Lunchtime conversation: Grandmother: You know what I saw yesterday? A squirrel with wings. Me: You mean, a bat? Grandmother: No, it was a squirrel. It was playing in the pine tree, and a truck came up the road. But when it changed gears it scared the squirrel and it flew away like a bird. Me:Continue reading “On Squirrels”
Tag Archives: grandmother
On Grandmothers and Eight Year-Olds
We’ll start with an eight year-old. I’ve never recommended a YouTube video. More than likely I never will again. But if you hate Bill O’Reilly, watch this eight year-old spout sense that would do Keith Olbermann proud. I’ll put it like this. My jaw hit the desk a few times. You go, girl! Now, myContinue reading “On Grandmothers and Eight Year-Olds”
On the Nonsense
My grandmother lost her purse. My dad and I were eating dinner. My grandmother, rather than eat anything, wanted to find her purse, and she was growing increasingly angry. She looked in the broom closet. She looked in the oven. She stood on her tip-toes and tried to look in the top cabinet. Every cabinetContinue reading “On the Nonsense”
On a Sign of the Apocalypse
My grandmother is watching The O.C.. She wanted me to sit down and watch it with her. I think I’d rather stab my hand repeatedly with a fork than watch The O.C.. Is this what my life has been reduced to?
On My Grandmother's Perceptions
For several months my grandmother has talked about the women who live in the treehouse in the back yard, how they will invite her to dine with them each morning, how they swing on vines like Tarzan, how they have sleds on ropes to go from tree to tree to tree. It took me aContinue reading “On My Grandmother's Perceptions”
Emergency Road Trip IV
Sleep makes me feel better. The trip yesterday didn’t go quite as planned, but it was, in general, a good trip. We left Raleigh at ten, as planned, but my grandmother didn’t want to go back to Rocky Mount and the hospital to see her sister, so I didn’t force the issue. It was aContinue reading “Emergency Road Trip IV”
Emergency Road Trip II
In an hour my grandmother and I are leaving Raleigh, heading back north to Baltimore. The plan seems to be this–drive to Rocky Mount, pay a visit to Gertrude at the hospital, stay a half an hour tops, then up I-95 to Baltimore. Leave at ten, should arrive in Baltimore somewhere in the vicinity ofContinue reading “Emergency Road Trip II”
Emergency Road Trip
Yesteday I made an emergency trip to Baltimore. Saturday morning my mother called me at work. “What does your Sunday schedule look like?” she wanted to know. Her aunt–my grandmother’s ninety year-old sister–was in the hospital in Rocky Mount, North Carolina. She had fallen a few days earlier and broken her hip. Someone needed toContinue reading “Emergency Road Trip”