It’s been a while since the last post. I’ve been a busy bee, yet I haven’t produced much 🙂 I have a lot of things in my head though, and I’m through with the weddings and such.
In the meantime, enjoy the above pict. Life is one of my favorite games — as a kid I loved the board because it was 3D (and that noise the spinner made). Fortunately real life is actually much more fun than the game.
I’ve sat on this stool a lot this year. Sitting this low in the kitchen gives me a different perspective.
I’ve spent a lot of time on this stool crying this year too. When my cousin died, when my great-grandmother died, and when I found out my grandmother was in the hospital. Something about being low to the ground was better than sitting on the couch, staring at electronics. Plus, my dog can reach me a lot easier at the stool level.
Despite the fact the stool is constantly in the way (the boyfriend and I stub our toes and knock our shins on it often) and it’s not the best stool for reaching high into the cabinets (it teeter-totters very easily) the stool remains. It’s somewhat of a comfort, like having a blankey.
I like sitting on it on good days too, not just to cry. Sitting, staring at the beige-ness of the kitchen. It can be slighly surreal. Or just sitting and talking to the boyfriend as he cleans up dishes and such. It’s my kitchen island.
My mom bought this stool for me when I first moved to Kansas City. I needed something to sit my radio on in the bathroom. In my last apartment I used it to grab sweaters from the top of my closet.
My stool reminds me of the one at my grandmother’s house, I believe it was my uncle’s. It was a little red stool, slightly more stable than mine, and it had a little story about the red stool on top. I don’t remember exactly what it said — it may have alluded to kids using it to reach the sink to brush their teeth.
The other night I had a dream about my Granny. I was sitting in Grandpa’s chair and turned my head to the left, and there she was, standing, looking at us, where she usually sat. We all wondered how she’d gotten there, as she was supposed to be in the nursing home, not in good shape.
At that point in the dream, I woke up, saying, “That can’t be right; she’s dead.” Then I woke up for real.
My grandmother lived a very good, full, long life until the last 5 or 6 months. She’d seen a lot of the world, she’d spent time with her grandchildren (that’s an understatement), she’d live her life to the fullest. So it was hard that last 5 or 6 months to see her not living life — though I wasn’t seeing it, I was only hearing about it since I was on the other end of the US.
Which is why this entire thing still feels like some weird dream — it doesn’t feel real. She’s not gone, I’m just 3,000 miles away.
What’s funny is now when I try to remember all of the things we’ve done together over the years, there’s only one moment that really sticks out in my head. I was in college, home for the summer. Granny was always telling me how proud she was of me, but this time was different.
We were walking out of the living room, where Grandpa was watching the news. She told me, “I’m so proud of you and all you’ve accomplished. You didn’t get into those things other kids do like drugs and sex…”
What was funny was the way she said sex. She lowered her voice, to almost a whisper, and had a little smile on her face and a twinkle in her eye. She said it like it was the most taboo word (and I was shocked to hear her say it, so maybe it was).
Then we both just giggled like a couple of schoolgirls, and I said, “Thank you Granny” as I gave her a hug.
I’m not sure why that is the one memory, out of all my memories of her, that overpowers them all. But I did like seeing that little twinkle in her eye — she’d get it everytime she’d make a sly remark that she shouldn’t and that was so atypical of her.
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