’s supermarket or for putting in the church collection plate during Sunday services. She believed in walking before driving. She believed in finishing one’s work before going to bed. She believed in saying “please” and “thank you” and singing “I Love You Truly.” She believed in practicing the piano, sharing the family design on the layer of pie crust that covers blueberry pies, and packages of Brach’s chocolate covered cherries wrapped in red paper and tied with red string as the best gift on Christmas. She believed her husband Harold, my grandfather, to be the smartest man in Kansas, my mother to be the best mother, my father to be the best husband, and I had no reason to doubt her wisdom on these points. She believed in sticking up for one’s beliefs, and she thought it healthy for any person to cry. She thought cows were cute, and she loved rhubarb pie. She believed in maintaining her garden in the daytime and straightening the house each night before bed.

But it was language that bonded us the most. The fact of the matter was that she was also an incredible storyteller, and I feel bad that nobody in the world knew this. From my earliest memory, I still remember her tucking me in at night in the upstairs attic in a big white-sheeted bed on a curved metal frame. Oh, it was hot up there on those August harvest nights. She had an electric fan, but I usually took a wet towel with me and kept it on a chair next to my bed so I could wipe it across my body to cool myself until I finally fell asleep. But hot or chilly, she would tuck me in, and she would always tell me a bedtime story. She never read to me because she had such a list of yarns from her own life, mostly from her childhood.

One in particular I recall was one about her father. She grew up in the early 1900s in northern Kansas, on a farm just to the north of a little town called Jewell. Her father was a strict German Protestant. My mom still says she can hear her grandfather talking with the short syllabic bursts of a slight German accent. He had severe rules in the house, and Grandma and her two brothers, not to forget her mother, were to follow the rules of the boss father to the letter.

In the barn of their farm was a new motor car, and the women in this family had strict orders from the father that they were not to touch that car under any circumstances. Her mother even got a lecture one morning as she told her husband that she wanted to go into town to get some supplies; he refused to take her, stating that it was far more important for him to get the tilling done in the wheat fields that day. Her mother was perplexed. Grandma, 17 years old at the time, heard the conversation between her parents. After her father had walked into the fields and had disappeared into the wheat stalks, she went up to her mother and said, “Mom, we’re going to town today.” Her mother asked, “How can we go?” Grandma responded slowly and confidently with, “Mother, we are going to drive.” Her mother gasped, pursed her lips, and said, “I’ll be right back; I have to get my pocketbook.” They walked together to the barn and opened the doors where the black motor car was. Her mother said, “I don’t know how to drive this.” Grandma said, “Neither do I!”

As Grandma told me this story, she explained that she forgot what it was exactly that she did to get the car going. Still, she drove that car, taking it out on the dirt road and into town, parking it at the mercantile, where she and her mother bought knitting supplies and vegetables to go with her father’s evening’s roast beef. When they returned, they put the car back into the barn, closing and bolting the barn as it had been that morning. Grandma had instructions from her mother to not say anything about the car. However, Grandma told me that she didn’t really need instructions to keep quiet. She knew the wrath they would receive if he found out they had driven that car to town. However, her mother made a terrible slip-up. She used the potatoes she had bought at the mercantile that day to make supper. She hadn’t realized that her father knew that weren’t any potatoes left in the barn prior to that day. At the dinner table that night, her father looked at the plate of roast beef and observed the mashed potatoes next to it. He scowled slightly, as if to notice that something was out of the ordinary. Finally, he seemed to understand and said to her mother, “Where did we get the potatoes from?” She looked at my grandmother who looked down at her plate. She then turned and looked at her own plate and said, “I got them at the mercantile.

You got them today?

Yes, sir! We got them today.

How did you get to town?”

At this point, her mother didn’t say anything. Finally, my grandmother looked up from her plate and said, “Well, sir, we drove.”

According to my grandmother, no more words were said that evening, and her father never once mentioned the car again. She said she found the experience liberating for her mother and for her. She also said that it was really her only example of rebellion or defiance that she ever exhibited before her father.

Well, as far as my mother was concerned, Grandma ran a tight ship with her family much in the way her father had done with her, and my mother to this day strives to meet the perfection demanded of my grandmother. Grandma made my mother pay for the pain her own father inflicted on her. The hardest lesson my mother received from her was when Mom decided to go back to Kansas and study watercolor with her favorite professor in Hays. I was two years old, and Dad was in Paraguay, doing a university project. Grandma agreed in permitting Mom to move back home to get her Master’s degree, but it was under one stipulation: “You will take care of Eric.” A Master’s degree is hard, but Grandma’s constant reminding that Mom was mother before she was a student was harder. It wasn’t that Mom disagreed. It was just that Grandma reminded her daily. When Grandma got an idea in her head, she let us know several times a day. Mom got this lecture several times a day for her entire Master’s degree career. Mom said that she loved me and she loved painting. For her the price of school wasn’t the tuition; it was a daily set of lectures she received from Grandma when she returned from class.

Still, I had a positive relationship with Grandma, and I longed to spend some of my summer vacation in Kansas each year. When I got old enough, I eventually got a job one summer in a hotel in Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming as a restaurant cashier. I earned enough money to buy a round trip bus ticket from Utah to Kansas to spend a couple of weeks with my Grandmother before school started. My grandfather had died a couple of years previously, and Grandma’s eyesight was getting bad, so Mom felt it was nice that I go because I’d be able to drive Grandma around to do errands, thereby making life easier for her for a couple of weeks.

So, I took the bus to Grandma’s house. She met me in the middle of the night at the bus station. Her neighbor Mr Macy came with her. He drove us to the house where Grandma had chocolate chip cookies and a ham sandwich waiting for me. It was well after midnight, so we only talked for a few minutes before going to bed. There would be no bedtime story that night, but there would be many over the next couple of weeks. There would also be game playing and even some sentence diagramming.

Driving Grandma wasn’t easy. Hays isn’t a small town, but it’s not big, either—maybe 15,000 people. Still, Grandma thought it was getting so big. She hated Main Street, and she hated Vine Street, the two principal routes in Hays. I actually loved Main Street because the pavement was made out of brick. Still, in Grandma’s mind, the traffic on these streets was so fast and so terrible that she refused to take them.

So the first day I was in Hays, Grandma wanted to go grocery shopping. She had a list of places where different items were on sale. She also had a stack of coupons prepared. First, she wanted to get a can of apricots at Dillon’s, so I drove her there. (It was the same Dillon’s where I had ridden that mechanical horse as a young boy.) Then she wanted to go Safeway because checker-board ice cream was on sale there. The Safeway was next to the Hays Mall, which was on Vine Street. I turned left on 12th Street to get to Vine. When I arrived at Vine, I signaled left to indicate my turn. Grandma then said that she didn’t want to go on Vine because the traffic was too fast. I said, “Yeah, but I’m driving, and it doesn’t bother me.” However, Grandma said, “I know, but I don’t get to go anymore, and I want to go my way.” So we went straight ahead and snaked our way through the neighborhoods to the east of Vine Street so that Grandma could avoid that street altogether. It probably took an extra ten minutes, a stretch of time that didn’t make sense to me at age 18. We went inside Safeway and bought the ice cream. Then Grandma said that she wanted to go to the North Dillon’s because they had a sale on oranges. I said, “How come the North Dillon’s has a sale on oranges but the one by your house doesn’t?” Grandma said, “Oh, you’re just being funny. Everyone knows that the fruit at the north Dillon’s is fresher than the fruit at the south Dillon’s.” It was clear that Grandma was not into one-stop shopping at all. Like an idiot, I said, “Well, then, I want to take Vine Street to get to the north Dillon’s.” Grandma didn’t like that and said, “No, let’s go the back way!” And I said, “But Grandma, that will take forever!” And Grandma snapped back, “Look, I don’t get to go anymore, I’m paying for the gas, it’s my car, and I want to go my way.” Some days we would go to five different grocery stores for five different items..

Such was the routine each day for the next three weeks. We got in the car, we drove five miles an hour below the speed limit, and we took the back roads. And I was an immature teenager each day, not realizing that there was no way for me to win any arguments with her and that I really did have the time to do what she wanted. As a result, I got the lecture each day: “I don’t get to go anymore, I’m paying for the gas, it’s my car, and I want to go my way.”

On Tuesdays, we went to the post office in Victoria, an old train-stop of a village 12 miles east of Hays. The reason we went there was because that post office had stamps with pictures of the US flag on it. She didn’t go there though because she was particularly patriotic, though. No! She went there because the Hays post office only had stamps with pictures of people on them, and she didn’t like the idea of licking behind people’s ears. She would say, “Can you imagine licking behind President Eisenhower’s ears?” so we drove to Victoria.

On Sundays, we walked to the Methodist church for service with her favorite minister, Reverend Miller. The church was beautiful: big, tall, high ceilings with long stained glass windows, plush green pews, and high flying buttresses. The walk took all of 20 minutes. Grandma would often repeat rhymes as we walked:

I left, I left, I left my wife and 24 kids without any gingerbread. Did I do right, right, right to my family and God by jingle because I left, I left, I left my wife and 24 kids without any . . . and so forth and so forth and so forth.

She loved that rhyme. Even as a college-attending teenager, I asked her constantly to remind me of that military chant.

One Sunday on our way to church, as I was trying to remember her favorite chant, Grandma interrupted me and shouted, “Shame on you!”

I looked at her surprised and said, “What did I do?”

Grandma was stunned that I didn’t know and said, “Shame on you again!”

I said with a more highly pitched voice, “Grandma, what are you talking about? I don’t know what I did?”

Again, Grandma said, “Eric, shame on you for not even knowing what you did wrong!

Grandma, I honestly do not know what I did wrong.

You don’t. Well, what side are you on?

What do you mean, What side?

Shame on you!

Grandma, what side?

You’re walking on the inside.

The inside of what?

You know, the inside of the sidewalk.

What side is the inside?

The side you’re on!

Well, why is this side so special?

Shame on you!

Grandma, I don’t know.

I can’t believe you don’t know. Anyway, let’s switch sides.

Why?

Because it’s just good manners!

What manners?

The woman is always supposed to walk on the inside.

You mean, the woman is supposed to walk over there?

Yeah, on the side that’s not next to the street!

Why is that good manners?

Shame on you!

Grandma, I don’t know why.

Well, any fool knows that a woman isn’t supposed to walk next to the street because if a horse and buggy comes along and there’s a puddle, then she won’t get splashed and muddied by the horse and buggy.

That’s why?

Yes, that’s why!

Well, Grandma, I’m afraid I don’t see any horses or buggies right now.

I know, and I know you think I’m funny, but cars work the same way as a horse and buggy.

But, Grandma, there’s not a cloud in the sky, and the street is made out of brick. What makes you think there’s going to be a puddle.

That’s not the point. The point is that it’s good manners to have the woman walk on the inside.

Yeah, I see your point. You want my suit to get soiled if I get splashed. That’s doesn’t seem fair.

Shame on you!

Why now?

Because you don’t understand chivalry at all. Shame on you!

OK! Fine, you can walk on the side closest to the houses. That’s a fair exchange.

What do you mean?

Well, I’ll get splashed by the horse and buggy. But if we walk by a front yard with a big German shepherd that lives in one of these houses, the dog will jump the gate and bite the person closest to the house, and that will be you.

Shame on you!”

I stopped and let Grandma cross in front of me so she could be next to the gardens and I could be next to the auto exhaust.

Grandma was dedicated to two things: clipping coupons and finding the daily specials in the newspaper. One morning, Grandma opened the newspaper to see that there was a sale on at the drug store just down Main Street. She told me she wanted to walk to the nearby Ben Franklin’s so she could get some of the geraniums. I said, “Isn’t Ben Franklin’s a drug store?

Yes!

Then why do they have geraniums there? I’d think you’d go to the greenhouse to get geraniums.

Well, they have geraniums there, and I’d like to get some.”

I didn’t think too much of it, so I said OK, and off we went walking to the Ben Franklin. This time I made sure to keep Grandma walking on the German shepherd side of the street.

We arrived at the Ben Franklin and walked down a set of white marble-like stairs. I certainly didn’t see any plants. All I saw were drugs, candies, and hair care products, and the like--but no flowers. I was puzzled, but when I looked into Grandma’s face, she didn’t seem dazed by the lack of foliage at all. She merely walked to one of the aisles and turned right. She seemed to know exactly where she was going, although I still thought it looked like she was there to buy Tums.

I made a right turn into an aisle marked “seasonal” where one might find Halloween masks and Christmas lights. Grandma had stopped at looked that the items on the top shelf. I twisted my head and started to laugh.

“What’s so funny?

Plastic? You wanted plastic geraniums?

Yes! I think they’re pretty, and I want some in my front lawn.

Your front lawn? You’re the mother-in-law of a botanist who once owned a plant nursery, and you want to plant plastic geraniums in your front lawn?

Go ahead and tease! They’re on sale, and I want some in my front lawn. Now help me choose the prettiest ones.

Ones? How many do you want?

Four!

Four? You’re going to plant four pots of plastic geraniums in your front lawn.

Yes! I want them next to the front steps. I think the pretty red blooms will go nicely with the red bricks of the house, don’t you think? Now come along and help me pick out the best ones.

They look the same.

Shame on you!

I still can’t believe you’re going to plant fake flowers in your front yard. That’s embarrassing.

Go ahead and tease! I like them, and I want them, and I don’t care what you say. It’s my money, and if I want plastic geraniums in my front yard, then I will put plastic geraniums in my front yard, and I don’t want to hear any more about it. Besides, they’re on sale.”

I hushed, and we walked to the front cashier to pay. Grandma put the four plastic green pots of plastic red geraniums in her bag and started walking up the front steps. Just as we started out the front door, Mrs Lentfer, the woman who rented the apartment in Grandma’s basement walked in. She greeted us and noticed the geraniums sticking out of Grandma’s bag.

“Oh, I see you’re getting some of those geraniums!

Yes, I wanted to put them in the front yard.

I know! I wanted to get a couple to put in my kitchen window sill. Besides, they’re on sale!”

Grandma looked at me and said, “See?”

I rolled my eyes. Grandma then turned to Mrs Lentfer and said, “Eric thinks that buying plastic geraniums is silly.”

I smiled and said, “I said I thought they looked fake.”

Mrs Lentfer smiled and said, “Oh, I actually think they look pretty. Besides, they’re on sale.” Mrs Lentfer chuckled and said, “Well, see you back at the house!”

I did actually feel a little embarrassed, but I was still disturbed by the idea of planting plastic geraniums in the front yard.

When we arrived back at the house, Grandma said, “Now, Eric, I’d like you to go into the garage to get me a watering can and a trowel. I want you to put two geraniums on each side of the steps while I go in and make us both some lunch.

I have to plant plastic geraniums out her in the front yard where everyone can see?

Oh, you’re just being funny. Come on in when you’re done.”

So I planted them and went inside when I was done. Grandma had made a hot turkey sandwich with scalloped potatoes. When she saw me, she said, “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?

Would you like me to water them every day? Perhaps they’ll grow into an entire plastic geranium forest. Then maybe tomorrow we can go Ben Franklin and buy some plastic zinnias or plastic petunias. Then we can have the most elegant polymer garden in Hays.

Oh, Eric! You’re just being funny. Besides, the plastic zinnias aren’t even on sale. Now finish your sandwich and I’ll think up some sentences for you to do. Then maybe we can play Scrabble.”

A few months after my visit, Grandma moved to Tucson, Arizona to be in the same city as my mother. I haven’t been back to Kansas since.

Mom let her live with her and my father for a short time, but it was easier on all parties for Grandma to live in another place. At first, they tried a nursing home, but Grandma called and cried, saying, “I can’t be here,” every night. She lasted in the nursing home for four days before my mother found a place where a crew would take care of her in her last days. It was called Casa Esperanza, and she was cared for by a lovely elderly African-American woman called Chuckie.

Grandma was a sports fan, and when she moved to Tucson, she enjoyed listening to the University of Arizona ball games on the radio. One night as Grandma was listening to the game with another couple of women from the Casa, the basketball game was tied with a couple of minutes to go. Grandma got so excited that she turned off the radio. The other two women got mad and asked her why she did that. She said she couldn’t take the excitement of close games and that she always turned off the games if they were too close. One woman said, “That’s stupid,” and the other one said, “Yeah, that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in my life.” Well, as I said, Grandma took such statements very deeply, and she walked sullenly back to her room. Well, Chuckie heard this comment and saw Grandma walking sadly back to her room. Chuckie followed her, knocked on the door, asking, “Mrs Elder, are you all right?”

Grandma opened the door. Chuckie said, “I saw what happened.” Grandma just looked at her and a tear dripped out of her left eye. Chuckie sighed and leaned forward, giving Grandma a big hug, saying, “I understand. I can’t handle those close games either.”

The Casa wasn’t exactly a nursing home. If a person showed too many signs of losing control, their families were asked to make other arrangements for living. One day, as Grandma was listening to a ball game, Chuckie came into her room. Grandma could see that something was wrong, so she asked, “Chuckie, is there something you want to talk about?”

Chuckie said, “Yes, ma’am, there is, and I’m not sure I know how to talk about it.”

Grandma said, “Well, just say what it is you need to say and we’ll go from there.

Well, Mrs Elder, did you make water on your seat at the dinner table tonight?”

Incontinence was not tolerated and meant expulsion from the Casa, so Grandma knew what this implied. She had initially tried to accommodate Chuckie’s feelings, but this question really did offend her. As a result, she said, “Chuckie, if you think I wet myself at the dinner table tonight, then just come over here and feel my pants!” Grandma even lifted her skirt to show her slip as an invitation to do so.

This expression of outrage was enough to satisfy Chuckie though, so she leaned over to Grandma, hugging her and saying, “I’m so sorry. I believe you. I believe you. You don’t need to feel this way, and I’m so sorry I even suggested such a thing. I’m sorry.”

Grandma smiled and said, “Well, Chuckie, that’s OK.”

Chuckie leaned over and said, “Mrs Elder, I’m sorry. You know, . . . you know, I love you, and I don’t want you ever to go.” Then Chuckie held Grandma’s face in her hands and kissed her cheek, saying “I love you Mrs Elder, and I never want to you to go.”

Grandma told me this story on a visit I made to Tucson in June 1986. She told me it was the first time she had ever been kissed by a black person. I said, “Chuckie is your friend,” and Grandma said, “Yes, Eric, she really, really is.”

When I made this visit, Mom had told me that Grandma was beginning to fail, and I felt that this would be the last time I would see her. The day before I was to return to Boston, she told me this story as if it was my last bedtime story. It was just like old times. And just like old times, I said, “Oh, please tell me another story.” When I was younger on the attic white-sheeted bed, she used to say, “I’ll tell you another tomorrow night.” This time though, she said, “OK!” And she told me of the time that Grandpa proposed to her.

They were sitting on a porch swing after church one Sunday in front of Grandpa’s parents’ house in Burr Oak, Kansas. Grandpa said, “Bernice, would you like a lemonade?” She said she would, so he went in to get one. He came back out with a lemonade and sat down next to her. She said, “Oh, this lemonade is good.” I loved the way my grandmother pronounced the word “good” because there was always a firm breath of air supporting its pronunciation. Grandpa then said, “I’m glad you like it. It is good, isn’t it?” Then he said, “Bernice, would you like to get married with me?” Grandma said her heart went pitter pat for a few seconds before she said, “Yes, Harold, that would be fine.” Grandpa said, “Good! Would you like another lemonade?” They were married for 50 years.

I smiled at Grandma and said, “I’ve never heard you tell such a romantic story before.” Grandma said, “My father taught me how not to be romantic.” I bit my lip in surprise for a second, not saying anything. Then Grandma took a deep breath and said the last thing I ever really remember her saying to me, “I’ve always been angry with my father because he never taught me how to have a sense of humor.” Then Grandma looked at the clock and said, “Your mother is waiting for you, so you need to go now. You just go on.” I always cried when I left my grandmother. She always said I’d stop crying when I became older and more mature, but I always cried. This time was no different.

I saw my grandmother one last time, though. I returned to Tucson to visit my folks for Christmas. Before I flew out of Boston, Mom warned me that Grandma had told her that she would probably die within the next few days. Mom explained that she might die before I got there and to brace myself. Well, she didn’t die before I got on that airplane. Mom picked me up from the airport and took me directly to the new nursing home where Grandma was. We walked through the sterile hallways with pale yellow walls. As we approached Grandma’s room, Mom and I heard her shouting out, “Someone please take me to my room!” She was in her room. I walked in, and Mom said to Grandma, “Mom, do you recognize who is here?” Grandma sighed, identified me as her late husband, and said, “Harold!” All of the sudden she really did recognize me and said, “Oh!” She took her sturdy wrinkled hands, stretched them out, and cupped my face with them, holding my face with all her energy. She cradled me into her wheelchair for a long strong hug. She may have been failing, but I could feel the strength of her muscles holding me next to her. She held me for a full minute. As she released me, she kissed my face. I looked at her and said, “I love you.”

I went and read to her the next day, and she went in and out of sleep as she lay in her bed, listening to my diary stories. This time, I told her the bedtime story, anecdotes about my recent trip to Tanzania. She fell asleep. I went to her bed and stroked her hair, saying to her, “I’m so glad you’ve been a part of my life.” She smiled and breathed, and I decided to drive home.

Shortly after midnight that day, the phone rang. Mom got up and spent no more than 30 seconds on the phone. Then she came to me as I was lying on the sofa, grabbed my hand and said, “Mom’s gone.” Mom decided to fly her body back to Kansas and have her buried next to Grandpa in Jewell. I decided not to go. My brother, who was a student in Las Cruces, New Mexico, also decided he wouldn’t go to the funeral, either. Instead, I drove to Las Cruces from Tucson, normally a four-hour drive. This time, I left the house at 5:30, so I could drive to Saguaro National Monument to watch jack rabbits and coyotes. Then I got on Interstate 10 for the drive, but I refused to go over 50 miles an hour. Grandma would have wanted me to go five miles an hour under the speed limit, you see. I arrived in Las Cruces where my brother greeted me with a hug. We shared a dinner that night of green enchiladas and talked about Grandma. The next day, I went to my favorite candy store, a pecan farm south of Las Cruces where I often bought chocolate covered pecans. I spent fifty dollars, all on chocolate. For the next seven days, I sat shiva in Las Cruces, watching TV, eating chocolate covered cherries (gaining seven pounds), and diagramming sentences.

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