The C-List

My very lovely grandma is 84 now and has had her share of health problems which have worsened with age. Recently she has been falling and I know a lot of it is to do with how prideful and stubborn she can be (me too!). She went to the hospital a few days ago to see what's really going on and everything looks okay for now. She does have to do two weeks of physical therapy, which is unfortunately at a convalescent home. I know she must be so upset and feeling abandoned. Hopefully she uses any anger/frustration to her advantage and gets out of there as soon as she can. Plus I am fairly certain someone is going to be with her almost every day so she does not feel like we are dumping her since that is the last thing we want to do to someone who has done so much for all of us. Here are a few of my favorite Grandma C memories.


*Whenever we would get hurt, which was fairly often, she would put lotion on our soon to be bruised area and gauze if she had it. My favorite
"make it better-ism" would be if we crashed into a table, she would hit the table and yell at it for hurting us. Stupid table!

* I am vegan now and will probably never eat them again in my life, but her scrambled eggs were always my favorite, so buttery and fluffy. She would wake us up to eat breakfast but we wouldn't want to get up because we were lazy. So then she would say we could get up and eat and then go back to sleep. She wasn't going to cook breakfast all day.

*If we napped or slept on the couch she would always put a chair next to it, "in case we fell". I don't know how much that would have helped, but we never had to find out because none of us ever fell.

*She used to watch us after school and we learned to embroider on the front lawn.
We also ate way too many cookies because that's what grandmas let you do.

*She would always sew blankets and pillows for my stuffed animals/dolls. She even made a raggedy ann type doll for me which I called "Deana". I do not remember why I called her that but I still have her. I made many crazy braided hairdos out of that red yarn.

*I used to fake being sick and she would pick me up and my mom would be so pissed when she saw me laying on the couch drinking seven up and watching "All My Children".

*Whenever she offered us mangoes she would always try to make them more enticing by letting us know that "La Modela Raquel Welch" ate them. I didn't go for it as a kid because I didn't eat a wide variety of fruits and did not know who she was (for shame!). Now I love mangoes, modela or not.

*She has always taken pride in her appearance and will not leave the house looking anything less than her best. She is fond of blazers, brooches and filmy scarves, but most especially huge sunglasses. One time we were going to take her to lunch and she needed to touch up. She swapped out her shoes, threw on her beloved accessories and was ready to roll. As soon as I turned the corner to her hospital room the other night she had her makeup on, best believe.

*Ever the lady, I don't think I've ever heard her curse, even en español. She would always say "God bless it" instead of "Goddamn it".


I know it is greedy and selfish to not want to let go but I really do not think her time is up, let's at least have one more huge mariachi birthday send off.