Ah, Springtime. When everything returns to life. New beginnings.
With Grandma H, it’s grave cleaning time.
She pulls into the cemetery driveway and tells me, “You are the look out. If you see a rapist, you tell me.”
“Uh..okay?” I say.
“And you run as fast as you can.”
“I’m going to have to. He’ll take one look at you and be after me,” I say.
Grandma H giggles hysterically.
******
We pull up and park the car. She tells me to grab the rake. When we get to the graves of her parents and her sisters, she does some weeding and assigns me to raking. As I’m raking, she says, “You’re not being the look out. You have to rake and be the look out.”
*****
Grandma H says, “I’m only taking out library books if I find something good.”
“Ok.”
“Those three I took out disappointed me. I skimmed them. But you know it’s outside,” she says.
“What’s outside?”
“It.”
“What is it? The bushes, a person what is outside?”
She sighs. “It’s spring time. Time to be outside.”
“Ah. I didn’t get that from it’s outside.”
She shakes her head.
***
Grandma H decides she wants to try Olive Garden. On the ride over, I say, “I think you will like the breadsticks.”
Grandma H says, “I hate breadsticks.”
“They call them breadsticks but they are more like rolls.”
“Hmmh.”
“No seriously chewy like hotdog rolls and long like breadsticks.”
“I’ll try them.”
We get to the restaurant and Grandma H takes her first bite. “These are delicious!”
“I know.”
“We can get more right?”
“Yup.”
“And the salad too?”
I nod.
For the next hour she tells me four times how great the breadsticks are.
*****
Her eggplant parm meal comes and she say, “I’m only eating a little pasta. I’ll take it home so I can eat more salad and breadsticks.”
I don’t eat my spaghetti so she scrapes it onto her plate and takes it home for dinner.
****
Grandma H comes into my mom’s house and announces, “We have to go to Poppy’s grave to check on the angel. I think the grave diggers ran her over.”
“What?” My mom and I ask in unison.
“They are digging a new grave near your grandfather’s. And I think they backed into the angel and broke it. We have to go check.”
I nod. “Sure.”
She gets a menacing tone in her voice. “And if it’s broken they are going to fix it.”
“Okay, let’s just make sure they did something wrong first,” I say. Grandma H has a tendency to open with mean.
*****
Grandma H’s favorite place to drive by is the horses on Woodtick Road. There are about 6 horses in a paddock below street level.
Every time we drive by she slows down and gazes at the horses. Her voice gets buttery and her eyes sparkle. She adores the horses. And it never gets old. We’ve been driving by them for two months and she gets excited each time.
Sometimes it surprises her and she tells me, “I like horses. I really like horses.”
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