Whose will shoe his pretty little feet?

I am skating slow circles around the idea of becoming a grandmother, dancing in and out of the throngs of people already on the ice. The grandmother I treasured died more than three decades ago, right after my oldest child was born. I memorized the moment I took him to meet her, the talcum powder smell of new life blending with the old lady smell of her room at the home, his smooth pink baby face contrasting to the darker waves of her softly creased cheeks. He nuzzled for milk and she laughed, delightfully amused. “That’s been dry for a long time baby,” she spoke as if incredulous that the years had passed so swiftly. Painfully I realized that she had no idea who I was. I looked imploringly into her eyes, straining for her to see me as the pigtailed girl with skinned knees who once sat happily in her lap. Believing I could skip a rock over the years and pull her back to me I began to tell her stories like she once told me.

Remember Pearl Bryan, Mamaw? Remember how we used to sing it together while you played the organ in the living room? Remember how you showed me the newspaper clipping of her death? The murdered girl ballad from long ago came easily to my mouth:

Down in the Valley
Where the flowers fade and bloom
There lies my sweet Pearl Bryan
In her cold and silent tomb
She died not broken hearted
Nor lingering sickness fell
But in an instant parted
From friends she loved so well.

She’s remembers the words and sings along with me, music being the last thing that leaves our soul before we depart. Like her, I always sang to my children, but the only one who ever liked it was the baby she held so briefly. Grown, he still remembered, and we danced to “You are my Sunshine” at his wedding, the song I sang to quiet him so many times when he was a little boy. I think about singing it to his little boy, and the wonder of the flickering passage of years overwhelms me again.

I am back in my grandmother’s tiny house, the pot bellied stove pouring off heat into her parlor, the craftsman rocking chairs padded with homemade quilted pillows, all the side tables heavy with starched dollies. She is patiently teaching me skills she believes I will need, like how to crochet, and make braided rugs; how to create quilts from scraps of fabric and sun hats from chicken feed sacks. She came from a time that everything needed for life was made by hand, and seeing my mother was not encouraging me in those womanly skills, she tried to fill the gaps in my education.

On sunny days we walked together to the grocery in our small town, down stop and go sidewalks and past black wrought iron fences. I held her hand and balanced precariously on top of every concrete wall along the way, pretending to be a tightrope walker. I don’t remember ever questioning why we didn’t drive, the delights of going with her and helping her carry home packages was paced perfectly for a child’s adventure. After, she gave me pennies from her change, probably money she could not afford, and we put them into a mason jar for me to save. She taught me not to spend them, but to wait until there were 100 painstakingly counted copper circles, whereupon I got to trade them for one greenback dollar. It was a month’s allowance for me, a fortune in a time when candy bars were a nickel, comic books a dime, and a “real” emerald ring from the 5 and 10 cent store cost a quarter.

If it rained, her kitchen was a cozy retreat where I made miniature versions of her cakes and pies in jar lids, baked them in her kerosene stove, and ate them immediately, hot from the oven. If it did not rain I helped her carry water to the garden for the vegetables she grew and canned for winter. When the green rows of corn, beans, tomatoes and okra were harvested, the bright mason jars multiplied on her shelves, giving promise of sustenance through dark winter days. Every visitor was ritually invited to come see the fruit of her labors and to make approving noises about her foresight.

I had no love for her shed of nervous sharp beaked chickens, and I dreaded the glare of their suspicious eyes as I reached under their silky warm bellies to steal their eggs. One noisy explosion of clucking set them all off, wings beating uselessly, the air filled with the hot smell of dust and feathers. I loved the gentle rabbits that sat in high cages at my eye level, their noses twitching as the leafy greens I fed through the wire disappeared into the conveyer belt of their toothy little mouths.

The boundless detail of rich anachronistic skills I learned from her fill my head with promises as sweet as the homemade jam lined up on shelves in her kitchen. I wonder what useless things will I teach my grandchildren, what brilliant stupid things will they love about me? Then, in a flash, I remember the some 2500 miles that lie between him and me and feel a warm tear fall unbidden down my cheek.

My children have made a web site to share the life they have in Seattle. It is filled with pictures of their beautiful friends, and there, in the middle, is the surprisingly large belly of my daughter in love. She looks so happy, and the picture of the life they have made in the Emerald City so brilliant, it takes my breath. I tell myself that it is enough that warm and loving friends surround them. I’m quite sure that grandparents in residence are not essential, since I reared my own children far from the crazy people who raised me. I know it’s going to be best for them, probably best for the baby. I’m sure I will get over feeling sorry for myself any minute now.