I take for granted that my grandma never runs out of things to say.  I admit, a little sheepishly, that she is the more interesting dame of the duo.  At least, her venerable vocabulary makes it seem so, culled from years of a passion for word games and good writing.  She reads the complete L.A. Times every morning and if our giggle infused chit-chat ever slumps, she’s ready with a “conversation-starter” nabbed from that morning’s headlines.  She always makes sure the topic reflects something I’d be interested in - a new museum show, the state of the reservoir by my house, or the weather in New York City, my old stomping ground.  She’s a Southern Belle after all, and those ladies are born knowing how to talk to flatter and bemuse.   

She’s also a woman who takes pleasure in knowledge and is generous with it and never prideful.  Out of the blue, I’ll come home to a reused manila envelope sitting on my stoop with my grandma’s address in the top-left corner.  It’s belongings: a small note on floral stationary and a clipping from the paper she thinks I should take notice of.  I save all the clippings in a box.  Sentimental, I know.   

Grandma and I have been talking on the phone a bit more than we’ve been seeing each other, lately.  I have a production job in television that lets me out into the night air after the sun has already set.  Grandma much prefers matinees.  We work around it as much as we can.  Grandma’s also been on painkillers lately, as her teeth problems persist, so her sleeping hours are irregular.  I’ll call on my way home from work to see if we can catch a movie and wake her up from an evening nap.  I enjoy the phone conversations.  I’ll duck out of my office during lunch and catch up on her profound sadness over the Lakers’ game and her dentist’s newest forecast: dentures a must. 

She’ll ask about my life, the details of it, because she always remembers them.  She knows the name of my co-worker and my landlady.  She remembers my latest bummer, and my latest happiness.  She could very well store these tid-bits in the same part of her brain that she stores her crossword answers.  I imagine my life as one of her puzzles.  She’s been filling it in year after year, skipping numbers that don’t have answers yet (45 ACROSS: Shauna’s life passion).   

She has some other friends that she sees movies with during the day and she likes to go to movies by herself, too, another idiosyncrasy we share, actually.  I can’t really ask her to wait on a film for me.  She likes to keep up and she doesn’t like to see movies twice.  She went to “Sex And The City” at 9:30 AM on its opening day.  She said she’s d been waiting eagerly for it but that she didn’t want to be crammed into the theater with a lot of other silly women.  Grandma is serious about going to the movies.  She hates to miss the previews and she watches all of the credits.  I had another obligation so couldn’t go with her… but she says she’ll go again, and I’m hoping that will be our next review.  

I’ve gotten so used to her being a part of my week this last year, that when we don’t see each other, I feel like I’m walking around with only one shoe on.  She balances me out.  Whenever I’m feeling too vain and flighty, too “twenty-something-ish”, with one hand-squeeze she brings me back to myself.

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