Looking for Grandma

I recall being in my grandparents house when I was a child. They
lived in the town of Westchester near LAX and when my parents went on their many
trips they would drop me and my sisters off at my grandparents to stay
while they were gone. This was a routine in my life. I was close with my
grandparents, especially my grandma.

My grandma was a short lady, and stout....she was 100% Italian and she would throw out Italian words regularly in a sentence just to keep me guessing. She called me "Goya" which, I think, meant "big mouth", because, apparently, I talked a lot. She said it as a term of endearment. Everything between us was about endearment.

She often laughed at what I did...she thought I was funny; I was so often trying to be funny. She was the one person in the family who I knew would appreciate my efforts. She made
me laugh, too, or let me say that she made me smile. She was very good to me and she
always made me think I was important by recounting so many of our times
together in detail and with fondness. I think she understood me better than did any other family member. I guess that's one of the ways we feel loved. She might have been my best friend. She was that
special to me.

It has been 45 years or more since I was last at
that house but I can remember most all of it.... It was a humble house on a quiet street in a normal
neighborhood. It had no frills, but it had my grandma.
Much of my time there was spent looking for things
to do, things to get interested in. They had a small garage at the back of the house that
contained a lot of my grandpa's favorite projects. He liked to fix TV's. He had
a vice grip in that garage that I used to play with. It was designed to hold things tightly so you could work on them with both hands. It was attached to
a bench and I used to watch it intently as I opened it and then closed
it by turning the handle.

Behind the garage was a small grass
space where my grandma had a clothesline. She would hang the wet
clothes there for drying after they came out of the washing machine. In my mind I can picture the clothes swinging in the breeze as they dried out.
There was a pole at either end of the attached clothesline and they
had a lot of rust on them so that you could run your hand up and down the pole
and lots of crusty shavings would come off.

There wasn't a whole lot to do so much of the time was spent wandering around the small
backyard, in the garage, or sometimes in the driveway, looking for things that seemed worth doing. I spent a lot of time just thinking when I was there, wondering. Unlike now, I was a very
passive participant in my life. I went where I was taken and I left
when I was picked up. I went with the decisions of the "grown ups"
wherever they took me...they decided where I would physically be at that point in my life but, even though, my thoughts and my imagination were mine and mine alone. I’ve always taken great comfort in that. Perhaps my favorite thing about being me is all the thoughts and feelings I have in my head all the time.

I made several trips to that garage during a
stay at my grandparents home. I would go back in hoping to find
something new that would interest me. I might sort through some nuts
and bolts in a box, or turn that vice grip a few more times, hoping to get a few more moments of pleasure.

At some point I would lose interest in the garage and I would move on to another
activity. Maybe I would go inside and sit for awhile with my
grandparents while they did their things. My grandpa was a very sweet man but he was quiet most of the time. My grandma loved to talk, and so did I. We were good together that way. I would often come inside for a few more of the peanut butter or chocolate chip cookies that grandma would bake for us in anticipation of our stay. I loved those cookies and relied on them when at my grandparents house. I took them for granted. She kept them in special cookie tins and placed them above her refrigerator. You could always see wax paper squeezing out from between the container lid and the container. She always had several layers of wax paper separating the layers of cookies.
My grandpa did the NY Times crossword puzzle every day (quietly) and my grandma would be in the kitchen or folding laundry or taking a rest break on the sofa where she often would lay flat on her back.

I was understanding my world and looking for fun things to do. It was all very simple. No one expected much of anything from me.

My grandma always tried to get me to play with the boy who lived across the street. I think he was my age. I don't remember his name but I sure heard it a lot over the years from her. I usually just wanted to be able to roam on my own and sift through the day in a semi solitude. You can't do that when you are with a new friend. You can't "wonder" unless you are alone.

I would eventually go back outside and find something to watch, like a
pill bug that was walking along the driveway. I'd pick it up, knowing
that it would do what it always does when you pick one up. It curls up
in a ball and you can roll it around between two fingers, then, if you
let it sit still and undisturbed on the palm of your hand for awhile it
might feel safe enough to unravel from its ball and start walking again.

My days at my grandparents house were a lot like that. Actually, much
of my childhood was spent stringing moments like these together, until
the day faded to darkness, and my activities went inside.

I remember taking naps in the guest room there. It was always very still and quiet.
And times when I would be awake but my eyes would be closed still and I could hear my grandma open the door slightly to see if I was still asleep. I wasn't but I would always
pretend to be asleep, sometimes squinting my eyes to take a peek. There is something very different about being awake with your eyes closed while knowing that someone is looking in on you
and they think you are asleep. I remember the dining room near
the front door, and the table at the end of the kitchen where we always
ate breakfast. We always seemed to have toast for breakfast and unlike anywhere else
that I knew of my grandma always cut the toast on the diagonal, which
made two triangles instead of two rectangles.

These were golden moments from my childhood, perhaps not too different from the moments I would spend at my own house, except these moments were spent with my grandma.

I think now, after having my own kids and the joy that it brings, how my grandparents must have felt when
I was driving away in the car with my parents when it was time for me
to go home. Surely we hugged and waved before leaving and exchanged an "I love you", or "I'll miss you" a few moments before my parents car pulled away from that house and
slowly turned around the corner and out of sight. Was she a little sad that her young grandson was now gone? Sharing your home and your days and your heart, and even cookies
with your grandchildren must bring some joy, or so they told me, if only to have something
young and innocent to watch over and observe, a reminder of when life
was so fresh and adventurous, and carefree.

Might she have visited her small garage soon after I left for home and seen the vice grip left where I had last turned it, and a few strewn nuts and bolts that had been pulled out of a box and left out on the counter.
Might she have wandered across an activity that I had started in some corner of the backyard, maybe a
small hole dug with a trowel or some rocks stacked on top of one another to see how high it could go.
I might have left my toothbrush in the bathroom or a small sock on the opposite side of the bed. Surely I forgot to make my bed, leaving the imprint of my head on the pillow from the quiet sleep of the night before.

Things are very different now. Many more moments have taken their
place. My grandparents passed away many years ago..that house has been
torn down and the old vice grip is nowhere to be found. No one who now
lives in that new space knows what happened there so many years ago and
between whom.
It all happened. It was perfect. I was there. I am the only
one left to recall those days at my grandmas house. I'll hold onto the
secrets for awhile and then they will be gone. There will be no one
left to tell the stories of the moments with the pill bug, and the vice
grip, and my grandma and me.