"Before School Age (First Communion)"
Before her mind became cloudy, we used to knock on the front door instead of letting ourselves in. That was before she constantly used to say she felt “dizzy-headed”… like her head was in “buttermilk,” even. Before all of that, before her car keys were taken away, before I managed her checkbook for her, before she had a sitter, she was my grandmother: Dana.
Dana’s house sits on a bay of a lake. Before, the water was clear. My cousins and I used to play in it endlessly… if you stood very still underwater, tiny fish would swim up to you and nibble at your finger tips. We trolled the long seawall and would make ashtrays adorned with shells for my grandfather from red clay under the sand of the lake floor. The boat ramp opposite from the beach was good for finding bigger shells. The boat ramp was a great spot for pretending, as it could conceivably be used to land military jets, spaceships, pirate ships, host mermaid parties, the usual. There were fish frys and many long summer days at Dana’s house on the lake. I remember her expertly gutting and cleaning the fish while we all swam and played. Memories of exquisite tomato sandwiches, swimming for hours, Dana’s continuous singing, and the contagious laughter and cigarette smoke coming from my grandfather, “Papaw”… All these memories and feelings form together to join one grand memory- a vision I call “before.”
Slowly over time, the water in the bay has gotten cloudier and cloudier. The boat ramp got more and more slippery. As we got older we didn’t troll the seawall or make anymore ashtrays. Our wet towels were no longer spread out to dry on the prickly holly bushes in the summers. When I was in high school, my grandfather, Papaw asked where the cat was while we were all sitting at dinner one night. He mentioned he hadn’t seen it. (They didn’t have a cat). Papaw’s mind had begun to fail, and he was not at home much longer.
But before, all the grandkids would ride on his golf cart to look for golf balls. He took us on long trails, and he’d stop to let us excitedly hop off and collect the stray balls. We used to walk up to the workshop and hear the roaring and whining of his table saw at work. He grew the best tomatoes I’ve ever tasted. Right outside the front of the house, Papaw planted a cherry tomato plant just for me, because I loved them. I ate them right off the bush.
Dana used to let me play with her make-up and her porcelain figures that she displayed that were clearly not toys. I remember Dana mostly working in the kitchen, yet I hardly remember seeing her eat. Just sitting half perched and waiting for someone to “need” something… salt and pepper, tea, another napkin, an extra helping. If no one needed anything, she’d oftentimes fuss over her cooking. I often spent the night with them as a child, and we would talk and read books until we fell asleep. I loved hearing stories of her childhood. She and her siblings would ride in the back of a mule drawn wagon with the tailgate down, stopping to pick peanuts every time the mule would come to a stop. And there was the Sally Jane hole at her grandmother’s house. Dana’s grandmother had a scuttle hole in her kitchen ceiling that her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren knew not to dare enter- as the ghost of “Sally Jane” would get you! Who knows what her grandmother had hidden in that attic… She let me help her make red and green pepper jellies- I remember the bright green juice gushing through the cheese cloth each time my little hands squeezed it.
I helped her decorate her Christmas tree every year. It reached nearly all the way up to their 12′ ceiling, and we lavished it’s branches with eclectic ornaments collected over time. I remember globes that housed the most tiny and intricate nativity scenes and winter scenes inside of them, lots of gaudy, bright gold tinsel garland, and the big bulb lights. That was something that she and I did together each year- I was her Christmas decorator. I loved looking at old family pictures and listening to Dana tell the story behind each photo. Many of the people in those photos at her house were no longer living- those that lived before me. I couldn’t hear enough of their stories. I asked her many questions about her first husband, my paternal grandfather who passed away at 51 years of age.
When I lived with Dana, her mind was rapidly unraveling just as the lack of normal development in my two year old son was showing it’s face. The ultimate chaos. Her kitchen became more and more quiet, and we kept more of a presence in her house- hovering over her pill box and her mail box, worrying about her eating habits and what she bought at the grocery store. And there were the countless Coke cans all over the house. Before, there were countless batches of soup and pineapple upside-down cakes coming out of her kitchen. I loved her chicken and dumplings, her vegetable soup with ham, and her collards. During the holidays there were her peanut butter balls, her orange balls, red velvet cake, and ambrosia. I could sense it in her cooking- that her mind was fading. We stopped knocking, we just began to let ourselves in.
Not long after I moved out, we were moving her into a nursing home. It was a shock to see all her belongings so severely pared down. She moved from a sprawling house overlooking the lake to a small room with a TV and a mini fridge. She soon began to lose her place in time- away from her home, away from her kitchen, the lake… She asked about her parents and siblings who had all passed away before her.
When recently I moved her things out of her room at the nursing home, I found a note in her worn and beloved Bible. It reads: “Before School age: I remember my first communion (at Trinity Church in Waycross, GA). My Daddy took me to Church, and it was Communion Sunday. Mama had stayed home to cook for all the family.” I’m not sure when she wrote the note, but Dana was reflecting on her before…
Dana seemed to remember me all the times I went to see her. I think she did. She loved seeing my son, Grant. He’ll know her better in time. Before they gave her the morphine, she still had her eyes open. I got the opportunity to look into her eyes and speak to her, even though she couldn’t speak back. I hope when she closed her eyes she saw her before: Sunday lunch at her beloved parents farm when her boys were little, Christmas morning in Walhalla, South Carolina, the mountain trip with her sister Thelma and Bill before she and Charles had children, the stale, papery taste of that first communion wafer, she and her siblings and the squeak of the wagon wheel …
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