Why is “Blue Raspberry” the name of a flavor? Blue has no flavor at all. It’s literally a color. Another, possibly more important question: why do we add the color blue to raspberry flavoring, which, in its natural form, is decidedly not blue?
Find you a friend who makes you cackle like the lady sitting two tables over is cackling right now at something her tablemate said. Everyone should feel that level of unholy joy at least once a day, though I think, for most of us, it’s a pretty rare feeling.
I saw an old friend recently. He was sitting on a bench with another of his friends, someone I know by sight but have never met. I introduced myself and we got to talking about life and everything that goes with it. My friend asked about my kids and I did the usual age and activity update. At this point – and it’s necessary here to say that I’ve been laughing ever since – my new acquaintance says, “You must have been a child bride.” Friends, it is no exaggeration to say that I snort-laughed at that. Man’s got game. He’s 80 to my almost 59. I told him that I’m pretty proud to be an old bitch.
My soapbox is in the shop so instead of talking about how society makes it a crime for women to age, I’ll just say that I looked down at my hands the other day and realized that they look like my mom’s hands: a little wrinkled, marked by age and life with spots and scars. It felt like a little gift to see her in me and I wouldn’t give it back for all the anti-aging creams in the world.
Last time I was here, at the coffee shop, two hopeful sparrows hopped past my table, pausing as if to ask, “Got any crumbs for me?” I cooed at their charm and a young woman next to me expressed her worry that they might get trapped here. I reassured her that they are regular visitors, savvy city dwellers who know how to navigate the confines of this store. That young woman, my immediate table neighbor, was wearing an absolutely popping white peasant-style skirt, long and flowing. It looked cool on what was a hot, sunny day. I complimented her and she confessed that it was vintage. She just got it over the weekend. She was pink with happiness over her purchase and the compliment. In her turn, she complimented my bright red reading glasses and confessed that she’d love a pair of red glasses. I said, “Do it. Buy the red glasses. Make them a component of the art of your appearance.”
It’s okay, you know, to go on living while we worry about our futures. It’s okay – in fact, essential – to cackle at a friend’s joke, to think about your outfit, to buy red glasses. It isn’t ignoring what’s going on to sip an iced tea at the coffee store – which tea, by the way, has increased $.50 due to tariffs. During WWII, people danced. It was an act of defiance against the people who would have us fearful, cowering at their pretend strength.
This morning, I talked to a friend whose partner just started his second job. He works afternoons/evenings in the South Hills and then drives to the West End to work nights. She’s delighted that he’s off on Sundays and Mondays. Tell me again how lazy people are. Tell me again that Medicaid, SNAP, and CHP are full of waste. Explain to me why ICE has to go to stores and schools to steal immigrants from our soil. If they’re lazy and not contributing, why are they at work? Why are they graduating from high school and college? And why isn’t the so-culpable media calling out this obvious conflict with ICE’s story?
Some days, when I’m supposed to be working on my story revisions, I’m so frustrated with the ill-behavior of my words that I find other things to do. I can be very disciplined but I can also be very UNdisciplined. These past few weeks, it has been far easier for me to write 10,000 words for a CNF piece than to work on the novel. I think it’s because I can be angry when I’m working on the CNF but I have to be funny in the novel. I can do funny, usually. Right now, though, I’m feeling angry and aghast and…well, ANGRY. It’s easy to be snarky when I’m angry but snarky isn’t necessarily funny, especially when it’s directed at another person.
I woke up thinking about my grandmother. She’s been gone for more than 40 years, though I think about her often and often. I don’t know what, in particular, I was thinking about her – she was simply on my mind when I returned to consciousness. So, indulge me for a moment, while I share a story that started with her and ended with an … experience.
When I was maybe 10 or 12, my parents, sister, grandmother, and I went to my dad’s favorite fancy restaurant. We rarely – and I mean rarely – ate out. He always said that because he ate lunch out every day, he wanted to eat dinner at home. This was a disappointment for my mother, who, as a result, never ate out but always had to cook because … that’s what women did. My dad didn’t learn to cook until he had to live alone. And then, he became one of those people who thought they discovered cooking. LOL
Anyway, for some very special reason that I no longer recall, we went to The University Club for dinner. It was one of those places – lobster on the menu, drinks before dinner, candles on the table … blah, blah, blah. NOT my scene, and I remember with a child’s clarity that, every single visit there, my sister and I hoovered up the crackers on the table because we were starving by the time the before-dinner drinks had been consumed.
By the end of our meal, the adults at the table were a little tipsy, some more than others – yes, including the driver. We were all draped on the fancy sofas in the entry room – maybe it was a bar area, I don’t remember – waiting for bathroom trips to be over when my mother told me to follow Grandma into the restroom because Grandma was pretty tipsy from all the Manhattan’s she’d downed. (Grandma was MAYBE 5’ on tall days, in heels and standing on tiptoe.)
Of course – because my mom had some weird sixth sense about things – about 10 seconds after I entered the restroom in my fancy childhood sandals, my grandmother fell and I had to run for my mother. Grandma’s necklace had caught on the toilet paper device – a weird accident that caused her to hit the wall, hard, and cut open her face. She went by ambulance to the hospital with my mother while my (inebriated – don’t tell anyone that I initially spelled that inebrie-ated, yes, like the cheese and then giggled aloud SMH) father dropped us off at Grandma’s apartment. This is where things get crazy.
Let’s paint the scene – my grandmother lived in a fancy old, old, old building. She’d been there for, maybe, 5-ish years. I loved it, with its antique-y furnishings and funny smells. She wasn’t, probably, so happy there and even less so when Gannon University started using it for student housing. Do you already know where this is going? Believe me; it took me a LONG time to figure it out.
For those of you who haven’t quite got it yet: I’m sitting in Grandma’s living room. I think my sister is trying to nap in Grandma’s bedroom. We’re there for what seems like days but is probably just a couple hours. There’s nothing to do. It’s too late for television because, of course, in those days, television went off the air. I don’t have a book so, basically, I’m just staring out the small, basement-apartment window when I hear a woman scream. I sit BOLT UP, wondering if I’d dozed off. It happens again. But this time it’s more like a cry or moan. Oh my gosh. Someone is dying. I run into the bedroom to ask my sister if she can hear it. Maybe she’s less naive than me because she doesn’t seem to care. I go back into the living room and – not realizing it – listen to two people having very loud sex, while thinking that a woman is in agony. I was several years older before I figured that memory out. Haha
Grandma was fine, by the way. She got stitches but didn’t even have a concussion. Unrelated to the injury but not to the loud sex, she moved out of that building into a new senior high-rise that she absolutely loved and ruled like a benevolent dictator, if that is actually a thing. She was quite a powerhouse who made everyone love her, at least from my very not-objective childhood opinion. I am pretty sure, in hindsight, that, like my father, one either adored her or absolutely despised her. Of course, I adored her.
Perhaps it will not surprise you that this post is a meditation on the companionship of grief. Occasionally, someone new to it will ask me if “it” gets better. There’s a lovely poem, “We grieve But We Do Not Drown,” by scar_poetry that answers that question particularly well. I don’t know scar_poetry’s given name but you can find her on social media, particularly Instagram. I recommend that you listen to her read the poem, as her inflection is, itself, a gift.
Much love.
