While driving, I packed my bag and moved into the back room for what was supposed to be a few weeks. Those few weeks turned into nineteen months. During those nineteen months, I learned how noisy an old farmhouse can be in winter, when the wind whistles through bad seals. I learned how to operate the upstairs bathroom handle so the toilet would flush.
Stop running. I learned which floorboards creaked loudly enough to wake her up and which medications made her dizzy if she took them without toast.
I also learned that taking care of a loved one can make you feel more like yourself than almost anything you've ever done before, something I didn't expect and haven't had the words for until now.
Much later.
Grandma June was eighty-one when I moved in, and she still had all her wit, like some elderly women, not in spite of their age, but because of it, the decades having honed their minds into a focused and precise force. She had an opinion on everything and gave it without preamble. She told me I had bad posture and
My coffee was too weak, and my tendency to apologize for things that weren't my fault ruined an otherwise perfect sentence. She repeated that last thing so often that it eventually took effect on me, slowly, like water on stone, not all at once, but gradually, over time.
In the evening, we would sit on the veranda and she would talk about what was next…
