150

Among the coupons, small calendars, and ambulance company magnets on the refrigerator at Grandpa’s are sixteen photographs Rosie, and one picture of a great-grandchild. When I got to the rehab center in the afternoon, Rosie was in the room, sitting with Grandpa; her daughter, Jeri, was there too. Rosie got up and took another chair, giving me hers, though both Grandpa and I tried to talk her out of moving. She has a bar in her back and moves a bit stiffly. “I’m not supposed to bend or twist,” she said later.

I told her the news about Naomi’s baby and that they had named her Rosalie, which is Rosie’s full name. “Well, it’s not my first name, you know,” she said. “It’s my middle name.” Her first name is Blanche, but when she was four or five she said no to that. I asked what her mother called her. “Well, she mostly called me ‘Sis.’ I was the oldest of eleven kids, you know.”

Later, unprompted, Rosie said, “I think it was those drugs.” She was referring to her own medical problems of recent months. She told about how a mix of pain meds had led to a mental break. “They put me in there with those crazy people, but I told them I didn’t belong there.” Jeri said that she’s now getting out-patient psychiatric treatment. “I don’t know what happened,” Rosie said. After she was home again, she discovered longer-lasting effects. “I went into the kitchen to make Pat some dinner, and I had forgot how to cook. I forgot how to do my bookwork too.” She shook her head, mystified. She hasn’t recovered these abilities, though she seems in conversation the same as she was a year ago. Her reddish hair suggested a recent visit to the hair salon, and she wore a purple blouse and a notable amount of perfume.

Conversation turned to the topic of me, and Grandpa told one of his chestnuts, how when I was nine, at the end of a visit, I had hid and no one could find me. “He didn’t want to go,” Grandpa laughed, still pleased forty years after the fact.  He next turned to another favorite: “We took him out there to Mojave one time, to Richard and Bethene’s…. He was twelve or thirteen months [probably older]…. Walking, you know…. And they had him ... what do you call it ... hooly-hupping. He was doing it.” Everyone laughed politely.

After an hour or so Rosie and Jeri said good-bye. “I’ll see you next Sunday,” Rosie said, giving Grandpa, who had stood up, a rapid-fire series of kisses on the cheek…..

I pulled my chair closer and we two sat together in silence for a bit, adjusting…. Grandpa wore a pale green short-sleeved button shirt, the breast pocket full of pens and scraps of paper; his khaki pants were pulled up stereotypically high….

Eventually we started chatting again, and eventually he told me how once he had made a list of the events in his life, a total of 150, that were “you know, worth telling a story about….” For example, “that cyclone came almost right up to the back porch, and then for some reason it just veered off and took down the barn.” This was in Nebraska, probably in the early thirties. He talked about the wonders he had witnessed in the aftermath. “You can’t really even tell people because no one would believe it.” He gave me a few details anyway: a neighbor’s car was missing the engine; it was found weeks later fifteen miles away. He discovered a long piece of straw shoved right through the trunk of a tree. “Now how is that possible? I saw it but I can’t explain it.”

Later he said, “I wish I’d done more, but it doesn’t look like all that’ll happen now.” He mostly meant travel, after he retired twenty years ago. “I would’ve liked to get back east more. But Mom’s … your grandmother’s health wasn’t good, her eyesight, she couldn’t see much…. Not that she wouldn’t have wanted to go too, if her health had been better….” The way I remember it, Grandma’s fading eyesight may have been a factor, especially later on, but so was Grandpa’s own inertia….

“I been back to California just once [since 1984], back to Nebraska just twice [since 1936].” He meant to go more, but there was always some reason to stay home…. I don’t suppose taking care of his yard would warrant one of his 150 stories, but it was also a source of satisfaction….

I left at dinner time, and stopped on the way back to the house at The Great Wall, a restaurant in a strip mall. The lack of Chinese employees was a red flag, and to no surprise my take-out fried rice was rather bland. Grandpa had encouraged me to stay for dinner at the rehab center—visitors can eat too—but I had begged off. I felt like a selfish ass as I walked out of the dining room, but I kept going.