#letterstomygrandma

[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.