I wonder sometimes at my grandmother’s perceptions.<\/p>\n
Last night she said to me, “I’m watching the airplanes. They’re getting ready to take off.”<\/p>\n
“Airplanes,” I said, flat but with the hint of a question.<\/p>\n
“Right out there,” she said. She pointed out the kitchen window. “Airplanes.”<\/p>\n
I looked out the window. “That’s your neighbor’s house,” I said.<\/p>\n
“Those lights,” she said. “Those are airplanes.”<\/p>\n
“That’s their backdoor light.”<\/p>\n
“There are people. I see them.”<\/p>\n
I looked out the window again. “How can you see anything<\/i>? It’s too dark out there.”<\/p>\n
She ignored me. “They’re going to take off soon.”<\/p>\n
“Take off from where<\/i>? There’s no room<\/i> out there for a runway. You’ve lived in this neighborhood for how<\/i> long? There’s never<\/i> been room for an airplane runway.”<\/p>\n
“There are airplanes out there,” she insisted.<\/p>\n
I walked away.<\/p>\n
I wonder at what she sees. Her vision cannot be good; she’s always going on at how she’s lost her glasses, and she can’t see without her glasses. Sometimes she finds strange glasses, glasses I’ve never seen before. Once I wanted to ask her just whose<\/i> glasses she was wearing, as the frames were much too big for her small head. And the day I found a pair of black glasses that looked exactly<\/i> like the “brainy specs” the tenth Doctor wears, I had to wonder if there were a rift in time and space that ran through Baltimore.<\/p>\n
Sometimes her memories are confused to the point of absurdity. She talked at length about a bus tour she took through Afghanistan once. Last night she claimed to be an expert on the walls along the United States\/Mexico border to keep illegal immigrants out — she’s taken tours, she sat on the planning commission, she inspected the finished product. I doubt she’s ever been<\/i> to Texas.<\/p>\n
It’s the invention<\/i> of memory that I find most difficult to take. One day, apropos of nothing, she told me the story of how, when I was three, we went to the ocean. And she and I walked out a pier into the ocean, and she tossed me off the end of the pier into the water.<\/p>\n
I can tell you, dear readers, in all honesty, that I have never<\/i> been to the ocean with my grandmother. Going to the ocean was not<\/i> something my grandmother did. Her relatives went to the ocean. She did not. She was always delicate, tried to stay out of the sun.<\/p>\n
When I told her that, no, the story she related was clearly false, she was quick to reply with anger.<\/p>\n
Trying to explain that what she thinks isn’t true invariably results in anger from her.<\/p>\n
It’s not worth arguing over. It might make me<\/i> feel better, but fifteen minutes later she’ll have forgotten.<\/p>\n
Sometimes the best thing to do is simply to walk away.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I wonder sometimes at my grandmother’s perceptions. Last night she said to me, “I’m watching the airplanes. They’re getting ready to take off.” “Airplanes,” I said, flat but with the hint of a question. “Right out there,” she said. She pointed out the kitchen window. “Airplanes.” I looked out the window. “That’s your neighbor’s house,”Continue reading “On Grandmother Conversations”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[159,4093],"class_list":["post-1713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-grandmother","tag-life","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1713"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1713\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}