silly white blog

the phone rang this morning just before 7am, which is about four or five hours before i wake up these lazy and uncomplicated days. i knew it was my grandmother. not calling, but dying. she is about 95 years old, i am not sure of her exact age at the second i write this, but i do know that she grew up thinking her birthday was about a month before it really was. only a few years ago they found her actual birth certificate and confirmed the date. she had been recognizing the wrong day her entire life. except for the few years she was a jehovah’s witness, when she didnt acknowledge birthdays at all.

its been a few years since i have known my grandmom, and she stopped knowing me a few years before that. when i’ve visited her back in the nursing home in new jersey too few times over the past six years, she knew me less and less. first i was her granddaughter, julie, who lived in california. then for a few visits i was just some nice girl who stopped by, and the last time i saw her shrunken body, a blissful, faint smile crossed her face for a split second. my mom said it was a miracle she knew who i was, even for a moment. i was happy that my brother and i were able to bring a weak smile to a face that hadnt seen one in some time. then it was quickly gone and so was my grandmom. the grandmom whom i always picture in her kitchen in chambersburg, wearing her apron and horn-rimmed glasses, cutting my grandfathers hair and shaving his face.

baking tomato pies or apple pies or meatballs or christmas cookies. and that confusing cheese bread that i would always mistake for pound cake, not realizing my error until i had shoved a huge portion of the dry stuff in my mouth and started choking and spitting crumbs across the kitchen table. then there was the prune juice she was inexplicably so damned fond of. every morning, the prune juice. as a child, i could think of nothing more horrifying to ingest, and as an adult my opinion still stands.

she was born a catholic, spent some time as a jehovahs witness, then reclaimed her God, whom i am certain she will meet in heaven. i remember her love for the Lord, as she wore it on her sleeve. sometimes even stamped on her forehead. sometimes screamed from a megaphone. she will be with Him soon, as the child He created almost a century ago, before she was a wife, mother, grandmother, and great grandmother to more people than i have the patience to count.

shoving a five dollar bill in my pocket every time i left her house. chastising me for buying her a present. the much-anticipated white envelopes that would be distributed every christmas. playing the piano and singing in one of the worst voices i have ever heard. the toybox in the living room. the photos of her children proudly displayed over her sofa. she will be fondly and lovingly remembered.

childlike, sometimes petty and hot headed, definitely opinionated and strong-willed was Anne Conti. i see some of her in myself and for a while i no longer see my imperfections as imperfections but as characteristics passed on through the generations.

i pray that He take you soon, grandmom Conti. i know that you never stopped loving Him, even when you ceased to be your old self. i know He awaits you with open arms and a royal cloke and queen’s crown. if those things can be earned, then you have definitely earned them.

as i was just now standing in my bathroom, enjoying the soft negative (or is it positive?) ionic breeze my revolutionary ionic hair dryer was distributing throughout my hair, i thought, “wow, i’ve had this fancy ionic hair dryer for over a year now. neat.”

while the thought was still hanging over my head in one of those cartoon thought bubbles, the dryer leapt out of my hands and crashed onto the floor. its as if it read the bubble and realized that one human calendar year is, like, 100 ionic hair dryer calendar years. the thought must have been too much to bear, so it flung itself to a premature death instead of dying a natural, and possibly undignified, ionic hair dryer death.

ugh…the thing cost about a hundred dollars and it was a christmas gift. its one of those stupid things that you/santa overpay(s) for, for the price of beauty. you know, when you tell yourself that a particularly pricey product will be with you for the rest of your life. or at least until you stop caring how you look, whichever comes first.

i will now have to go back to the circa 2002 eighty dollar dryer i used before the ionic movement began. i will have to humble myself and dig the withered thing out of storage and see if it will be willing to re-claim its place as top dryer dog. if that doesnt work, i might opt for ceasing to care how i look. after, all, its getting ridiculously expensive to look decent these days.

(note to santa: if you dont want this to happen, you might want to prepare to shell out yet another c-note in the name of beauty.)