Pop, Light, Rainbow, Fade

I was making waffle batter while everyone is still asleep, and it's cool out on a summer morning, the kind of cloudy you know won't last, but that you're so grateful for when you don't have air conditioning. The summer has been quiet, and hot, and slow, the perfect antidote to the busyness of the school year, where you feel frazzled by the end of each day, and simultaneaously like you've done nothing. Now we just do nothing, and we feel sorry at the end of the day that there isn't more time to do nothing, because we're full of happiness, bags of nothing, time spent dawdling and slowing.

Making the waffles I was thinking about my grandma and how I miss her, and how I'm hoping to BE her, with her puttering and her interest in all things little - the dailyness of everyday life. Whether the big heron that lived on her river in North Carolina was going to come up onto her porch for some hamburger meat. And if he didn't, where was he? She was old when I met her (probably 50!!) and she didn't seem to have any of the "what am I doing with my life" things that are so popular with the moms around me today. She just tended to my grandpa, who was a dick, basically, although he mellowed later in life, and she sort of hummed all day while chopping vegetables, and also had a twinkle in her eye and was ready at any time to play any card game with a grandkid. And beat the pants off of you without making you feel bad. Instead, you just wanted to play more. Cause she had that cozy spirit, and that Airstream trailer, and you didn't see her much, so she was an enigma, a kind, gentle cloud.

My other grandma on the other side was a cigarette smoking, more high-energy in a slow moving body type, with big streaked tall hair, and an Arkansas accent. At her lake cabin near Pine Bluff, it was so hot the lemon drops all stuck together like one big clump in the clear cookie jar, and once you wrestled one free, it was the best lemon drop you ever tasted. They had a wire on posts that was like a guard rail that you followed down from the cabin to the lake, and they said it was because a blind man once lived there and had to follow the wire down to the boat house. So we'd always walk down with our eyes closed holding the wire to see if we could do it. Now that I think back, I'm pretty sure my big brother made up that blind man story. Gramma Yvonne was the step-gramma, though it didn't matter. She gave you everything you wanted (even though all you really wanted was candy, or something at the 5 and Dime), and she loved when you sat on her lap and nestled into her tan, loose, watery skin. She really had everything you could ever want in a gramma - humor, closets you could crawl into and find treasures, decks of cards in every drawer, and time to just sit with you and not accomplish anything.

I also have another gramma, who was like the pageant queen of grammas - the one most likely to be sitting on a float waving a perfect wave. She smelled like South Carolina, and she had lots of bangles, and she also had a soft spot for grandchildren. She was the one probably least able to enjoy her life, and she was the one who had the most elegant stuff. At nine, I loved shining her silver til you could see your relection, because in a few minutes you could take something ugly and make it look like a million bucks. It was pretty satisfying. She did have a sly sense of humor and we could poke away her prickliness. She more than the rest of them probably needed the most love, only because she couldn't seem to hold on to it. She'd try to stick it onto her body and it would just wash right off. The other grammas were thick with love, they must've been stickier, and she just kept watching hers wash right off.

This Fourth of July I got to sit at a friend's house on a hill and watch fireworks made only for us (and all of Toluca Lake) and whoever else lucky enough to see them since fireworks pretty much belong to anyone with a sky and the ability to look up. I sat with my dad, who had a hat with hands on it that could clap. I sat with one of my moms who has really nice hair and who argued me into sitting in the cushy chair. There were a row of kids, all ours, some borrowed, a husband, my sister and an uncle in front row fireworks seats and someone else's husband and some other guy I didn't know but he had the lighter for the sparklers. We were happy even before the big fireworks started, just watching the far away fireworks, all across the valley. Then just when we thought maybe they weren't going to have fireworks this year, suddenly there they were, all huge, right in front of us, pop, light, rainbow, fade. The first thing I thought was, awww, I wish my missing mom was seeing this. She loves fireworks. Then I was happy just watching, and watching the kids, and the fireworks went on long enough where I didn't have to think anything, I could just be there, and be on Earth, at night, with colorful light in the sky. Safe with my people.

Being the gramma must be like that. Pop, light, rainbow, fade. But you remember the rainbow.