Kalei walks a few feet behind me this time in her never-ending attempts to avoid my eyes when she's being confrontational. She's looking at the stack of grocery baskets instead.
"We talked about that, she's not mad."
"What then? She thinks I'm obnoxious?"
"You're a lot of personality to take at once, especially for long periods of time."
Mint. Limes. Club soda. Kalei likes testing the limits of how mean she can be.
"Do you have any idea what I'd give to be the kind of person that other people want to be around?"
***
"Oh, where is the train going?"
I lean against the window and hold the phone close to my ear in an attempt to not be that ass on the train that dominates the air with a phone conversation, "North, grandma, I'm going to see a friend."
"Oh, well that's wonderful."
I have fond memories of this grandma from when I was very young: building a birdhouse, and how proud I was the first time I could bat a ball the whole way over her house. There were kittens in the abandoned barn next door, a bay window where I use to sit, and an empty concrete slab in her back yard where I use to stand and look out over the field. She had a hummingbird feeder, but I lacked the patience to ever see many birds.
I remember jars of fireflies, and plastic mugs with zoo animals on them, and the excitement of spaghetti-o's in a glass dish that the microwave heated unevenly.
I remember watching her fight with my mother, and slowly realizing as I grew older that my attention was one of the prizes. I remember Christmas dinners where she would insist on something, and all of my aunts and uncles would get upset and fight. What they were arguing about and what they were talking about must have been different, because nothing they ever talked about seemed important enough to fight over.
I remember reaching the age where my questions about the world were more uncomfortable than adorable, and I remember grandma becoming more and more distant through this.
"You're getting all grown up you know!"
"I'm 11."
"You were so much fun when you were little!"
We didn't talk for years. There wasn't really anything to say. The question isn't so much if you love each other but if you can stand each other.
She's dying now, some sort of cancer. She's been thinking she's dying for decades, but now it is actually happening. I call her now, and we can talk about nothing, because we know this relationship isn't really going anywhere. We don't need to worry about how she'll never change, and how I'll never change, because it isn't going to matter.
I lean against the window and hold the phone close to my ear in an attempt to not be that ass on the train that dominates the air with a phone conversation, "North, grandma, I'm going to see a friend."
"Oh, well that's wonderful."
I have fond memories of this grandma from when I was very young: building a birdhouse, and how proud I was the first time I could bat a ball the whole way over her house. There were kittens in the abandoned barn next door, a bay window where I use to sit, and an empty concrete slab in her back yard where I use to stand and look out over the field. She had a hummingbird feeder, but I lacked the patience to ever see many birds.
I remember jars of fireflies, and plastic mugs with zoo animals on them, and the excitement of spaghetti-o's in a glass dish that the microwave heated unevenly.
I remember watching her fight with my mother, and slowly realizing as I grew older that my attention was one of the prizes. I remember Christmas dinners where she would insist on something, and all of my aunts and uncles would get upset and fight. What they were arguing about and what they were talking about must have been different, because nothing they ever talked about seemed important enough to fight over.
I remember reaching the age where my questions about the world were more uncomfortable than adorable, and I remember grandma becoming more and more distant through this.
"You're getting all grown up you know!"
"I'm 11."
"You were so much fun when you were little!"
We didn't talk for years. There wasn't really anything to say. The question isn't so much if you love each other but if you can stand each other.
She's dying now, some sort of cancer. She's been thinking she's dying for decades, but now it is actually happening. I call her now, and we can talk about nothing, because we know this relationship isn't really going anywhere. We don't need to worry about how she'll never change, and how I'll never change, because it isn't going to matter.
The dying are so easy. The living are hard.
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