MEMOIRS

Gran: My Advocate and Hero

A moment for the one person I was most like in this world.

I miss my lady. The moments in quiet that come to me, she comes, and reminds me of myself, that I’m not alone.

She and I were so much alike, life experiences excised and joined together at time’s hip. Absent modern technology, and the fact that I didn’t marry or have children, or work on a farm, our childhoods were nearly identical. The youngest of multiple children, the “independent” ones — or more accurately, left alone.

We figured life out on our own and saw the world through wild eyes, and interacted with weary parents, whose best intentions were spent on the older children.

No hard feelings, I get it.

I believe that she, as I did, spent most of her life peering over the spread on life’s table, watching everyone else dive in while we, barely able to see the surface, on tippy toes, watched in wonderment.

Every once in a while, a mindful and considerate force would look down at us and ask, “which ones do you want?” Or, in a fit of mischief and within our rights as youngest with unrealized privilege, snatch whatever we wanted, in near-miss of mom’s heavy hand, or under a forgiving/knowing side-eye.

Like that time, she climbed down from her porch stairs, with urgency in both her gait and gasp with “that’s salad”, at the young dandelion greens sprouting up just a few feet away. “Look sista, that’s salad,” she said. We both looked at the circular plant fanning out in all directions, that smelled like collards and felt like kale between my fingers. “Look sista, we can wash and eat these…”

And we did, we did eat. After copious washings, chopping, and soaking in a sprinkling of salt. Bitter green herbaceousness, married the ever-present pine-sol that lingered in the air at her house, the embrace that made her house feel safe.

We did eat.

Or that time I took a chance and enjoyed a dance in the pouring rain while passersby looked on in varying degrees of silent inquiry. She snatched our lunch from the earth’s table, and I snatched a moment of blissful, free joy from the banality of my day. If logic follows me, then she also, felt that joy in a small yield for two.

It’s occasions like these, punctuated, and powered by the little girl peeking, on tippy toes, where I feel closest to her spirit. I miss my lady.

©️KS Hernandez 2022 All Rights Reserved

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