Amy Loves Books

My mother was born late in her own mother’s life. She was a surprise, perhaps not a completely welcome one. As a result, my mother’s mother was old when I was born, older than most grandmothers. Though we did not know it at the time, she was in early stage Alzheimer's - a disease that would progressively close her in its vice-like grip. By the time I was eight or nine, she did not know who I was. She would ask me where I was from, and I would tell her that I was from Florida. Her eyes would glaze and she would nod. “I have relatives in Florida”, she would say. I would tell her that I was one of those relatives. She would smile, and forget again.

My memories of my grandmother are mostly hazy. I remember that she had impossibly soft skin, a trait that my uncle Richard claims all the women on our side of the family have. I remember that she reminded me a frightened bird. At dinner, she would barely touch her food, and my grandfather would scold her. "You eat like a bird", he would say. I looked at her and wondered if maybe she was a bird - like big bird, except more old lady-ish. She was thin, and nervous. She never seemed to stay in one place.

My grandmother ate baby cereal with lots of sugar. She collected figurines of gnomes. She had a drawer of buttons that she let me play with. In her bedroom, she had black velvet paintings of harlequins dancing that scared me so much that I slept in the dining room just to avoid being with the pictures in the dark. There was a summerhouse in her backyard, and a fish pond. At night, there were fireflies in the bushes.

The thing I remember most about my grandmother, is that her refrigerator that had doors that opened side-by-side. I had never seen a refrigerator like this before. When I came to visit, she always had my favorite things in her fridge: a box of banana popsicles, a box of root beer float popsicles, and bottles of strawberry pop. When we got to her house, after a two-day drive from Florida, I would immediately run to her fridge and look for the popsicles and soda. They were always there.

I saw that she had bought them just for me, and I felt the feeling that I craved more than anything in the world. I felt wanted there.

She was a good grandmother.

Her name was Winnie. She was kind.