Sunday, June 1, 2014

Victoria Newman

I know when she's about to say it. When she's been looking at me too long in silence and squints her eyes in confusion. I wait for it. Never really insulted, more amused by the conviction she has for her feelings.

'What have you done to your hair?'

She asks me this every time I visit her despite the fact that my hair has not changed very much in the past year. She is insistent that she does not like it.

'I don't understand. What color do you want it to be?'

When I was a kid we would watch 'The Young and Restless' and often my grandma would try and do my hair like one of the main characters on the show, Victoria Newman. It always turned out very nice but she pulled it so tight it was hard to blink my eyes. I was the only ten year old with a natural facelift.

In an effort to make the most of whatever time I have left with her brain, I have begun to dig deeper in our visits. Today for the first time I acknowledged to her that she does not remember stuff from three years ago, and that is okay. I suggested that maybe she remembers things better that happened twenty years ago.

So sitting there outside in the sun, my mom sitting on the grass with my son, my grandmother sitting across from me holding my hand, I asked her if she remembered visiting one of my restaurants a few years ago. She said she did not. Don't worry about it, I told her. What about going to the Jersey Shore, I said. Bakers Acres (the campground where we stayed)? John and Karla? Ginny and Gary? Deep sea fishing and beer and pizza? Yes, she said and smiled and squeezed my hand. Those were good times, she told me.

We talked about the cars she had with my grandfather (always Cadillacs) and I recited for her the colors: mint green, green leather interior (my favorite), gold with tan leather interior (the one she had when my grandpa died) and so on. We went over the colors of the rugs in all of the upstairs bedrooms before her house became two apartments. I took off the ring she gave me, the one my grandfather gave her for a wedding anniversary many, many moons ago, and slid it as far as it would go on her finger and watched her smile at it.

'Make sure the stones don't fall out' she told me. I asked her if they ever had. Well no, she said. I laughed. The ring is close to fifty years old. I think those stones are staying put I told her and gave her a big hug.

Missing her tonight and feeling the weight of it all, the sadness and the joy of watching her last chapter be written. Mostly though I just feel lucky, to have been there and have shared so much with her and now, when she falters and struggles to put together the pieces of a specific memory, I can be there to help her, to remind her of all the beauty that we've seen together.

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