MeliGoesRogue

I was never close with my maternal grandmother …wait that’s not true. There was a time in my life when I slept by her side every two weeks. Where I labored beside her- polishing her silver, organizing her threads and watching as she flipped that switch and turned fabric to clothes.

There was this wonderful winter she sewed at least a half a dozen nightgowns for me. I would be visiting my fathers mother, mi ofelia in bogota. I still remember those gowns. I treasured them dearly on those very cold mornings when I could feel the frost everywhere around me. She would start the water and shush the servants while I remained in her bed. I always slept with her. Although I would say the always was never enough. I remember going into the shower in the morning, it was in a windowless room with a large Roman style tub.

It’s interesting the parallels I can draw of myself and my parents with their parents, more specifically their mothers, and what I learned from them.

Abuela Ana was a staunch woman. There was love there but at times it felt more like a stream and less a river. It was quickly moving. Bringing just barely enough nutrients to survive and then pressing forward. I remember those weekends with her. She taught me in many ways to survive. Part of it was learning that even in her home

I wasn’t safe. I try not to be sad about it anymore – I realize now there was so much she missed and lost. How could she ever have kept a look out. More still she never really understood the emotional part of caregiving.

The irony anyone who knows her would say is that to strangers she was the most loving, kind, generous and forgiving. Maybe she was like that with her other grandchildren, maybe they were better equipped. I remember how measured she was. She loved me in her way I believe, I choose to believe at least. I’m going to stray but this matters. One of my terrible (subjective) traits growing up was often I would ask or tell my mother of my love for her and my desperate desire for her love. It was never a lack of love but I somehow needed the words.

She had married and Bourn children with an artist of a different kind – one who felt emotions and acted upon them without thought or reasoning. What a prize that would seem…but emotions run the gamut and they at times turn like a bad wine, bitter and full of sediment. I needed love the way he did. Viscerally and physically expressed.

I was to young to convert the security of a home and meals to love. They seemed like necessities and not offerings of affection. I think now as I look back on that time with my grandmother I am able to see how my mother became the woman she is or used to be I should say. Her actions, her sacrifice was her form of communicating that love she felt for me (again siblings…again difference in opinion). It took a long time to understand that, but soon I would stop asking as often if she loved me, or shouting back to her my love in the hopes of reciprocation. It was only as an adult that I understood how she learned, it was only looking back on how my grandmother loved me that I could see my mother. Moreover it has made the journey of her expression of love to me so much greater.

Now my abuelita Ofelia- ohhh that sweet woman who is the smallest of us all and yet the heart that beats within those probably 80lbs is the biggest one I think God may have created. I hope when my mama reads that it doesn’t break her heart. I hope she understands that love is so multi faceted because we are and sometimes the reflection we need is not always the one in the closest proximity. My ofelia is one of the most treasured possessions I never really had the chance to own/hold. Does that make sense ?

It’s hard to understand and yet if I’m

Honest it’s easy. Love is so damn imperfect and marriage is apparently so hard that I wasn’t able to feel the warmth of my Ofelia for longer than weeks but less than months. Yet I hold no anger nor even the sadness that would keep me shackled to the past. I believe the love that runs so deeply in her veins is already in mine and further tutelage wasn’t needed.

I am her granddaughter in ways I never walked or could understand. Yet I apparently carry her heart in mine. She taught me to be delicate, patient and loving. She taught me big lunches meant little dinners and the failures of our children are merely lessons they will grow from and not battles that have defeated them. I say that as the daughter of the man who called her mother.

Im finally reaching this point in my life after some 20 something years of coherence where I see the things I have endured as lessons. Where while the pain remains, the understanding has become greater. I think that part of my abuela Ana is kicking in. The part that says this shit is so fucking hard that sometimes it feels like the air has gone and your lungs have collapsed, but I am strong. I am more than the sum of my failures, that my value is greater than the silver I shine or the threads I weave. Thank you abuela for teaching me that. I used to think you were cold but now I realize you were hibernating. You were conserving the energy you would need so that the next battle wouldn’t rip you to shreds and by god did you have battles.

I will never be able to love her the way others did. There are wounds that even now thru this I am working thru but I promise I’m trying. When I think of her I pray that she is in heaven. I used to pray it for my mothers sake but now I pray it for yours. I see how easy it could be to stray with so much strife.

Sometimes I don’t know how to end these. Mostly because I don’t think I’m done but the tears that constantly flow tire me and the words begin to get stopped by my gasps for breath. Will you let me rest and return to you ?

More honestly will you forgive me if I can’t or don’t.