Grasping at Grandpa

A recent conversation with Cecily ::


Cecily: What happens if Grandpa gets hit by a car?

Me:  Which Grandpa?

C:  Tickle Grandpa.

M:  He can't.  He already died.

C:  But what if he gets hit after he comes alive again?

M:  He can only die once.  When we are resurrected we live forever.

C:  But we will die.

M:  Yes, because we're still mortal.  We will die and then we will be resurrected and we will live forever.  We'll never die again.

C:  Oh, it's like Rapunzel's hair.


May I comment on this exchange with some degree of earnestness?

I believe what I told Cecily.  My God, My Eternal Father in the Heavens above is real.  He gave me my own Father here in this life - the divine gift of family, because family has always been the very illuminated center of the vastly encompassing and simple plan of all our existence.  The man who is my earthly father is also a child to our spiritual Father.  My Dad and I - we are father and daughter - we are brother and sister.   Both recipients of the resurrection that Jesus Christ purchased for us.  The ALL us.  The every-human-being-who-has-ever-lived us.

In my life this is not a fantastical, wish-it-were-true fairy tale.  This is the truth by which I make every choice.

God speaks to his children.  Of whom, I am one who is listening.  Sometimes.


Cecily is fixated with the death of her Tickle Grandpa.  She is three, so her mind harbors the experience in a way I am still trying to understand.  The entirety of her conscious life has been dominated by . . . change? . . . upheaval?  I'm not sure what to call her experience.  At two she was trying to grasp the new, abstract absence of her beloved Tickle Grandpa.  Shortly thereafter she was pulled from her bed and her home to escape a flood that defined our exit from Salt Lake City itself.  From January 28th of 2011 to present she has been without a stability of spirit.

In the midst of all this the constant has been her fixation with Grandpa.  It manifests itself in strange places.  Cecily's sadness, anger, and delight can all find a voice in Tickle Grandpa.

She watches me open a pomegranate and slowly extract the arils into a bowl for all of the children to eat unhindered by the leathery skin and difficult pith.  In the motions of it I see my Dad's hands that have countless times done this same thing.  He was born to the desert, eating pomegranates from beginning to end.
Cecily interrupts my thoughts with her own.  "When he comes back alive, I think Tickle Grandpa will like to have pomegranate seeds for a snack."
"I'm sure he will, Cecily.  Tickle Grandpa loves pomegranates."
Let's just hope that he is not gobbling them up in the afterlife making himself prisoner to the dark one like poor Persephone.

____

Cecily comes to me in the morning, still rubbing sleep from her eyes, holding a little Boppy.  "Mom, I feel like I'm dreaming out of my Grandpa."

____

Cecily prays incessantly.  She is in a stage of defying everyone else in the house the opportunity to pray because she owns it.  And in every prayer is the same request, "Please bless my Tickle Grandpa to come back alive."

____

She requests stories over and over that feature baby Cecily and Tickle Grandpa.  Her favorite is simply this:
Baby Cecily and Tickle Grandpa were sooo tired.  Grandpa laid down on the couch, put Cecily right  on his chest and they both fell asleep.

____

I find Cecily at the computer looking at the screen of all our Skype Contacts.  She looks at me with terrible disappointment and says "I skyped Tickle Grandpa, but he wasn't alive."

____

In the midst of a tearful, screaming argument with Caroline, Cecily shouts, "STOP CAROLINE! You're making my Grandpa not come back alive!"


It is this declaration that has given me the most insight into her experience.  She interprets all hurt through the lens of Grandpa being dead.  The more she hurts, for whatever reason, the farther away is the reality or memory of Grandpa.  And where there is peace there is also the greater possibility of his return.

I had a dream the other night in which my Dad visited me.  When my eyes met his I refused to look away, knowing that I was dreaming, knowing that he was really with me, knowing that in the moment I looked away he would be gone.  I miss him.  I didn't want him to go.  I touched his arm and we both began to float slowly away, into the sky.  All the while I would not let go of his eyes.  He smiled and touched my hand that was on his arm, "It's ok Jess.  You can stay here.  It's ok. I'm ok."

So if any of you have been wondering - he says he's ok.

What Persephone Couldn't Resist

That's a Good Day

Thank You Marba Rose

Thank You Nita Sue

Thank you Celeste Thank you Susie

A long time ago, I had a Grandma.

Marba Rose.

"Grandma," I would say, "I'm hungry.

"What do you want for lunch?" she would ask in this very sincere way, as if she ever expected me to eat anything other than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

"Peanut butter and jelly."

As if there existed any other edible anything when it comes to lunch.

She would make a sandwich like this:

Two slices of Shepherd's Bread from the Von's on the corner of Lamb and Charleston in unincorporated Las Vegas, Nevada.

Jiff peanut butter spread so thick on one slice you could lose a marble in it.

Margarine on the other side, but only a bit and only to accentuate what came next-

Le Piece de Resistance

Homemade, from homegrown, pure magenta, sweet-tart a la perfection in a Kerr jar

Pomegranate Jelly.

Slice that bad boy in two, serve with a well chilled glass of 2% milk and feel it stick to the roof of your mouth in pure ecstasy.

Plus, my grandma was a genius and knew pretty much everything, like how to love my Dad and his brother through the teenage years.

And other important things like-

"A glass of milk with a peanut butter sandwich provides all eight of the essential amino acids."

I still don't know what an amino acid is, but my Grandma sure made me feel good about eating my daily peanut butter and jelly.

___

I have a Mom.

Nita Sue

She lives in the house my Grandma lived in all the years I was growing up. She tends the pomegranate trees planted by my Grandpa way back when. She harvests the leather-skinned fruit. She juices the impossible seeds. And every time she comes to visit me she brings quart jars full of the sweet nectar for me to make into jelly.

She taught me to make the jelly.

___

I have a friend.

Celeste

She taught me to make bread.

Not just any bread - the delicious kind, that people fawn over, including myself. The kind we have to ration so as not to eat all three heavenly loaves that just came out of the oven, before Matt gets home to enjoy a slice.

___

I have a Mother-in-law

Susie

Dear Susie

She taught me there is more to life than peanut butter and jelly.

And because I lived in her house for two years and cooked elbow to elbow at her stove, following VERY precise directions all along the way, and because she works culinary magic with any morsel of food that makes its way into her kitchen (including.....onions...) I can now whip up a little dish that makes me feel so gourmet...so sophisticated. Like I should have a bit of lemon sorbet before I eat it to cleanse my palette of all the ordinary things that passed by there throughout the day.

This is it - Carrot and Onion Soup

A bit of butter, a bit of chicken stock, a bit of cream

A whole lot of sauteed carrots and onions

Blend

Savor

And think your life blessed that you

Peanut buttered and jellied for lunch

with your own homemade pomegranate perfection

and your own "pain du jour"

and you grew up for dinner

eating onions in ANY form that would have once been worse than eating dirt

and is now better than eating candy

If the peanut butter and milk provide the eight essential amino acids, the carrots and onions must provide the for-the-pure-joy-of-it amino acids.

I love women.

We hand things down in a way that the men generally only appreciate at the table,

and that we appreciate in the soul.

Bless you women.

And ain't magenta pretty?