My Grandma’s Flowers
Since moving home I go to my grandma’s house every other Sunday with my fiancé and my siblings. Sometimes my parents come too. Sometimes we bring our dog.
My grandma makes too much food and tells us about her friends we don’t know. She always has a plate of appetizers and charcuterie out. My grandma is sharp, she knows about AI hallucinations and the latest football upsets.
My grandma uses old recipes cut out from newspaper article and books. The paper is browning and thin. Alternatively she sometimes cooks without a recipe, throwing fistfuls of flour into a bowl.
I love sitting on her couch while she cooks under one of her hundreds of quilts.
My grandma is mensa, she has a very high IQ. She had my dad and his twin brother 11 months after my uncle - having three boys within a year. She told me once that she regrets never having joined the workforce.
When we leave my grandma’s house, she give me roses from her garden. She plants old fashioned roses, because she thinks they smell better. Their oblong petal shapes bloom away from the buds in bursts of pinks, reds, yellows and oranges. She fills an old pickle jar with them for me to take home.
The fresh, clean smell fills the car as we drive over the bay bridge and into the throngs of the city, pushing westward to the Marina.
My grandma is always dressed well, with colorful scarfs and sweaters, pearls and acrylic red glasses. Sometimes she’s returning from a big shopping spree, toting bags of clothes or antique goods.
My grandma is unafraid. She sometimes says things are make us blush.
I love looking at the roses in my apartment. On days where I work from home and feel the weight of loneliness, I feel the love she’s put into her garden and into me.
As the days pass, little shakes from the apartment door opening and closing or people walking by cause the petals to fall. The smell begins to quiet and then suddenly they’re bare stems in a mess of petals on the coffee table.
Though my grandma never really worked, there’s so much about her that I aspire to emulate in my professional life - being bold, smart and put together. Showing up and being real. A woman unafraid.