Letters from Grenada

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A few weeks after the fire it was Thanksgiving, and my mom arranged for me to fly to South Bend, Indiana.  There I spent a week with my ailing grandparents.  I drove us to Indianapolis to see Rebecca (my aunt, their daughter) and her family.  My grandfather, Gene, was nearly blind at that point, suffering from macular degeneration.  He had stubbornly continued to drive long after his vision began to fail in earnest.  Even after he accepted his lot in life as chauffeured, he’d ride his bike all over South Bend.  But mostly he’d be driven, by friend or family.

Grandpa Gene knew every inch of highway in Indiana and Michigan.  He remembered it all like he had a 3-D map in his head, peopled with stories.  Blind as a bat, sitting in the passenger seat, he always knew where we were.  At one point, stopped at a light, a troubled look settled on his face.  He asked me, thumb jerking towards his window, “What’s this, Maria?  What’s over here to my right?”

“It’s a shopping mall, Grandpa.  A little one, like where each store has its own entrance.”  I thought for a second.  “It looks new.”

Then he was smiling, because he’d figured it out.  He’d heard of the shopping center but never seen it himself.  I was smiling because I was feeling a little bit useful… and over a thousand miles away from the smell of fire.

Grandpa, sightless, announced every landmark five minutes before we were upon it.  Grandma Vera spent the entire trip securely tucked in the backseat, fast asleep, bundled up like Nanook of the North.  Over her clothes she wore a sweater, a winter-weight windbreaker, a scarf, a fleece-lined hat and gloves.  It had been two years since her Parkinson’s diagnosis.  In addition to always being cold, she was losing motion and balance.  She was in the very early, merely batty, stages of senility.

Gene and Vera were of the World War II generation.  They’d married young and had eight children.  My mother was the third-born and the eldest girl.  They didn’t have much but they worked hard and had no taste for luxury, so they managed well enough, and, with the help of scholarships, sent most of their children to college.  Gene was big and talkative, a bull in a china shop, a very gentle bear.  He was a born storyteller, and loved the life of a salesman, endlessly trading stories, slapping backs and shaking hands.  Vera, meanwhile, was beyond shy.  She spoke little and seemed to make a sport of introversion.  She was kind and sweet and she let me pick out the fabric when she made me clothes.

In 2002 they were both 81 years old.  They still lived alone but needed help daily.  Aunt Cindy cooked and cleaned and shopped for them.  Uncle Kenny read the mail, did the family paperwork, filled prescriptions and attended doctor’s appointments.  I was visiting so they could take a respite.

We had a good Thanksgiving.  Uncle Jay deep-fried a turkey in peanut oil.  Cousin Michael introduced me to the new generation of Lego’s.   At the end of the week I flew back to New York.

Back in New York, I floated for a bit.  I eventually found my way to an empty bedroom in my brother’s house.  Robert lived in the Five College region of Massachusetts.  It felt a lot like Ithaca, so it felt a lot like home.

My life in Robert’s house was designed to move slowly.  For more than year, I did little more than watch DVDs – the ones that had survived the fire.  I cooked, I drank wine, I walked the dog.  I got the cat stoned.  I reveled in the discovered of floral oil treatments for dry hair, imported from India.  I discovered Tom Robbins, drowned in the eccentric genius of Still Life with Woodpecker.  I read at least a book a day, and I pretended to write.

There was no job market there, unless I wanted to work in an ice cream store with the students, or at an organic hydroponic farm with the hippies.  I loved wandering around the campus at UMass, feeling at one with the students around me.  Certainly I still looked like one of them.  I’d gotten a campus library card, joined a couple of groups, spent most weekdays on campus.  But it was a sham, and an expensive one.  I needed to go back to work, which for me meant going back to New York.

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Posted on September 12th, 2008 under Grenada • Tags: backstory, memoir. •  Print This Post •  Email This Post • RSS 2.0 feed • Both comments and pings are currently closed