Voices from the Moon

Grandmother. at Home. Summer 2005.

 I think very few people are cooler than my grandmother. I was intimidated by her as a child. She had strength, presence, and she was tough. As I’ve gotten older, that’s what I love most about her. She’s taught me a few things about independence, about what it is to be a strong woman, about how to move with what life brings. She likes to put me in my place, and every now and then she lets me put her in hers.

In 1998, my mother’s parents and my father’s father passed away. It was a terrible year for all of us. She stood at my oldest brother’s rehearsal dinner at the end of that year and talked about the shoes she had to fill, and of how she was intent on doing so. She understood what we had lost, as she had lost too, and she has not let us down.

She runs a business and puts up with no nonsense. She travels and dances and is unafraid. She’s smart and reflective and she often says things that I want to write down.

I was just listening to an interview on NPR of Alex Harris, my photography professor at Duke, and Bill deBuys talking about their book River of Traps. It’s a book of writing and photography, a tribute to Jacobo Romero, a man in New Mexico who taught them much about life and farming when they arrived there as young men. deBuys said, “the most important thing Jacobo taught us was how to grow old with dignity and integrity and vigor and love.”

I thought of my grandmother immediately. I don’t think of her as old. She’s more active and productive than most people my age. But I do think, as time passes, that that is exactly what she’s teaching me.

(This is copied from an old blog. My grandmother’s 81 now.)