For My Grandma

I was in Chicago for most of the summer, and because of this, I didn't write many blog entries. Really, the world was not too entirely disrupted. My blog has a limited readership, and there are plenty of more savvy writers out there to fill the Internet.

Or so I thought. When I saw my Grandma for the 4th of July, a large party that drew a lot of second cousins and distant relatives from all over Chicago and other places, we talked quietly about my experiences here in Wales. It got quiet for a minute, and she said, "You don't write those letters anymore."
"My blog, Gram? Oh that. Yeah. Well, I'm here now. There's not much to say."
"I know. I just miss hearing about your life and all."
See, I have a limited number of email addresses I can have this blog automatically sent to, and my Aunt's is one. She had been dutifully printing off the entries about my exploits in a foreign country and reading them to my grandma, and evidently she liked it. And because I had been writing regularly, she had gotten used to hearing from me.

My Aunt pulled me aside later at the same party.
"You don't write much anymore," she told me, which I knew.
"Yeah, well, the blog was about my experiences abroad, and I'm not having those right now. So...I think I'm on break for the summer."
She nodded at me as if I had answered the question "What is two plus two?" by explaining the signing of the Magna Carta.
"Yeah. But your Grandma was asking if you would write. She really liked hearing from you."

It had seemed, as is always the case, that your biggest fan is usually the quietest one. My humble little journal gets read from time to time, usually by my friends off Facebook, or Erika because I demand her to. Occasionally, people tell me that it's interesting or funny, but rarely do people ask when I am going to write again. However, silently, my Grandma was wishing I would so that she could hear about my life.

Which is not to say that my life is interesting, and my Grandma likes to read compelling narratives. It's not like I am scaling mountains, detailing my fights with my Sherpa and thin air. I wrote an entire entry about shopping for pants, for Christ's sake. But here's my Grandma, asking for more.

And here is what makes my Grandma special: it doesn't matter if I just cured cancer or found a well-fitting pair of Chinos, to her it is immensely interesting. When we were kids, my Grandma sat at the head of the family, though not at the head of the table. In my parent's house, there was a high, wing-backed purple chair, and I don't know anyone who sat in it more regularly than my Grandma, and that includes my family that lived with the chair. It always seemed to important a chair to sit in. My Grandma, though, fit in it perfectly.

In the solar system, all the planets revolve around the sun whose gravity spins the planets and whose sunshine gives, at least Earth, the warmth needed to sustain life. In much the same way, my father, aunts and uncles revolved around my Grandma, and all my brothers, sisters and cousins revolved around them like satellites and moons. Everything that I am today is because of her, directly or indirectly. She shone her light on my father, making him the man that he was, and in turn I was bathed in her reflected light to act as I am today.

So, here's one just for you Grandma. I hope that you can hear it at some point, knowing that almost everything I do is in hopes that I won't disappoint you.