Cold Grass

Cold Grass, originally uploaded by jryanpackard.

Well I promised updates, and here you go. They planted grass, and as you can see, it didn't stop the water from washing through and freezing over. Very humorous. I'll be taking a little blogging break for Thanksgiving so I've decided to make this a longer post.

In 2001 I had Thanksgiving with my Dad's mom (Farmor if your Swedish). When I came back I wrote the essay below. Many of you have read it, but many have not, so I share it with you here as people continue to tell me how much they like it. My grandmother died not long after I wrote this and it ended up being the last time I saw her.


My Grandmother is Zen

My grandmother is Zen, living each moment as if it were her first and last. Of course, it’s not exactly her choice. You see, she’s old. She’s 83 with some degree of Alzheimer’s. Before this past Thanksgiving I had only seen her once in the last 4 years, at her 80th birthday. I was younger then and didn’t understand as much as I do now. She too, was younger then, but she understood far more. For various reasons, I have never spent much time with my Dad’s side of the family but now, thanks to the miracle of divorce, that is changing. The upshot is that before we went out to California on Wednesday my grandmother knew very little about me as a person or I of her. She didn’t know what I am like, who I like, what I am doing, or what I want to do. She had only a vague idea of what I even look like. Probably the only the thing that we both knew for sure was that she loved me and I loved her.

So this trip was going to be a chance for her to get to know her only grandson a little better and vice versa. She set about keeping her end of the bargain by asking me questions as soon as I got to her room. “What do you want to do with your life?” “Where are you going to graduate school?” “How long will it take?” “What’s your girlfriend like and when do I get to meet her?” It was good to get to talk to her face to face as she doesn’t do so well on the phone. Ya’ll know how tricky those things can be with the talking into one end and the listening out of the other and all. Throw in the ringing and all those numbers and you might as well forget about it. Face time was definitely needed. Later that night we got to look at pictures from my Dad’s childhood. And as my grandmother talked about each picture I was more than happy to listen about countless people that I never knew and never will.

Thursday morning was spent moving some of her furniture into her new assisted living apartment (read: nursing home). While my dad and his younger brother engaged in some sort of Laurel and Hardy re-enactment in putting the furniture together, my grandmother and I had a chance to talk some more. It was clear that she had questions to ask so I just sat quietly and waited. Soon enough, they came. “What do you want to do with your life?” “Where are you going to graduate school?” “How long will it take?” “What’s your girlfriend like and when do I get to meet her?” I answered each of them again and tried to phrase them a little differently so she wouldn’t remember that she had already asked me and feel embarrassed. The conversation turned to the evening’s festivities that were planned to be at her oldest son’s house. We talked a little about Thanksgiving in general, and then she told me some stories about Thanksgivings from her childhood. I wanted to ask if it was weird to be eating with Indians, but I decided against it.

That evening I faced the usual round of inquiries that one faces with people one hasn’t seen in a while. The hardest part is always trying to gauge interest. Trying to figure out if they really care or if they’re just asking questions because they feel like they should. There were questions about my life, and my plans, and my girlfriend which I attempted to answer enthusiastically as my grandmother sat there and said things like “Really?” and “I didn’t know that.” or “Oh, that sounds like fun.” Then I watched her play with her 18 month old granddaughter and we all went home.

Friday was our last day in L.A. and we stopped in to see Grandma just before we went to the airport. I told her I would keep her updated about graduate schools and send her a picture of my girlfriend. She wanted to know what Megan was like and where I was thinking about attending graduate school. I helped her to the balcony and we sat outside in the quintessential Southern California day, 73 degrees and sunny with no clouds and a light breeze on the day after Thanksgiving. Soon it was time for us to leave, so we all went back inside. We hugged. I said I was glad to have seen her and I was. She said that she enjoyed seeing me and she did. I told her I loved her, she told me she loved me.

Saturday morning I awoke still thinking about her. Thinking about how good it was to have spent Thanksgiving with her and how I was sad to have left. I feel like I know her a little better but I don’t exactly know why. I didn’t ask her very many questions, and the stories she told were about places and people that were foreign to me. She, no doubt, awoke Saturday morning and thought about me at some point during the day. Chances are good that she got mad at herself for failing to remember to ask me about graduate school and my girlfriend like she had wanted. All the same, she is glad that I was there for Thanksgiving. And the end is much like the beginning, we know very little about each other, but she knows that I love her and I know that she loves me.