From a 90 year old

I am sitting at the nursing home with my grandmother today.  She sits solemnly slumped over in her wheel chair, feet swollen and wrapped in cloths. I rock quietly in the chair next to her, wrapped in a shawl that smells like its from 1950. She is 90 now, and old and gray. Her eyes sunken in, the skin on her face so thin, the faint blue veins show through. Her fingers gingerly handle her rosary, the beads draped across the back of her deeply wrinkled hands.  The creases on her hands look as if they reach far far down to the insides of her frail body. Those beads know her fingers well. Many years of prayer have come and gone; supplications, thanksgivings. She has a powerful faith that I have always admired her for. We talk about the things I have learned, our family, the memories we all share. She sometimes remembers stories more clearly than I do.

I remember my childhood- bouncing on her bed, exploring the secret passageways of her dilapidated house, and eating pancakes dyed green with food coloring.  I remember finding dead birds in her back yard, and hauling them away in the little red wagon to the pet cemetery we made down the street. Officiating ceremonies and dramatically singing hymns over the little dead bird bodies. We would go to mass at the big Catholic church in town, fighting sleep, boredom, starvation- singing, kneeling, standing, kneeling, standing, crossing my body with the rest. In her closet was the tutu that all the cousins fought over. We were daily being sent away to the bathroom for calling Patrick a "poop head." I remember The time I had a 104 degree fever and Gram fed me a twix bar, it was a miserable heaven. And the way the forks in the drawer were never actually clean, a little memento of the last meal remaining between the tines, everyone secretly re-washing their own dishes before dinner began. There was the room with many portraits of children's faces whom I have never met, the lives that had come and gone before me. Aunts and uncles I would have had, but death came quickly. It was always a mystery I was to afraid to ask about. Children and death, this family knew it well. Gram would sit all the while smiling, tea in hand, drawing sketches and watercolor paintings of us children spraying one another with the hose to momentarily escape the summer heat. I remember sneaking into her room to test her perfume and lipstick. The smell was pungent and makeup bright red like a rose at first bloom.
Though the wrinkles and thinning hair tell stories of their own, today I find comfort in her familiar smell and lips painted red, as if she is ready for her husband to come home from a long days work. He has been gone for 30 years now.

She begins talking about love and loss, starting over, and the endeavor of loving again.  At one point she looks at me and says;
"sometimes you just have to stop being scared of the past. take courage in your hand. love will take care of fear. "
I look at her for a moment wondering if my 90 year old grandmother really just gave me this life advice, then I scribble the words on a small piece of paper.

After kissing her papery forehead, I drive home through the cold and snow. That little scrap of paper sits on my dashboard. I think of all that has happened, the places I have been, and all the unknown of what is ahead. Anxiety flutters momentarily in my stomach. There are so many reasons to be afraid of risk.

love will take care of fear

thanks Gram