Faded Glamour

This weekend, my husband and I made the four-hour trip to my grandmother's house south of Lexington, Kentucky. My 94-year-old grandmother hasn't been back in her house since she had a stroke, then nearly died from pnuemonia, then went for rehabilitation in a nursing home and finally moved in with her daughter near Lexington.

Last month, she started pushing to go back to her house to live. We agreed to try to find someone who will stay with her and last week my cousins moved her back home.

Earl and I spent Friday night with her and she needed care that older people usually need. I trimmed and filed fingernails and toenails. I emptied the portable toilet situated in her bedroom. I took her to the bank and went to the grocery for her.

But in the bedroom where we slept, I was reminded of the woman she used to be, the glamourous Nana who ran her own store and worked at the post office. 

This is a jewelry tree that holds some of her clip-on earrings. I remember as a kid going through Nana's costume jewelry. It felt like 1950s movie star glamour.  

Here's a close-up of some of Nana's clip-on earrings. Imagine her with her tiny-waisted dress, kitten heels, and ginger hair curling around her ears where these big baubles dangled.

Startling Discovery

Today Grace and I made a quick 6-hour trip to Kentucky to visit my 95-year-old grandmother. She has been living with my aunt for nearly a year now since she had a stroke and got out of rehab. She'd like to live on her own again and I've promised that I'll start looking for someone to take care of her and stay with her at her home an hour farther south than my aunt.  It was nice to see my grandmother and my aunt, plus my parents were visiting from Florida, so lots of good family time. But that wasn't what startled me.

It was the gas prices. As we turned into my aunt's neighborhood, I saw a Speedway sign advertising gas for $3.22.

Before we started our trip, I had just filled up in Columbus for $3.59 and thought that was pretty cheap.

As we were leaving my aunt's, I pulled into the Speedway and found gas was even 1 cent cheaper than advertised. I got half a tank of gas for $3.21 a gallon.

Startling in this day and age.

A Grandma by Any Other Name

I'm not sure why I started thinking about this. Maybe it was when Tucker, the 15-year-old, started talking about getting a P tattooed on his shoulder in honor of his great-grandmother Pauline, and I choked on my coffee. But I started wondering about names that kids call their grandparents. The grandparents I knew were Nana and Granddad. Because my mom's parents died, I don't even know what the 25 other grandkids called them before I came along.
My parents decided to avoid the grandma and grandpa tradition. My dad became Gran and my mom became Nena. I'm not sure if Nena is an offshoot of Nana, but it works.
Then my dad's sister became Nonni. I have no idea where that came from.

Earl's sister has a grandbaby who will be two this week, and she calls her grandparents Memaw and Pop. I don't think I'd want to be Memaw.
Hopefully, this is a question I will, personally, not have to deal with for a long time, but what weird grandparent names have you heard of? What did you call your grandparents?

Nana

Nearly a month ago, my grandmother suffered a stroke. We didn't find out about the stroke until a couple of days afterward. She was moved to a rehab center fairly quickly. My brother Kevin and I planned to visit on that Friday. Then a snow storm cancelled our driving plans.
We talked about other days we could visit, swimming and basketball schedules interrupting our plans. Illnesses and dance recitals interfering.
This week, I learned our grandmother had contracted pnuemonia in the rehab center. I begged off a staff meeting on Thursday afternoon, went to teach Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m. then hit the highway headed south. I drove four hours to the little town of Mt. Vernon, Kentucky, where she lives.
Nothing prepared me to see my lively Nana in a hospital bed struggling for each breathe. She told me I shouldn't have driven all that way. We talked about cousins and relatives. After about 15 minutes, she said she was going to rest.
I told her I'd be back later. When I got to the car, I called my parents in Florida and suggested they head north.
My uncle and aunt who live in Kentucky were both home with the flu, which they caught at the rehab center. I called my uncle and he asked whether my grandmother recognized me.
"Of course," I said. That meant she was better than she had been. She didn't seem better to me, but I hadn't been there every day to watch her progress or regress. I took some soup to my cousin's house, since my aunt and uncle were too sick to want it. I hung out for a bit then went back to see Nana.
Standing at the hospital bed, talking about whether she would improve, was awkward.
"I told Grace we would visit when she gets home from school," I said to my grandmother, willing her to hold on since Grace is 10 hours away from home.
She said she wanted to hold on, but she was miserable.
"Are you miserable because you hurt or because you can't do things for yourself?" I asked.
She confirmed that she hated to be waited on. Her mouth was dry but she wasn't allowed to have water because they were afraid she would aspirate it. I offered to read to her from the Bible, but she said she couldn't pay attention. She had the important parts memorized anyway.
I mentioned our childhood visits.
"You all always had a big time," she said. That's how she talks. A "big time."

Here she is with all of her great-granddaughters.

Nana married my grandfather when she was 16 and he was 28. He said he wanted a bride that he could raise the way he wanted. I think she ended up being more of a handful than he suspected. She had three children by the time she was 20.
She ran a store in the country and worked at the post office. She knew everyone in her small town.
I love the stories she used to tell. My favorite was the horse that got caught in quicksand, or maybe it was the horse that ran away with her. I might be melding the stories together. In Kentucky, in Rockcastle County, time didn't progress as fast as it did in other parts of the world. That's why my grandmother could go get a permanent for her hair, but had to ride a horse to get to the beauty shop. I think that was the time she was riding home from getting a permanent that the horse became mired in quicksand. She climbed over the horse's neck to get to dry land then pulled him out.
Another time she would tell the story about the horse running away with her, "and me just a skinny, little thing holding onto the horse's neck."
My grandfather died in the 1980s and in 1989, Nana met and married Grandad Ish. Grandad Ish took her away from Kentucky to winter in Arizona and to vacation in Peru. He opened up the world for her and he thought she was the cat's meow.
She survived him too. But she has been well loved by her three children, eight grandchildren, and 12 greatgrandchildren. As my kids have gotten older, we don't go to Kentucky as much. They all have busy teenage and young adult lives now, but I bet they look back on their times at Nana's house with a smile, just like I do. I wrote about some of those adventures when we visited last May, which you can read here: Nana.
Before I left the hospital, I leaned over the bed and kissed Nana's lined, papery cheek and slipped my hand under her bony shoulder to hug her. She raised up her right arm, unaffected by the stroke, but now taped with tubes at the hospital, and patted me, hugging me.
"I love you, Nana," I said as I left. Her pale blue eyes smiled at me, but looked a little sad and resigned too.
The doctor let my parents know today that Nana has taken a turn for the worse. I'm glad I got to see her yesterday, while we could talk, but I know that my memories of Nana are not made from that one visit. My memories of Nana are made up from a lifetime of hugs and laughs and scoldings. Every bite of fried chicken, every UK basketball game on TV, every clip on earring pilfered from her jewelry box, every bottle full of jewel-colored water that sparkled in the sun, will remind me of the things my grandmother gave me in a lifetime. It's not the last few minute spent with someone we love, but the lifetime of minutes that we spend together.

Simple Pleasures

I'm not sure if everyone would consider it much of a vacation to stay holed up and work on a novel for three days straight, but that is what I have done. My only break has been to walk downtown to get coffee every morning.
It's about a mile to our little downtown strip and we have three excellent coffee shops.
The day was already promising to be hot when I set out around 9:30 a.m.
I'd turned onto the main east/west street when I saw a little girl in front of her brick house. She was standing by a stroller and her mom disappeared inside the door. The little girl had two braids that nearly reached her shoulders. She was three or four years old and focused very hard on the stroller next to her.
I thought she said something, so I smiled and waved.
Then she looked at me and blurted out, "Grandma's coming!"
"What fun!" I responded.
Her mother came out then and, so I wouldn't be thought of as a potential child snatcher, I repeated the brief exchange for her mother.
"Not until after lunch though," the little girl added.
"That's a long time to wait," I sympathized.
I just loved the little girl's enthusiasm. The best thing that could have happened in her life was grandma coming to visit.
Ah, the simple pleasures of childhood.
Here are my kids, about 12 years ago, enjoying a visit with their grandparents.

Family Road Trip

On Thursday, I began to have an inkling. On Friday, I was certain. Looming before us was a Saturday with no plans whatsover. No swimming, no basketball, no track, no concerts, no work. My entire family was unscheduled on Saturday. (Well, except for me. I had my weekly run with my friends, but we pushed it back to 5:30 a.m. and only ran for an hour.)
Some people may take the opportunity of an unscheduled day to spend it sleeping in then lolling about for the whole day. Others might organize a spring cleaning day. For me, I decided on a family road trip.
My grandmother lives four hours away in southern Kentucky. She's 92 years old and has out lived two husbands. She has a pacemaker and until a few weeks ago, she was caring for an aunt who is in a wheelchair. When they moved the aunt out, I knew that it was true, my grandmother, who I call Nana, is starting to slow down. Taking care of other people has been her life so if she decides she can't take care of other people, that is serious.
So following a winter where she slipped on the ice and broke a vertebrae and a spell a few weeks ago where she had a small stroke, but drove herself to the doctor because she didn't want to bother those nice ambulance drivers, I decided it was time for my whole family to pay her a visit.
Grace and I had seen her in April when we drove to Florida and back. Nana mentioned that she wouldn't even recognize my boys because she hadn't seen them for so long. I thought that might be true. So we left the house about 7:45 with chocolate milks and little powdered donuts to lure the teenagers to the car.
We listened to the first CD of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe trying to retrieve that old Narnia magic on a car road trip. Then we turned to telling stories and playing 20 questions. Finally, we fell back on Harry Potter story CDs. Harry Potter with the soothing voice of Jim Dale has gotten us through every car trip in the past 10 years.
We surprised Nana because I didn't want her trying to prepare food and wearing herself out. She was delighted to see us, even if she kept calling Spencer and Tucker by the wrong name.
And, although our day was unscheduled, my cousin Mike, who lives nearby, has a family that is always scheduled. He and his wife Melinda (one of the best additions to our family) had a funeral to go to and their college-aged children had a wedding to go to, but they still made time to visit us at Nana's house.
My kids and his kids used to spend hours playing dress up and exploring the gorge and cave over the cliff from Nana's house. They'd gather weeds and berries and make potions. They were imaginative and daring, playing Little House on the Prairie. So it was good to have a reunion, even though no one played dress up, except Morgan who needed to change from her funeral dress to one appropriate to celebrate a sorority sister's wedding.
Then my Uncle Wil came by to borrow some pruning sheers, having misplaced two pairs of his own. It was practically a family reunion.
I patted Nana's arm before we left and implored her to take care of herself.
"Honey, that's all I have to do now," she said.
And I wondered whether that means she is giving up just a little. She has always had someone else to take care of. She seemed well, just admitted to getting dizzy if she stands or walks too much. So she has slowed down a lot.
As the afternoon grew long, we piled into the car to drive back to Ohio and allow the kids to scatter with their friends. They took car pictures and slept.

Then listened to some more Harry Potter as we reached Columbus before the sun had gone down.
No one complained about a day spent appeasing mom. No one even fought about summer jobs or swim team practices. And Earl's tool bag, which he'd taken along just in case Nana needed some work done, remained in the car.