No Complaints

My great-grandmother Janet will turn one hundred and five years old in mid-March. I will turn thirteen in July. It will be around seventy-five years before I am half of her then age. She's seen everything, from the roaring twenties to the Great Depression to World War II to the first color TV and on. The problem is that whatever she sees, she subconsciously compares to all those greatnesses before. For example, when she saw me right before my third-grade growth spurt, she told my grandmother - during lunch - that I had gained weight. So, while we were thrilled that she was coming for fifteen minutes to admire/examine our new house, we were terrified that she was coming for fifteen minutes to examine/admire our new house.

She came in, red blotch marks down her sagging yet startlingly pretty face, her driver on her arm, cane in hand, and gave me her pocketbook. I set it on a small table automatically. My mother gently helped her take off her coat. On the second sleeve, she shouted, "It's caught on my watch!" My mom gave slack and adjusted the watch; sure Janet's strong - at age one hundred, she recovered from a broken pelvis as fast as the average young adult - but she's not that strong. Carefully, we walked her around the ground floor. She was surprisingly happy, complimenting our new kitchen, giving her positive opinion of the wooden floor, and laughing with nearly every sentence. Of course, she was ecstatic that we had a downstairs oven for if we ever decided to be Kosher.

After the tour, we sat down on some couches to talk. After a few minutes of popcorn banter, she reached one bony hand into her purse. (I had carried it back over to her once she was seated.) "You know, in the Jewish tradition," she began, hand paused inside the bag, "when you move into a new home, you bring sugar, salt, and bread - all the necessities." She smiled knowingly. Expectantly, my parents grinned in return, their hands subtly outstretched... "Well," she continued, "you're not there yet." The hands fell. "But here's some chocolate!"

Janet just finished a series of operations on her eye. Never once, in my life, have I been excited to see her when she says hello and kisses my cheek. But what if she hadn't come, leaving only us in a house too big with a family too small? She says, every time we meet, that she doesn't want to go on forever. She isn't afraid of death by any measure; in fact, I think in many ways she embraces it. I've certainly never given her any sign that I wish otherwise. I don't think she can use a computer, but I hope, somehow this reaches you, Janet: Please don't die. I don't know anyone else who I can love and fear and forget and cherish all in one confusing stew. I also don't know how those ingredients can be baked for a little under thirteen years and somehow come out of the oven looking a little bit like a lumpy love.