OCR Text |
Show 10-6 I didn't want to laugh about it and persisted in being cross with my mother, my grandmother and the whole idea. I felt the summer was spoilt. "Hey, Annie, listen to me. Your mom's right about this. And you know it. That old lady needs you. What with her man in the hospital for who knows how long and her boy dead and all. Paul. I'd not thought about him. But Andrew had remembered the bit I had once told him about my dead uncle. "Besides, you're lucky to still have her around. My granny is gone. And I miss the old thing." So, at Andrew's command, I tried to enjoy my mornings with Grandmother. Grandfather was slow in recovering and Father wanted him to stay in the hospital until he was strong enough to walk. So Grandmother faced the long days alone until John came home from his summer job. I had expected her to talk about Grandfather constantly. But she had gone further back into her past, as Mother had said. Every day, she talked about the days when her children were young: Joe, the oldest, my mother next, then Paul and the baby John. We sat in her front room with the heavy furniture, the shrouded lamps, the hard satin pillows. She had stopped knitting when Grandfather was taken to the hospital and she never read. So we sat inside, the windows open to the breezes that seldom came in the middle of the morning. She poured me glass after glass of ice tea, heavy with mint from the back garden. And she talked. She had always been a part of my life and I had always accepted her presence. I remembered her from my early childhood as a strong, happy woman, always in the kitchen, singing the old Scottish songs she loved. She was not large but seemed to fill a room with her noise, her music and her constant talk, her clatter as she prepared and served food to the family. |