Ewte Talk

My dearest Grandpa,

Yesterday was Election Day, which I know you certainly were aware of from over there on the other side, or Heaven, or where ever you find yourself these days. I certainly make no pretense to know, though I feel your presence here in my vicinity regularly, so you can’t have gone far. Thank goodness for that.

I tapped the computer screen rather quickly at the poll, knowing exactly what I wanted to do ahead of time, having gone in an informed voter. I like to be prepared in life, sometimes overly so, but it’s a good feeling, you know, the quiet calm of a control freak. I also thought the faster I plucked out my vote the harder it would be for you to peek, even if you knew all along I wasn’t contributing to your side of the aisle.

Are you doing okay now that we took the House? What are the dead republicans saying about Nancy Pelosi up in Heaven? Do they smirk and rant and bitch just like they did when they were alive? Or is attitude a lost art once one dies? Anyway, as I write this we’re still waiting word on the Senate, my own state one of the states at issue, Virginia. All I can ever say is, shame on everybody who didn’t vote.

The boys had off from school a couple of days this week coinciding with Election Day because we had parent-teacher conferences. My sister Sue asked how it went and I told her that their teachers requested both boys be transferred out of the school system entirely. You know, kicked out. Of course, I was kidding. It was just the opposite. They’re perfect. Well, okay, kidding again. But our meetings went well. Our teachers this year are fantastic, real advocates for our kids. I couldn’t be more thrilled. I love our school. It does take work on my part, too. You get out of it what you put into it, that’s for sure.

What is becoming more and more apparent and alarming, however, is that I am being forced to crawl out from under the cozy rock I’ve tucked myself under for the last so-many years since I left the educational system. My sons now officially know more than me. Oh, crap! Take squirrels for instance. I’m sure you know what a drey is, Grandpa, because you do know most of everything, or a bit of everything, a trait my husband shares. Very annoying. As for me, I had to ask, “Maxie, what is a drey?” And my five-year-old son proceeded to explain the meaning of drey (even though it was obvious from the picture of the nest he had colored with the big word “drey” underneath it, but I asked anyway because I had never heard of the word.) “Wow,” I told my son, “You just taught me something I never knew. How about that?” I put the word in big letters on our white board in the kitchen that we use for impromptu lessons. Max then proudly launched into a long squirrel lesson primarily concerning the myriad functions their tails serve. So many functions and the kid knew them all. I was flabbergasted. It begs the question: how has my life focused itself? I know the current prices of food products at various local markets, and thus which markets to go to for what. I’m learning more every day about running and training. If anyone can tell me what kind of advantage in life that is going to serve me I’ll give you a hundred bucks. Above all, I know how to quickly perfume a small bathroom as guests pull into my driveway.

The other day Max and I were outside and he said to me, “Mom, do you see that squirrel?”

“Yes,”

“Well, I know it is probably a young one.”

“Really? How do you know that?”

“Well, I can tell from its tail. It’s not very big and fuzzy. If it was big and fuzzy it would be a grown up squirrel. The babies squeeze together to keep warm because their tails are so small.”

Grandpa, looks like I’m going to have to bone up on my squirrels. Please give Grandma a huge hug and kiss for me. I miss you guys so much. The Wilsons will be at my brother’s for Thanksgiving and the Traegers, I suppose, up in Pa. Please come and be with all of us. I’ll save some pie for you.

My love,

Your granddaughter,

Stephanie

PS Almost forgot. Tell Gram that her Christmas cactus just started blooming today, one of my favorite events of the year. The blossoms are her exquisite laugh, that gorgeous smile of hers lighting up my home in the early winter. How thoughtful of her to come in the form of a plant, but she would for she loved her cacti, and I gladly receive her for I am a plant lover like her. Perhaps I can keep this little guy alive for the next bunch of years until I keel over and whomever I bequeath my plants to can put one of mine next to Gram’s Christmas cactus and then, hey now, wouldn’t that be famous? Is this a little too much for you, Gramps?

Dear Grandma,
I hope you enjoyed your birthday. It’s your second one since you died, though you’ve been gone for just over a year. It’ll always be like that because you died shortly before your birthday. I realized this year that I’d like to celebrate your birthday instead of mourn your deathday, especially since they’re so close together. You were more of a party girl anyway.

I hear Aunt Ann has just decreed that we women will now wear beige on your birthday, which is well and fine with me. I have some beige. Plenty of black if anyone should ever die who loved wearing black (I guess that would be me. . .), but I could pull together a beige ensemble or two for May 21st. No problem.

Of course, if someone ever gets the idea to honor you by way of wearing a new pair of shoes every day for one year, I might chair that committee. Too bad not one of your lineage can fit into your hundreds of tiny pairs of slippers, otherwise the memorial would be feasible.

I know you must have been surprised to see me go to church on your birthday. I wasn’t sure the building would be open, but I guess someone wanted me to be there because the choir was practicing and I was able to walk right into a pew unnoticed and alone.

I sang you two songs, I am the Bread of Life, and Be Not Afraid. Could you hear me? My voice is so out of practice I could barely hear myself. I love those songs, and I will always remember the time when we sang them to you as you were dying. I thought they might be nicer than “Happy Birthday to You. .yada yada yada”.

You know, life here has gotten easier for all of us. You probably know this, can see this, or sense it. It was a tough year. Nutty. Grandpa is doing so well we all can hardly believe it. For starters, he’s still alive. That’s something, huh? Many widows his age, with his amount of grief would have succumbed. Add in his poor health, and you can only surmise that he’s a tough cookie, which we all knew anyway, but still. In addition to his great survival skills, your husband of sixty-odd years has become something of a social butterfly. Aunt Ann has him quite self-sufficient in many ways, and I hear he relishes the several social gatherings he attends each week. Pretty remarkable for a blind man on oxygen who can barely walk. But his wit and mind are still as sharp as ever, the old bear.

One last thing, Gram, I know I tell you all the time, but I thought I’d say it officially here: thanks.

Thanks for all of your intervention this past year in all of our lives, most especially mine. I can feel you in so many ways. And now that you’ve attained that most rarified of positions, omniscience by virtue of being dead, you know how things are inside all of us I expect. While in some ways this is a bit disconcerting, in others it’s a comfort. You are now the first person (except for Aunt Mary and Uncle Louie) whom I’ve known and loved with all my heart who now knows that on the outside I’m a very very kind and loving person, but on the inside I’m a wench.

I’m hoping this is common among humans, as you (dead) all see it, and I sort of blend in with no problem. If this isn’t the case. . .well, then, uh-oh.

Last, but not least, while I definitely am catching all of your signs and signals to me, I am not always able to interpret the exact meaning each time. In fact, many times I debate the polar possibilities of what any given sign might mean. Like today. Just as I posed an important question to myself as I was driving, I hit and killed a bird. Tell me. Was my answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’?

??

At any rate, it’s going to be another long summer without you at the Lake, without you anywhere, without you here on Earth. It’s just so nice to know you’re still so close, even if it is in such a quiet. I have to try to hear you with different ears. What a change.
Happy Birthday,

Love,

Stephanie

Dear Lover,

I want you back. At the risk of seeming a desperate woman I write this letter in hopes of winning your sympathies and your ultimate return. It is true I am a proud woman, a strong woman. Some people (my husband included) refer to me as a stubborn woman, and I would go so far as to agree, but in this instance I am willing to suffer insult to my pride, a weakening of my strength if I am forced to take up a grovelling stance fit for nothing more than the gutter-dweller I would become should it lead to our reunion, you and I.

My first taste of you was when I was but a girl and that was a long time ago. I saw you on our family’s one small television through a show on Babe Didrickson Zaharias. The show portrayed this spectacular woman’s athletic life, and how she had carried the U.S. Olympic Women’s Track and Field team by herself. I was smitten. With her, and with you. At the time I was perhaps eight or nine years old. I could run faster than every girl in my class except Amy Rogers, and sometimes I beat even her. She and I could also beat most of the boys, which I imagine gave her the same satisfaction it did me. I remember those days fondly. It was a time of fantasy: high hopes of marrying Derek from The Bay City Rollers and running hurdles in the Olympics. My father would run the high school track a couple miles from our rural home and my sister and I would come with him. I remember the sting of the evening air on my lungs when I’d pushed too hard for my unconditioned little body. I remember goofing around with my sister on the pole vault landing pad. I loved the track. I loved you: running.

It wasn’t until later, when we had to run in my other sports, that I remembered my allegience to you, and I switched out of field hockey and into track. From the time of my freshman year in high school I have been with you in one form or another: track, cross-country, road races, triathlons. What started out as sport, moved to a way to keep in shape, eventually became a way of life and a way to deal with life. You are so much more to me than the physical now, after twenty seven years. Our time together is spiritual, as lunatic as that may sound to the uninitiated, but if they only knew just how extraordinary your breadth is. You address my physical, emotional, and spiritual concerns with your one simple motion, all sweat aside. I’ve read that even the Buddhist monks access their spiritual reach through your efforts. Fantastic. The more the merrier.

My problem, of course, is that you and I have been separated now for the better part of eight months, which, if I’m not mistaken is our longest estrangement to date. Our separation indeed put me into a tailspin and before I got too low to pull myself out, I finally sought medical intervention. I was under the assumption that you and I were through for good, the party was over. Back at Thanksgiving my father-in-law made a valiant attempt to get things going. He is an ace at steroid injections in the knee, after having done a million over the course of his orthopaedic practice, and he sat me down in his daughter’s office as I crossed my fingers. I love that man almost as much as I love you, but, sadly, his cortico-boost was for naught. I was left high and dry.

This was indeed hard to stomach. I got up on my treadmill for repeated test drives of the “new” knee only to be driven off after half a mile. Slowly I spiralled down again. But my tolerance for dogdays is about the length of time I’m willing to stand in front of a grocery check-out filled with covers of Hilton or Brittany: not long. I got up. Again.
There is a big running club in this town and I called them, looking for you, or, more specifically, looking for a sympathetic orthopaedic and physical therapist, people who might bring me ever closer to your good graces. And guess what, honey? It’s working.

While I can’t see you or feel you, I can smell you in the air. I have been going to Farouk’s office twice a week for almost six weeks now, he crunching my scar tissue with his mighty arms, me panting back and forth all around the office. Inch by inch, I can now run two and a half miles. That’s nothing to sneeze at, considering, though I practically sleep my way through it given the pace I’m forced to maintain: sloooow. As I peek out the window, I can see the runners taking up the trails in this most glorious of seasons, and that’s when I divert my eyes because it’s more than I can bear.

But I’m making a come back. Make no mistake. In the meantime, I am doing my homework, crosstraining, and finding it rather satisfying, rather fulfilling. How does this strike you? I actually like my cycling class. In fact, my dear, I love my cycling class. I try to go to every one that I can.

Are you jealous? Maybe you should be. One never knows.

Until then,

Yours,

Stephanie

Babe Didrickson Zaharias