"Okay Sweetie, be good and say your prayers everyday. Bye. Wait! Don't forget that I'm proud of you. Okay bye. Wait! One more thing, I love you very much. Bye Angel."
This is how the telephone conversation with my grandmother ended today as I finished up my morning coffee. This is the exact way our phone conversations have ended for as long as I can remember. She tells me not to forget to pray and squeezes as many positive affirmations and I love you's as possible into the last five seconds of each phone call.
The social butterfly that she is, my grandmother spends a minimum of three hours on the phone a day. Three hours minimum. With friends and family spread all over the greater fifty states, she is constantly checking in with new friends, checking up on old ones, and gathering enough gossip to fill an ocean. Some of the oldest memories I have of my grandmother are visions of her sitting in her favorite chair in the kitchen, twirling the telephone cord around her left hand while doodling away with her right. She would fill up entire notebooks in one week with endless signatures, names, dates and boxes. She always drew boxes. As a young girl I used to get annoyed with her absurdly long conversations, pulling on her arm and begging her to pay attention to me. I didn't understand how she could A.) know so many people and B.) physically talk for that long. As the years passed and when I left for college, I used to actually semi-dread phone calls with my grandmother for the sole reason that I would have to set aside huge chunks of time during my day every few weeks to talk to her. Of course these long conversations conflicted with the "important" things, taking away from my social life or that extra hour on the beach.
Recently though, having grown up and re-prioritized the "important" things in life, I have a new found respect for these phone calls and the hour or so I spend every other week updating my grandmother on my new life here. These are calls that I have grown to love and minutes that I have begun to cherish.
We cover the same grounds every time. I tell her about my new house, my roommate and the job hunt, she tells me about her Pinnacle games, the latest gossip in the assisted living home where she now resides, and her most recent visitors. Then she usually follows with a round about way of asking whether I have a new boyfriend or not and proceeds to finish the conversation off with a not-so-subtle hint that she would really like to put a wedding on her calendar. Namely that of one of her nine grandchildren. These days, an hour chatting with that fire cracker is never enough, but somehow, even at age 86, she still remains busier than anyone I know and I can always tell when she is late for an appointment or daily Communion when she initiates the end of the phone call with the all too familiar "Okay Sweetie..."
Today, after our long chat and the usual two minutes of saying goodbye, somewhere in between the the time that the phone left my ear and the time that I actually hung up on dear Dolores, I heard her say one last thing. Somehow in that fraction of a second, she squeezed in "Don't worry Angel, everything always works out."
And now, as I sit with my thoughts on a cold, crisp Colorado afternoon, her words continue to be at the front of my mind. I think back to the last time I saw her before I moved. I drove through central Washington to visit my grandmother on a warm late summer day in September. I had only planned on staying for one night but as usual, ended up staying three.
"Well, you are just so much like your grandmother" Ted at table four said over a dinner of cold meatloaf and mushy vegetables in the main dining room. "We'll go out for breakfast before you leave tomorrow" my grandmother whispered to me from across the table as she struggled to finish her tasteless meal while completely ignoring Ted, who I am convinced has a crush on her. And as I laughed and stared back at my blue eyed, red haired grandmother, I wondered if we really were actually anything alike at all.
Later that night as we chatted over decaf coffee and warm cookies I worked up the courage to ask if she thought I was crazy for moving. I asked her if she ever felt the need to run away at my age, if she ever wanted more for herself. I asked her if I should be worried and if she thought things would work out for me. And before I even had a chance to think twice about the real-time talk I had just initiated, she said softly,"Sit down Angel".
Two hours and quite a few tears (on my part) later, I knew it all. Its a funny thing when you realize that your parents or grandparents in this case, had a life before you. Before her husband, the farm, the five children she birthed, and the nine grandchildren she was blessed with, she had a life. Her own life. And after listening to her struggles, her choices and her story, so many things made sense. She lived through a war, a depression, two engagements, years of bad crops, and years of really great ones. And as she spoke, I realized that the decisions she made when she was my age were the decisions that defined her life. "Don't be scared to make a wrong choice" she told me that night, "because wrong choices can be the best choices of your entire life". The next day I drove home with a new appreciation for my grandmother and a new found confidence in my own decision to redesign my life.
"Don't worry Angel" I heard her say today. "Everything always works out". As I put the phone down and sat on my bed I thought of my grandmother with her perfectly dyed red hair and her sparkly blue eyes and I hoped with all my might that I had given her enough positive affirmations today and that I had told her I loved her at least four times. Then I looked down at the notebook I had been doodling in and laughed when I realized that during our hour long conversation, I had covered six pages front to back with my signature, names of random people, and of course, boxes.
gotta love her.
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