“Hey you!” “Hey you!”
It feels like an inside joke we had that I don’t remember now. At the age of 2 and a half I wasn’t saying much of anything, but clear as day I greeted my grandma with a “Hey yoooou!” with so much playfulness and ease. I’ve been thinking about why that clip made me want to watch it over and over again, besides the chance to hear her respond back to me. I think it shows how we had our own little language, our own games, our own secret plans that we carried out together. Like any grandmother would, she spoiled me and made up stories for us to live in for a while, until we had to return to the world in which she didn’t live in my house like I so wished she did. I find myself searching for words that would make her seem like a one-of-a-kind grandma, a reason why our relationship was unlike any before or since. But it wasn’t. She treated me like I was special, but also normal. Unquestioning my belonging anywhere. Proud to march me around Saugatuck, Michigan on my pink bike with the elephant horn, proud to say I was her granddaughter to any shopkeeper who’d listen. Maybe Mimi will always remind me of a time when I had no awareness of my differences from my parents, peers, and even — and especially — her. She and I were unquestionably a unit. I saw myself so clearly through her, and I know I didn’t get a chance to see her for more than anything but my grandma, but I think that’s how she wanted it to be.
As I’m writing this, it’s been exactly 4 years since Mimi passed away. A diploma I never wanted but earned anyway, a 4-year degree in missing her. In those 4 years I’ve graduated from college, lived with strangers and best friends and with nobody at all, in 3 different homes inhabited by 3 different cats, cared for about 10 different dogs, stuck countless swabs up my nostrils testing for a virus that didn’t materialize in this country until she was gone. I’m now in my 2nd year of my masters degree, embarking on another path that feels like it’s winding away from the place where she stands still. It’s too much to fit into 4 years, the numbers don’t add up and the loss won’t ever make sense in linear time.
I’m sitting at my kitchen table looking at the photo on my fridge from this summer when we went back to Muskegon, Michigan to belatedly honor her headstone and gather some of her family in the place she grew up. It was healing but also painful, horrible to realize that I didn’t know these “family members” hardly at all, and they didn’t know me. I felt like I was on an island somewhere, bursting with the justification as to why I was there and who I was to her, because now it isn’t so obvious. The person to whom I would’ve gone to explain all the varying familial connections and seek comfort would have been her. I introduced myself as Patti’s granddaughter and Allison’s daughter, feeling weird having to explain that but also proud to say it. I read my piece that I wrote a day after her passing aloud and cried. I miss her so much still, and selfishly I miss the image she had of me, maybe always seeing the baby in China whom she held and played with. Watching these home videos allows me to get a quick glimpse of the versions of me that she saw, and also to observe her seeing me from a birds eye view. Hearing her voice again helps me remember how it felt to be hugged by her, how she smelled, her twinkly laugh. I hope she knew how much I loved those things.
I watched Barbie for the 4th time recently, the 1st time in the privacy of my own home. Many scenes make me emotional, but the one that hits in the tenderest spot is when Barbie meets Ruth, Barbie’s creator, for the first time in a room that feels so quintessentially grandmotherly. The first thing Ruth says is “Don’t worry, you’re safe here.” Ruth sits at a kitchen table and states that she does her best thinking there. Ruth studies Barbie as she tries her best to drink tea, feeling insecure that she doesn’t know how to do such a basic task. Instead of judgement, as Barbie expects, Ruth studies her with sincerity and curiosity. Barbie is quick to make caveats to her disheveled state, saying that she is normally more perfect. Ruth responds, “I think you’re just right.”
Everything about it feels gentle, plopped right between chase scenes and a loud Charlie XCX song. The sounds of the tea being poured, the teacups clinking against the saucers, the light washing over everything. It feels like being enveloped in the warmest blanket in front of a fireplace. Nothing has ever captured how Mimi made me feel more than that. In the midst of a world that is noisy and fast and forces me into a box, with her I was entirely safe, nourished, and just right.
Here is the piece I read aloud this summer and posted on my old blog in 2019.
I've never known a day without a Mimi
I’ve never met a grief like this one.
It’s slow moving. It hides behind photographs and memories and strikes when the time is right. Or not right. Or whenever it wants.
This grief amplified every noise on a train car. A commute typically peaceful turned suffocating.
I’ve never known a day without a Mimi.
She met me where I came from, where I was before I was me. She met me when I still was familiar with my now-foreign homeland. She met me before I had any concept of what my life would be.
Walking down the streets of Saugatuck, Michigan, I was always in awe of how many people would stick their heads out of their cars or storefronts to greet her. A true Saugatuck celebrity, she seemed to me. The man who drove the Duck Boat would say hello over his loud intercom for all of his tour guests to hear. The man painting in the window of the art studio would teach her a new word in Spanish with every conversation. The library ladies enthusiastically told her the most recent talk of the town.
I was easily infatuated with her, and wanted to show her off to everyone I knew. I invited her to all my birthday parties, to every dance show and musical. I remember wishing that I could bring her to my 2nd grade show-and-tell, certain that everyone would be jealous.
She was my most trusted confidant. I confided in her my newest inventions (including the flying car, which I only wanted to create so that the 3 hour drive to her house could be shortened to a few minutes), my books I would start writing but would never finish, and my biggest wishes (which always included a dog, and she would tell me she’d get one for me despite my reluctant parents).
What I didn’t anticipate was how much guilt would come with grief. Guilt that I didn’t see her more in recent years. Guilt that all my memories with her are centered on me, in the way that kids (and humans) are selfish. Guilt that I can’t seem to find the letters she sent me, typed out because her hands could no longer support a pen. I can only continue to forgive myself as I know she would’ve forgiven me, and to hope that I added as much to her life as she did mine.
I know I won’t ever truly be without a Mimi. She is a piece of my origin story, my first playmate, my first penpal, my favorite destination after a long car ride. Her hands that held mine just a couple weeks ago were the hands that helped assemble the building blocks of my DNA, my most treasured punctuations in this run-on sentence of life. I loved her and I love her and I will love her still.
Love all of this, and what a special relationship you had with Mimi, she loved everything about you!
To Mimi and to Nina <333