Portrait of a Person / "final" revision

My grandma walks kind of like my dog. After he’s spent the day scouting gopher holes beneath the brier patches that run along the fence line, he’ll come home wearing the scratches and hobbles he’s gathered from the day’s fun. He’s a smart dog. He’s learned if he telegraphs his injuries too much, I’ll be less likely to let him play, and then he’ll have to spend time in his kennel while he heals up, and he only lives to chase those gophers. Before he comes back home from gopher hunting he licks his cuts and then struts to his big wool blanket like he’s made of stone, then collapses from exhaustion.

On second thought the way my grandma walks also reminds me a lot of Joe Montana. Grandma embodies one of his more famous sayings, “You gotta play injured.” Her stride conjures up images of a popular photo of Joe, you’ve probably seen the one. Joe’s back is turned, walking off the field, his uniform is soiled and wet with sweat. Grandma doesn’t wear a uniform, just some old barn clothes, but she works just as hard as Joe. She takes the same pride in her living as Joe. I’m sure they both get the same sense of satisfaction after a long day is done.

Grandma’s walk also reminds me of an impression. When I was young, working with my friend Jack, he demonstrated what his father, who is eighty years old, would look like if he didn’t stretch in the mornings. Jack kind of stuck his arms out straight to the side when impersonating his father. He stuck his arms out really stiff, with his hands about a foot from his body. He spread his feet about a foot apart with the same stiffness in his arms. Jack made it look like he was wearing a long sleeve shirt and pants so tight he couldn’t bend at his elbows or knees. Then Jack shuffled sideways with his stiff legs and arms while keeping them perfectly straight. Jack made his father look like someone trying to make a snow angel who had terrible arthritis or like a crab that somehow learned to walk upright. After Jack’s impression he and I both had a good laugh. The comedy of it was from knowing full well we aren’t above the laws of nature and age. One day Jack’s dad will be me and Jack, I guess it’s normal to laugh about the things we’re most uneasy about. Grandma’s walk reminded me of Jack’s impersonation of his father.

Now I know it seems like I’m giving my grandmother an awfully hard time, but these are the ways I convey to you how hard a worker she is. She does her best to hide her injuries from my nosy aunts, who give her endless static, but they already know who the only person that will ever slow down my grandma is. Death himself; and at least she won’t have to hear his mouth, though I’m sure they smile at each other nearly every day. Grandma doesn’t let a little crick in the neck or lump on her knee slow her down, she takes the reins of her body and puts it through her paces without mercy. Up at dawn and down at dusk. Gauging by her health, I guess death has an affinity for simple people with good senses of humor and slow southern charm. Grandma’s driven her body to hell’s gate and back without taking so much as a sun burn.

One of the many anomalies of my Grandma is her diet. There are only three types of people on this planet that can consume the same breakfast as my grandma enjoys every morning without immediately going into an aorta seizing, lard induced catatonia. Eskimos, aboriginal whale fishers and true blooded, down south, farm and horse folks. Basically, to consume this breakfast, you need to be moving from about five in the morning until around ten at night and burn about five thousand calories per day. The smell of her cooking animal fat in the air at dawn is a much better alarm clock than any Sony I’ve ever owned because bacon has this miraculous way of turning off the switch in your brain that makes waking up such a chore. Bacon puts your mind on one track. Eat the bacon. It’s too bad, but most mornings I don’t have any bacon. I don’t burn half the calories that grandma does.

I stumble into the kitchen every morning to make my delicious breakfast of egg whites and oatmeal and I always notice her still warm frying pan containing all of the necessary elements of a well balanced cardiac arrest. Grandma enjoys the things that I could never touch with a 2 foot grill skewer. Scrapple, thick cut bacon, pork shoulder, ham hock. When she’s feeling healthy she’ll have some grits with butter, in a one to one ratio. I swear I could make a list five feet long scribed with the fattiest parts of creatures that Grandma gets away with savoring, while the rest of us suffer eating “egg substitute” and “low-carb wheat bread” to keep our waist lines in check. Grandma burns more calories than a California wildfire fighter, so I guess she’s earned the right to gobble down what she wants to.

Grandma knows the value of a good days work. If you’ve ever worked a day where by its end you’re dripping in the sweat of your labors, you already know grandma’s lifestyle. Not every minute of her work is fun, but at the end of the day she’s physically done something. Work connects Grandma to her animals, it connects her to the earth, and it humbles her. For me, those days of sweating like a sieve, baking in the sun and freezing in the cold all ended after numerous summers and falls spent helping my uncle in playing in concrete and working on a family friend’s turkey farm under the summer sun. Honest work taught me that I am not cut out for a lifetime of that style of work. I guess that’s the nice way of saying I’m not much good for manual labor. If you ask my grandma about my work ethic, she’ll flat out tell you that I’m a wimp, but I think she’s just joking, or at least for my pride’s sake I really hope so.

It is a mystery as to what keeps Grandma going. Some say she’s doing what she can to keep busy, not concern herself too much with my granddad, who passed a few years back. I have a theory, yet not many know it. Everyone is addicted to something which keeps their bellows fanning the embers of their soul. Grandma is addicted to the simple life. You know that feeling you get after finally straightening out your basement that’s been on your to do list for years? This is Grandma’s feeling every day. Grandma gets it done. Grandma’s guided by a moral compass as finely tuned as Swiss movements. Grandma’s been blessed with a genuine respect for authorities I only wish I possessed. One time I drove her to the hardware store and I came to a traffic light which showed red. I let the front wheels roll a few feet past the white line. By the appalled look on Grandma’s face you’d think she just then realized that I was Billy the Kid and we were speeding away from a bank robbery. Grandma’s never gotten a traffic ticket, there’s one way I wish I were like Grandma.

Grandma’s stride can send shivers down the spines of her family members yet she breaks horses, bales hay and rises and sets with the sun. Grandma’s breakfast could turn a gym rat into a house cow in under a month yet she runs errands, babysits grandchildren and provides for her family. Grandma’s got calloused hands yet many hearts have been healed by their tender touch. Grandma’s a blessing, even when she’s hobbling.


(1,299 words)