The water is wide
My grandmother lives in a house on the ocean. It is a forest green home nestled amongst rocks and trees with steps built by my grandfather leading down to the beach below. It was a magical place to visit as children. A place filled with wild, raw adventure. My sister and I would marvel as we discovered pieces of this new world so different from our inner city playground. We watched in awe as transient orcas made their way across the straight, giggled as otters frolicked in the surf, and shrieked as crabs scurried to find shelter after we had upturned the rocks they’d been hiding beneath. We would delight as anemones shrank inward at the touch of our tiny fingers and held our breath as we tried to coax dear along the shore to sample the apples we held out for them in our tiny hands. Despite the warnings of my grandmother, we would jump across tide pools and balance like tightrope walkers along pieces of drift wood. We got our feet wet and our hands dirty and at night, curled up in our sleeping bags, we would drift off to the lullaby of waves crashing against the shore below.
I miss this place. I have not visited in many tides. I miss seeing the world through my child’s eyes. I miss my grandmother also- who she was before I grew up and realized I do not know her at all. As a child she was just Grammie. I knew she gave wet sloppy kisses, sent a loonie on my birthday for each year I’d been alive, and said the words “God Damn It Alexis” when I threw tantrums. She was not the kind of grandmother who bakes cookies or tells you stories about when she was a girl, but the kind who tells you to wear an undershirt and makes you eat what’s on your plate; the kind that helps you clean up your room and lets you ride in the front seat of her convertible with the top down. I knew these things to be facts. I did not question the origin of her ways or long to know her soul. I know her now like the ocean in some ways; Mysterious and uncompromising; vast and unpredictable; sometimes playful and sometimes dangerous; hard to navigate. She is like the ocean for I am drawn to her, love her, and am afraid she’ll drown me anyway.
I see her clearer now; Nearing ninety, her body frail and small and failing her, her mind and tongue as sharp as ever. She is still on her own, her husband in the ground for many years and the man she loves across the country. She has a cat to keep her company. She has a neighbor that looks up on her. She has the sound of the ocean around her, and her family’s voices, distant on the phone. When I call to catch up I do not hear her lectures, I hear her loneliness. I do not hear her complaints about the cold, I hear her sadness. I hear a woman who has become an island. Or is this how it has always been?
“Hello” her voice cracks as she answers. “Hi Grammie, it’s me.” She asks what’s new. I give her updates on the weather, my job. She tells me about the seal that’s been hanging around the rocks, how the cat is, how the surgery went. Sometimes she lectures me about what it is I should be doing and reminds me to stay out of trouble. I make a joke and we end the conversation by wrapping our arms around ourselves in the sign of a hug. We know we both do this because we make the sound of being squished.
“Good bye Grammie, I miss you”
“I miss you too”
And we hang up.
The words I long to say, as silent still as the moon in the night sky.
What does your heart say grandmother? What did you dream of when you were a girl? Who did you love? Who hurt you? What did you fight for? What did you give up? How did you get here? Who was your mother? Your father? Where did you come from? What were your greatest joys? Your regrets? Your fears? Your triumphs? How do I reach you? What does it take? What do you know? What do you wish for? What makes your heart dance? What makes you cry? Who are you? I’m sorry that I don’t see you through my child’s eyes anymore. Can I please come in?
And if I could travel across the cables, across the water, across time, I would sit in her lap like I did as a child and I would whisper “I love you grammie. You are the wind whistling through the trees. You are the call of the loon, the wild colors of the setting sun. I’ve never told you this, but you are beautiful. And needed. And wanted. And loved.”
My grandmother lives in a house on the ocean. It is a lonely place nestled amongst rocks and trees, with steps, built by my grandfather, that she can no longer travel down. There is a world down there that she cannot explore. Do her bones betray her, or is she afraid of the coming tide?
