Grandmother

Grandma Esther fell a couple of weeks ago. For those of you who don't know, Grandma Esther is my paternal grandmother. She's 99 years old and lives in a retirement center in Texas. Not a nursing home because she's too independent for that. Just yet, anyway.

That Sunday afternoon my sister and I both had voice mail messages from our mother that Grandma had fallen, broken her hip and ankle and needed surgery. I was sure, quite sure, that Grandma wouldn't make it through that surgery. Who ever heard of a person so old having surgery? Those were long hours of upset and worry and tears. They tested her heart and it was strong, they performed the surgery and she made it through to fight with the doctors and physical therapists the next day. Like she always has.

I know what you're thinking. You're assuming, as I did when I heard the news, that she fell in the bathtub or on a slippery hallway floor or, you know, because she's 99 years old. But no, we were wrong. She was watching the Cowboys game and decided to take her walker and dash over to the Target store located next door to the retirement center to exchange a shirt during half time. She was sure she could make it back before the third quarter started and maybe she would have made it if she hadn't used the back door coming back into the retirement center. That door is not automatic and she got caught in the door. Jordan's been saying, in a way that tells me she's impressed, that "Grandma Esther's a rebel!". Way to be a 99-year-old bad influence, Grandma.

It's times like these that bring me up short and force me to re-evaluate because everything comes into such sharp focus. I see what's important and see where I've failed. In my life, where trauma and fires and then readjustment and getting over it have ruled everything for the last several years, so much that's really important to me had to be jettisoned from my immediate concern and attention.

I've lost touch with my grandmother. There's a line that extends from my mother to me. Invisible, but there. My mother is my matriarch, and that of my sister, since our mother's mother is dead. Grandma Esther, older than us all, is not our matriarch, for there can be only one, and that's a line, it seems to me, that extends from mother to daughter, not mother to son to daughter. She is, however, this paternal grandmother, fundamentally important to me. Her traits, physical, emotional and intellectual have descended down to me and on again to my daughters. She is a part of me, and I know her so intimately, almost as if I have her memories written in my dna, and her mother's and her mother's mother on back. Ancient and mine, too. Maybe I should set aside my post-traumatic stress and let a fire or two burn if I have to and pick up the phone and call her sometime. Or send her a letter in 18 pt. Times New Roman.