What are memories made of? The sun glints on the snow and
from my school desk I can see the ice is building up on the lake. The polar
vortex has brought ice early this year, wreaking havoc with the water supply
and our school days and my memories. The
present is entangled in the past for me on this January day. Sitting in my
eighth grade classroom at the biggest desk with rolling chair, the view from my
window brings me back to the eighth grader I was when my world was turned upside
down. Twenty-nine years is a long time to miss her, and I am literally back
where I started, remembering the day my sweet grandmother died.
How is she still so powerfully with me, this woman with the
map of Ireland on her face? Maybe it is because I was just talking with a
friend about her. How she taught me how to do the work first: woke me up at six
in the morning, fed me coffee laden with milk, and set me on my tasks for the
day. We rode the tractor, weeded the garden, made the beds, cooked the lunch
and put dinner on the stove. Worked hard first so that by 3:00 we were already
settled in to read our mystery books on the porch, or fish off the dock with a
bamboo pole.
But maybe it is something more. Her spirit is here, the way
she twinkled when she spoke, the way she stood up for her beliefs, the way she
made a little mischief along the path she chose. She dabbled in writing, and
power tools, and making friends, and breathing in nature. She drove her husband crazy, and never could
understand all of his political and upper class dealings. She was a simple
woman with a simple faith and a very large sense of who she was. Maybe she is
not so far away after all. I recognize her in my grown up self, and the miracle
is that the passage of time could make this so.
As my dad always said, “It’s all part of nature, you see.”
But it still makes me marvel. How could a woman who spent so little time with
me on this planet have had such a powerful impact? She planted the seeds: read
me books, fed me pudding and beef soup, showed me how to wear a hard hat under
the pear tree at the end of the lane so we wouldn’t get hit by the falling
fruit. She helped the hopeless and spoke her mind and never stopped
appreciating the apple trees and the starry nights and the hardening ice upon
the bay where she lived. She made her
corner of the world shine.
And she nurtured a granddaughter that would stand the test
of time. Somehow, I think, a garden left untended for nearly thirty years would
be infested and overgrown and unkempt. But these deep roots she gave me have
kept her alive, and molded the woman I have become: through my writing, my
ornery side, my love of the outdoors, and in my own children who join me amid
the tomato plants and sand castles and snow balls.
The ice outside my window today reminds me of the circle of
nature. And I can attest that in some ways I am back where I began when she
left too soon. But I am much closer to this woman in my heart, the one who
taught me to work and play and laugh and believe. And I think she might be proud
of the way her garden is shaping up.
