Grammy

Tomorrow my mother will have been gone for a year. It doesn't seem possible. In the last couple of years, I saw my parents at least every six to eight weeks. However, for much of this last year it didn't seem as though she was gone, because for about 20 years or so before she got sick, many months would go by when I didn't visit. So it didn't seem too strange not to see her. But then I think about it, and remember that she is gone. It feels disorienting to be in the world without your mother. Somehow your mother is like where the compass points, and wherever you are, you know the place where she is, and you are oriented. One surprising (to me) thing that has happened is that I have also thought a lot about my grandmother, Nana, and somehow it has seemed as though I lost her all over again. When we were little and living in Mesa before Grammy and Grampy were married, Nana and Gramps (Reta and Ralph Beaman--Grammy's parents) came to get us in the summer and took us back to their house in San Diego. I don't know where Bobby stayed during the school year while Mother was at work, and I was at school, but in the summer, we both went to San Diego. Gramps was fun to be around. Nana was much more serious. As most of you know, in the west there are many rivers without water in them. As an aside, when Bobby and I first knew each other when we were driving somewhere, he mentioned a river we were about to cross and I asked him if there was water in it. He really thought that was a strange question--he said something like hello--it's a river. I had to explain that in the west there are probably more rivers without water than with. Well while driving with Nana and Gramps, every time we crossed a river that had water in it, he would yell--and very loudly-- "WATO". I never knew why he said wato instead of water, but he said it with relish and we always laughed--oh, and he always blew the horn halfway across the bridge. He was so much fun. We didn't have a phone at our house (you remember--the three houses in a row--and ours was next door to Nana and Gramps.) So, if people wanted to talk to one of us they called Nana's house. We had a wire hooked up between our houses, and they would push a button at their house, and it would buzz at our house--a doorbell probably. We had a code--so many rings for Mother, so many for Daddy, so many for me, etc.--Bobby was little and I don't think he had a code.) When George Hinkle called to talk to me when I was about 13, Gramps told him that I had climbed on the roof of the garage to escape from a really mean dog who was chasing me. I was sitting at the table with Gramps when he said that and we were laughing. He put his finger to his lips like, "shhh". I waited a minute and answered the phone. George was frantic--he said something like--are you OK? I assured him I was. I don't think he ever knew. Well, I was telling Grammy what Gramps did, and she told me that when she was in high school, a boy called her, and Gramps told the boy that Mother was out on Highway 101 and had opened up a hot dog stand. Later the boy asked Mother who that crazy man was at her house! Does this sound like any people we know in subsequent generations? I'm just saying...