HOLDING HANDS ON THE LONG RIDE
To my grandmother’s chagrin, I had no use for baby dolls.
She left no cradle unturned, auditioning velvet infants and berry-cheeked rag children, curly-cutes who cooed and spangled socialites in garnet gowns.
I took off the gowns and put them on plush platypuses.
Eventually, majestic as she was, Grandma accepted this and started buying me kittens, pink toads, and additional platypuses. We spun stories like funnel cake, and they kept me warm under the clouds.
When I try to tell people about my grandparents, something like the Spirit quickly checks me. I am loath to boast, and two stories in, I remember that our bond was as rare as any annunciation.
Perpetually pink and glittering, Grandma was the closest thing I knew to an angel. She loved them, too, assembling a starfleet of winged women and snowdrop cherubs in every cupboard.
Grandma was never more seraphic than when she smiled, Sicilian starlight through espresso eyes. When we rode in the car, she locked on me in the rearview mirror, baby-powder hand reaching back ten times in a twenty-minute ride to squeeze mine.
When I was absurd in the easy way of children, Grandma raised the ante, soaring on wings of silly until we were liquid laughter. Between zeppelins of ziti and frigates of French toast, she followed my little-girl lead.
I wanted to name one stuffed animal “Bacteria” because I thought it was a beautiful-sounding word. She agreed and suggested that we name his friend “Listeria.”
I hesitated when she asked if I’d prefer a pink or purple sweater; she crocheted both.
I lip-synched entire albums by Alanis Morrissette and Natalie Merchant; she declared me brilliant and beautiful.
Always beautiful.
When I was sad, she urged me to cry in the mirror for as long as necessary, reassuring my own face aloud, “You’re beautiful. You’re beautiful.”
When prepubescent pudge terrified me, she declared me the “perfect size,” and that a smaller stomach would be “just not right.”
When I remarked that too many stuffed animals seemed to have sad inverted-V frowns, she ensured to surround me with the sweet and the smiling, the pink and the glittering.
And when my favorite stuffed animal, seaglass-green Sleepytime Bear, had the crisis of a lifetime, Grandpa was there.
Sleepytime Bear was in the wrong place during the wrong stomach virus. Together with my grandparents’ new floral couch, proudly purchased on Grandpa’s NYPD pension, Sleepytime Bear was sore afflicted.
But the police captain was on duty, and his “Princess” would not suffer more than necessary.
The consummate German-American, well chosen for air-traffic control in World War II, Grandpa read and reread the “care instructions” on Sleepytime’s bottom. Decontaminating a Care Bear is no simple task, and pillowcases and tiny stiff brushes are required.
Known for his stiffness, Grandpa flowed like mercy’s river, devoting the afternoon to the salvation of Sleepytime Bear.
By the time my smiling bear was back in my arms, my stomach had settled and the world was warm as ziti. Grandpa and I drew cartoons in his basement, and I reiterated a truth I’d first announced barely out of infancy: Grandpa was my best friend.
I am told that Grandpa was different with me than he’d ever been in his life, that decades of reserve split into a smile when I was born. Perhaps he was making up for the hard years, when an inverted-V was the only face he felt could keep his family safe.
Maybe he saw Grandma in me, the child who shared her name and her reckless sweetness, the baby who bloomed the moment he entered the room.
I tell you that the softness between us was something of the Spirit. I tell you that, if I live longer than his ninety years, I will never know a memory as sweet as the veteran in the corner, methodically brushing a seaglass-green bear.
I tell you that I miss them so much, I can’t talk about it.
I tell you that the angels deliver our messages, and we still squeeze hands on long rides.
I can tell you that they are my best friends, today as much as ever, warm on both sides of the clouds.
Angela Townsend serves as Development Director at Tabby’s Place: a Cat Sanctuary and has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work has or will be published in Agape Review, The Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Feminine Collective, LEON Literary Review, Palisades Review, and The Young Ravens Literary Review. She has lived with Type 1 diabetes for 32 years, laughs with her mother daily, and delights in the moon. Angie loves life dearly.
OVUNQUE SIAMO 