In Retrospect
I had a dream a few nights ago that I got a tattoo. It was the Penguin Classic logo and I got it as a tramp stamp. Throughout my dream I was on a yacht and then in an alternate version of San Francisco at what felt like the Ferry Building because a holiday party was supposed to be happening. I caught a glimpse of my lower back in a mirror and the penguin was off centered. I immediately succumbed to a blanket of stress that was two ply. One aspect was that I got a tramp stamp and the second level of stress was that it was an off centered tramp stamp. I spent the rest of my dream asking people how much it costs to laser off tattoos and nobody knew.
I woke up and began my day with coffee and reading and attempting to conjure up the focus it would take for me to be productive for around eight hours. Maybe it is because I am sleeping in my childhood bedroom, sharing my bathroom with my grandmother or maybe it is because as I have gotten older the holidays mean something else, but everything is moving too fast. As I was brushing my teeth the other night Machi, my grandmother, came in and was telling me about the talk radio show she has to listen to before Coast to Coast comes on. Another time in the past week when we were chatting she told me to look up the song, “Don’t Sit Under The Apple Tree.” She had a boyfriend who went into the military and that was the song he told her to listen to. Then she told me to look up the song, “When I Fall in Love.” We listened to a few versions, but settled on the Nat King Cole version:
When I fall in love
It will be forever
Or I'll never fall in love
In a restless world like this is
Love is ended before it's begun
And too many moonlight kisses
Seem to cool in the warmth of the sun
When I give my heart
It will be completely
Or I'll never give my heart
And the moment I can feel that
You feel that way too
Is when I fall in love with you
And the moment I can feel that
You feel that way too
Is when I'll fall in love with you
“Papa and I used to dance to this song. He was such a good dancer, but most of the time he was playing in the band so we did not get to dance all that much, but we did dance to this song… Make sure to marry a good dancer.” Her eyes welled up thinking about her now late husband and I cannot imagine what it would even feel like to live a life with someone you love, have children, travel, move across the country and back again, grow old, and then see them pass and have to keep going. I guess it proved to me it is better to have loved and lost it, than to never have had it at all, and apparently being a good dancer is a deal breaker.
Some nights later Machi told me, “I hate Jackie Chan. That karate stuff is just fake boxing. I love boxing.”
I started washing some dishes which caused my grandmother to say, “You don’t want to show me Jackie Chan?”
I showed her Jackie Chan and the movies he was in to which she responded, “I don’t know him, yeah I’ve never liked that show, isn’t that weird?”
My whole life I have been told I am the mini version of my grandmother, Machi even calls me her clone. We do look alike, similar noses and smiles, but there are parts of her I think are more important than genetics. My ability to drink black coffee is because of her. She has bought shirts off the backs of strangers, religiously been a live music patron, and some of her favorite television shows are Antique Roadshow, Forensic Files, and Twin Peaks.
Watching a grandparent age is an odd thing, but being able to have slivers where I have to reheat her dinner multiple times or meeting odd requests is something quite sweet, in retrospect. There is caretaking, but more importantly there is caregiving. It is emotional and requires levels of patience. You genuinely listen, bite your tongue some, and filter through the phrases no problem, of course, you’re welcome, anything else. Knowing my regular day to day life exists some 400 miles North from her and the rest of my family begins to feel somewhat pointless and vain. Is it really that noble to be young in a city? There is never enough time because every second lived is just expired life. I find myself holding on too tight to the fear of forgetting or even worse, having never noticed certain things. I cannot fathom forgetting my grandmother’s Machi-isms, like how when she laughs, she pronounces ‘ha-ha’, her tendency to do air quotes, or how she annunciates the word dessert as Di-Zert.
When I told her about my odd dream she told me about her dream that is recurring. She drives down this winding road. It is always the same road, but she never knows where it is. “I don’t really like having dreams… Can I have a bit of that?” She gestured to my smoothie. I got her a spoonful, and proceeded to do it twice more.
