Rhapsody In Blue.
November 24th, 2001 by Kevin
I am twenty-seven years old. I should be dancing on top of a 4-foot speaker in a strobe-infested club. I should be at Crobar right now, shaking it fast to deafening techno, wearing glitter and platforms like a drag queen. Or at Neo, listening to My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, swathed in latex, slashed with deep burgundy lipstick, watching little androgynous gothics stalk through the smoke. Someone should be doing a body shot from the dent between my collarbones as we speak.Instead, I am here, dork-prerequisite asthma inhaler in hand, cheap domestic Lite beer in other hand, son sleeping soundly down the hall, fiancee sleeping noisily in the next room, irritating fucking cat trying hard to get my attention by mauling my feet.
I feel ancient. Lame, passe’, and ancient.
Speaking of ancient, I went to visit my grandmother tonight. That joke was pitiful, unnecessary, and not funny in the slightest… I joke to cover up a rather painful experience that I had tonight.
My grandmother is ninety. She has never driven a car. She has never worn pants. She is given to long rants regarding religion, politics, and 1930’s nightclubs. She is chic to a fault. Her hat always matches her dress, and her bag always matches her shoes. She weighs 90 pounds, if that. Her skin, although deeply lined in places, is clear, soft, and rosy. I think that she is one of the most beautiful women I have even seen. I have seen a picture of her as a young woman, and she put any celebrity I can think of to shame.
I was always somewhat cowed in her presence while growing up. She was a classy woman, and I was a south-side-recluse-turned-drug-addict-model. I never thought we’d have much to talk about. I was grandpa’s girl. He taught me the piano from age four until about age twelve. He taught me discipline, anal-retentiveness, cursing-without-really-cursing(Ach!!), and he taught me that practice really does make perfect, if you have the patience for it. I usually didn’t. He did. The man could play Rachmaninoff like it was nothing but a reflex. I grumbled and stumbled through Beethoven and Bartok.
We understood each other. After he had a stroke in ‘97, I was the only one who could read his tangled handwriting, because it mirrored my own. He was unable to speak, but his scrawled notes urged me to keep playing music, and to keep fighting through adversity. As a young girl with a drug addiction and an eating disorder, I knew adversity. As a Jew from Europe, he knew it far more intimately.
When he died of Parkinson’s disease two and a half years ago, I was crushed and unable to handle the loss. I was a depressed, single, new mom, who just wanted to be eight and have grandpa run chord progressions with me again. I found an unexpected friend in my grandmother. We both liked tea, shoes, and funky jewelry. We were both alone, but too proud to admit it. We both were in awe of my perfect son. We bonded.
When I was still able to drive, I saw her on a very regular basis. We had lunch at least once a week, and I have always enjoyed being with her. She’s always thought of me as a heathen, she hates that I wear too much eyeliner, and as a converted Jew(to southern Baptist, if you can believe that) she worries for my immortal soul, but we’ve had some damn good times at Marshall Fields’ shoe sales.
I haven’t seen her much over the last six months. Sometimes my great aunt picks J. and I up, and we all do lunch, but it isn’t as frequent as I’d like. J. is a big fan of Great Gramma. He thinks she’s a hoot, especially when she sings “Jesus Loves Me” in her gravelly voice. He has no idea who Jesus might be, but it’s a catchy tune.
She’s been having a difficult time getting around lately, and her memory has been somewhat spotty. I knew this long before we arrived tonight. However, I had no idea how bad it had become. Tonight, she charmed my fiancee with tales of the south side in the 30’s and 40’s, and she begin to talk about my grandfather. She then turned to me in all seriousness and said,
“Jennifer, you’re such a good girl, I wish he would have known you.”
I nearly burst into tears, because he did know me, he knew everything about me, and so did she. They both knew me far better than either of my parents and most of my friends ever would. And she didn’t remember. She listened to me play the old, tinny, out-of-tune piano while my son played at her feet, and I have no idea whether she remembered how I sat at that same piano at the age of five and ran scales with my grandfather. And God, I love those memories. I can remember every note, and how it rippled through the house.
I hope that at times, she remembers.
We left tonight with promises to come back soon, and I will. But I think that I lost a little innocence tonight, and there wasn’t much left to begin with.
I know full well that as people grow old, their minds can grow great caverns of lost time and forgotten life. But there are certain inimitable, irrepressable people that you don’t ever expect nasty surprises from. My grandmother is one of them.
I left with tears in my eyes. She has had an incredible life - most of it with an incredible man. I hope that she never forgets it completely. I hope that when she goes on to the next place, he will be playing rhapsodies while she sits beside him on the piano bench, taupe pump tapping in rhythm.
I hope I never forget, either. I also hope that I will have the opportunity to be with her more, and help to remind her.
I’m waxing maudlin, and it’s probably boring. I’d rather be at the piano right now, but I don’t want to wake anyone up. Tomorrow, I will play.
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