November 10th is my least favorite day of the year. Nineteen years ago, my beloved Grammie departed from this world on the tenth of November. She was, for all intents and purposes, the greatest grandmother there has ever been. My childhood is filled with memories of attempted bird catching, sleepovers on the most fabulous of floral couches, tea parties with American Girl dolls, and being naively blind to the pain from which she suffered. My grandmother had a beautiful spirit, surely one of the greatest this world has ever known. She taught me how to make homemade macaroni and cheese and attempted to teach me to play the piano. She had more unwavering faith in her pinkie finger than the majority of people will ever have in their entire lifetime. When she was called home to Heaven, she went fearlessly. I didn’t understand how I could live without her in my life. I was weeks away from my sweet sixteen and I was angry that she would never see me graduate, never see me get married, never meet my children. She died two months after 9/11 and one of the last memories I have of her is singing Amazing Grace as she tickled the ivories in her living room. To this day, that song gets me.
For a few years now, I’ve been alive without her longer than I ever was with her. That’s a strange concept for me to comprehend because I still feel like she’s such a part of me. The pain of November 10th has withered away into a day of remembrance, a day when I can look back on the time that we did have together and be genuinely thankful for everything that she was, everything that she instilled in me. Her daughter, my mother, also now bears her namesake: Grammie. I truly believe that my mom learned how to be a grandmother from my own grandmother. They’re both beautifully caring, hilariously creative, and such integral parts of their granddaughters’ upbringings.
For me, Grammie’s house was a guaranteed good time. It was there that I learned to climb trees, play Uno, and declare myself the King of the Castle while all the others were Dirty Rascals. It’s where I was informed that if you put salt on a bird’s tail, it can’t fly. Naturally, I stood outside her bird feeders with a paper bag, a salt shaker and a hand-drawn bird pasted to a popsicle stick for more than an hour. No birds were caught that day, but she did buy me one from the pet store the following day, much to my mother’s chagrin. (Ah, Cheep Cheep, you were a good bird. May you Rest in Peace.) After she passed away, we found an old Saltines tin with that paper bag (still filled with salt) and that bird on a stick with the date in her handwriting. If nothing else, she was the truest of memory keepers.
For Clara and Eloise, Grammie’s house is always a good time too. They return home with funny stories which are sure to only get funnier as the years go on. After a day at Grammie’s, Clara will present her latest and greatest masterpiece, most recently a family of Acorn People they crafted together while Eloise was napping. My mother is so intune to my children’s needs; I finally understand how thankful my mom was for her mom when I was a child. To me, our sleepovers were adventures planned just for me; I now understand that they were, in fact, designed just to give my parents a break from me! That’s the magic of Grammies though, they never let on to anything other than the perfect world their granddaughters live in.
I wish Clara and Eloise could know my Gram, and I try very hard to channel her faith and believe that someday, they will. Each night, after I tell Clara that I love her more than all the words in all the books and all the stars in the sky, after I remind her that she is smart, kind, important, brave, strong, beautiful, and loved, she asks me to rub her back and sing. She asks me to sing Amazing Grace. Every. Single. Night. I know without a doubt that Clara would have loved her more than anything. Eloise would have too. To know her was to love her. Though they may never meet in this world, in a way, they do know her. They know their very own Grammie. So cheers to you, Grammie. On this November 10, 2020, in a year where everything is out of the ordinary, I’m deeply thankful for the constant you create in our lives. And to my very own Gram, until we meet again.
