Family

I had a dream about my grandma last night. And it made me think that on November 11th, 1911, my grandma would have been 100 years old. That's not too far away.

Technically, she was never related to me by blood and thus not a true grandma. But I called her so, thought of her so, and sent her finger-painted pictures address to a woman called Grandma. It made me think of two very distinctly different, but related things.

I have never put much credit in blood ties. I think of the boys i grew up with as brothers, even though they just lived in the neighborhood for most of my childhood. I somehow managed to adopt our elderly neighbor, Mrs. Reed as a grandma like figure before she had to move away. I've even adopted a co-worker as a fictitious Uncle. And while my immediate family will always come first, I can't help but notice just how much some of these non-traditional ties have meant to me.

Children have ways of making up their minds about people, instinctively adhering themselves to people they believe are good. If i put a lot of credence on blood ties, it would have led me to people i have reason to dislike. And since, my experience with certain blood ties was severely limited, either due to death or distance, I found ways of filling those holes positively.

Perhaps that is why i get so irked when a "close" relative completely misspells my name, even when it was the same spelling as their mother's, but a boy whom I haven't even seen in more than a decade, still remembers to spell my name with an E.

The other different but related observation was this:

• My grandmother never learned how to drive
• she never went out much, much less to parties
  
• she never drank more than a glass in a night and only on holidays
  
• her house was immaculate, but she never had a house keeper
  
• she was fit as a fiddle well into her 80's but she never went to the gym
• when we came over, there was no TV. We played with her antiques, or Majong, or cards, or read stories
• she wore gloves and a scarf when she went out
• her house was locked with a skeleton key (real secure there, yeah)
  
• when i was bored, she would pull out a random cardboard jewelry box and i would decorate it with broken jewelry and glitter and sequins.
  
• And when she died, i found every single box i could remember making

And yet, I never remember ever not wanting to go, even in my rebellious stubborn teenage years. I don't remember asking to watch tv; not when there was the beautiful view of the Puget Sound Canal when there were boats and binoculars to be had.

I also never remember thinking there was anything wrong with it either. That it could be a better place with a big screen TV, or video games, or extravagant things. You know the coolest thing in my grandma's house....

Little blue light bulbs in the living room instead of overhead lights. I will forever remember dancing around in my Christmas dress in her living room with all the lights turned off except those as she watched and clapped her hands and laughed and my pure joy.

Oh yeah, I was 14 when this memory happened...shortly before she died.