Tag: grandma
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Potato Salad
Grandma once told me not to defy her, and while the context for her saying this was my quibble with a comment she made about how old dad would be if cancer had not claimed his life all these years ago the memory conjured is earlier: helping her prepare potato salad for my high school…
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Grandma’s Violin
For twenty years before grandma was born my great-grandfather played the violin. “It was a Stradivarius.” She claims, though I wonder if she is mistaken. He played for dances in Nelson County then stopped when his daughters came along because he did not allow them to dance – it can lead to drinking, and other…
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“Keep Moving”
My 90-year-old grandma said when I told her I was bereft after my first wife called it quits. This was almost ten years ago and even now what comes to mind is a nurse shark on the seabed slowly scoping their feeding grounds: a sluggish but deliberate motion to keep a vital flow of oxygen…
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Sunday Dinner
Always polite, though not genteel, my grandma has deep regard for Southern codes of propriety – a comportment that unsettles me when she describes how her mother would prepare fried squirrel brains as a treat for the family after their Sunday dinner: cutting off the heads with a knife, boiling them to remove the skin,…
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Ghost Story
Grandma Tells Me a Ghost Story “Seven years after he died, I saw your dad standing in the doorway of my bedroom. He had on a shirt you all gave him: navy blue with a thin, burgundy stripe. His beard was trimmed short and he wasn’t wearing his glasses – you don’t need them in…
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Pallbearer
After she asks about her great-grandson, hearing the details of our baby’s growth – if he started to crawl, which foods he likes – my grandma says in a tentative voice she hopes I can still be a pallbearer at her funeral service when she dies. Ninety-five years old, death weighs on her – frankly,…
From the Firefly Galaxy 