Ode to MG

There are moments that define us. I'm existing through a series of such moments. My grandmother is in my house and this is probably one of the last times we will have the chance to live together in this way - as adults with a long, complicated, loving and occasionally destructive history.

I watch her. I watch until I can't take it any more, then I go one room away and I think about all of the hers I have known. I love that my grandmother has taught me to always value the eccentricities and individual quirks that weave together my being.

I was watching a Toni Morrison interview recently and she spoke about the loss of her father, which prompted her to write and publish. She said, and I paraphrase, that with the loss of her father she would never be seen the way he saw her. In this I felt the connection to my life, when my grandmother is no longer in the world there will no longer be anyone who sees me the way she does and that stings, if I allow it, it hurts deeper and longer than I can bear.