This Friday, I will be boarding a plane to return me home for three weeks with my friends and family. I am extremely fortunate to have a job that allows to me to work from anywhere, and I have taken full advantage of it through the years by working from Missouri as much as I can. Two years ago, I was preparing to go home for five weeks. My pregnant sister's due date was around the first of the year, and I wanted to be there for the birth and for the weeks following to help out as much as I could. A few weeks before my departure, I was warned that my grandmother was not doing well. She had spent four years in a nursing home fighting Alzheimer's and diabetes. The Alzheimer's had increasingly taken my once very vocal Granny captive. Each visit to her had left me saddened and in a daze. It was hard to believe the mostly-mute woman in a wheelchair could be the tenacious lady I had grown up half-fearing and half-adoring. It worried me when I was told she had taken a turn for the worse; I asked if I needed to return home sooner. I was reassured that there was time, and there was no need to change my plans yet.
After a few delays, I arrived in Tulsa, Oklahoma, very late on the night of December 19. The hour-and-a-half drive back to Joplin was uneventful until we pulled into the driveway of my parent's house. A car followed us. My mom instantly turned to my dad and started accusing him of violating a traffic law. My dad innocently denied the allegations. We pulled into the garage all a bit frightened of what this person in the driveway could want at 1 o'clock in the morning. He turned out to be an old friend of my parents and the chaplain with the police department. For some reason, they had been unable to get in touch with anyone else in the family, and so this is how I found out my grandmother had died 30 minutes after my plane touched down. Standing on the driveway my bags still in the vehicle, I wailed at the news. I would never get to see her alive again. One day late. My dad seemed a bit relieved, knowing that she was no longer suffering and that the pain of watching her slowly deteriorate was over. We entered the house and began the daunting task of waking the rest of our family members with the news. The following few days were a blur of arrangements, a visitation, a funeral, many family dinners and hoping my sister didn't go into labor at an inopportune time. I decided to speak at the funeral. Four years prior right after Granny had been placed in the nursing home, I had been in a writing class. Our assignment was to describe in great detail a place very dear to us. I had thought long and hard of what one place I could describe and write in length about. With Granny weighing heavily on my heart, I decided upon the one place I had spent hours with her while growing up - her porch swing.
The Porch Swing
My father’s parents have lived two houses away my whole life. This was helpful because we would all look out for each other. Granny would pick my sister and me up from school when my parents could not, my dad would borrow my grandfather’s tools, and my sister and I would let Granny know when the postman had come so she could let her dog out. The thing I most remember and cherish are the times my Granny and I would sit on her porch swing moving back and forth talking and laughing till it was past my bedtime.
My grandparent’s house has a screened in back porch spanning the whole backside of the house. It overlooks their large yard, my grandfather’s garden, and the busy street on the other side of their property. The porch was filled with green ferns and various chairs, lawn and wicker, and the swing is on the end of the porch opposite the door to enter. The swing is large enough for three or four people, and when the weather was pleasant, my grandfather would take his afternoon nap on it. The dark grey-brown wood that makes up the swing looked as old as my grandparents with their matching wrinkles.
Granny would always see me coming, running as fast as my little legs could, up the hill to visit her. She would be at the door waiting to let me in by the time I made it to the three wooden steps that led to the entrance. I would enter the porch and a musty old smell along with the scent remainders of dinner would greet me.
We would walk straight to the swing on the carpeted wood floor. Granny was always on the right and I on the left. The big wooden swing creaked and wobbled as it swung back and forth, and sometimes I wondered if it would crash to the ground. The thin cushion that rested on the bench provided minimal comfort from the thick, rough wood. The bulky chain whined with the pull of our weight. Our chatter was mixed with the sound of bugs, lawn mowers, speeding cars, and police sirens. We watched through the thin mesh the people leaving the restaurants on the busy street, the cars whizzing by, and my grandfather working in his garden. Granny would tell me stories of when she was younger. I would tell her about my day and about my frustrations with school and my sister. She never disagreed with me, and she proved her loyalty by siding with me on everything. I would stay seated in that swing next to my Granny until it was too dark to see anything but the fireflies blinking.
I would rise to leave. Granny would walk me to the door.
“See you later, alligator.” She began the exiting ritual. “After while, crocodile.” I yelled back as I started my descent down the hill.
“Pretty soon, baboon.” I looked back waving my hand above my head. The swing, now empty, was still moving as if we were still there.
Once I made it to my house, I flashed the backyard light as if I was sending Morse code for “I made it safely home.”
I got older and busier, and the alligators, crocodiles, and baboons saw less and less of one another. Granny’s health slowly deteriorated with every passing season. When she felt up to it, she would sit on the porch swing alone watching the world pass her by. Four years ago, she became too ill for my grandfather to continue to take care of her. She moved to a new home without a porch swing. Our times together were no longer the same. Her memory and sight were gone. She would stare at me blankly. I would see what she used to be, but she could no longer see what I had become.
Her porch swing sits empty, slowly swaying in the wind, waiting for her return. I see the swing, and it reminds me of all the times the two of us spent building a friendship. I recall very few specific conversations, but I cannot forget the feeling I always left with, one of contentment and love.
See you later, alligator.
My voice quivered with emotion while speaking this homage to my Granny and our relationship. All the preparation in the world couldn't prepare me for the reality of saying a last goodbye to my grandmother in front of family, friends and many strangers. I was honored to be able to expose the softer side of the blunt and abrasive woman most everyone else knew.
I never took a photo of that porch swing. Just as I had figured I would have time to see her one last time, I also figured there would be time to capture the sentimental slabs of wood. Just as no one could have predicted she would leave us before I could make it home, no one could have predicted a tornado would destroy my grandparent's house eighteen months after her death. She and that swing live in my memories now, and I know those conversations on that porch have shaped me into the tenacious lady I am today. Thank you, Granny. Miss you.
The Wizard of Oz terrified me when I was little. The witch. The munchkins. And most fearful of all, the evil flying monkeys. The tornado part never gave me much trouble since I didn't understand it and it only lasted for a minute or so on the screen. After my own little run in with a tornado, all the references to the Judy Garland classic film have been surprising. It's given a whole new meaning to the fright-fest from my youth.
a that is Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I should have had a pair of TOMS shoes years ago, but, for some unknown reason, I had never slipped on a pair. For my birthday in April, my sister surprised me with a stylish red pair that I rarely took off in the weeks after I unwrapped them. I was wearing them that fateful May evening. They went through a lot that day - soaked completely, covered in debris and quickly adapting to climbing shoes when I needed to get out (and in) the rubble. I didn't think much of them after the intense relief I felt when I was able to remove them and replace them with dry shoes (albeit two sizes too big shoes from my cousin's girlfriend but dry nonetheless). The red TOMS were thrown in the washer along with all the other clothes and items we salvaged from the house. They came out a little more weathered and worn, but we all were a bit weathered and worn at that point. Two weeks after the tornado, I headed back to New York in my red slip-ons. I wore them to the office that week and bragged about them being my lucky shoes. More than one co-worker deemed them 'my ruby red slippers.' Wizard of Oz reference #2. Love it.
