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I called up my 99-year-old grandmother the other day.
“Hello?” she said.
“Hey Grandma, it’s William. I missed your call last night. Is everything okay? How are you?” I said.
“Oh hi William. Yes. I’m fine. Thank you” she replied.
Her voice sounded dazed and soft. She held back her usual grandmotherly enthusiasm and silliness in favor of a more direct candor. It was around 9:30 in the morning. My phone call must have woken her up. She seemed both awake and asleep. She began speaking, “I just had the strangest dream. It was my 100th birthday and a news crew was there waiting outside my door when I woke up. They had cameras and lights in my face and everyone was on the street cheering. Anderson Cooper was there and he congratulated me. He looked into my eyes and stuck a microphone in my face and the cameras were rolling and everything. And everyone I ever knew was there. They looked at me and cheered and sang. Frank Sinatra was there and he sang ‘The Way You Look Tonight’ to me and spun me around the front entrance of my house. Right in front of everyone. And Buddy Hackett was there. And he cracked jokes and made everyone laugh. He said he remembered me from high school in Brooklyn and that I was always top of the class. And The Righteous Brothers. They were there too. They had their suits buttoned all the way to the top and their hair slicked back real nice. And they looked right out of a magazine. They sang ‘Unchained Melody’ to me and your grandfather. He was there too. He looked plump and his face rosy. His hair was big and bushy and he smiled his uneven smile at me. As they played ‘Unchained Melody’ he grabbed my hand and we had our first dance again. We swayed back and forth and got married all over again. And he told me he loved me and he always had. He said he was happy about how much life I have lived. And he told me not to be upset about how much he had missed, because he hadn’t really missed it. And my parents were there too. Carmelo and Maria. And they looked on and smiled. They still didn’t understand the words of the song, but they knew what it meant. And my uncle Zitzi. The bricklayer. He was there too. Looking the same as he always had. Big and burly, with arms like tree trunks, just like I remembered him. He held out his arms and the kids swung on them like monkeys. He told me he was proud of me. Of who I became. Of how strong I was. He said he was proud to have laid all those bricks. Each and every one. Because it helped feed us kids during the Depression when nobody else could. Because each brick made him stronger and gave him meaning. And everything I’d ever cooked was there. Every meatball and rice ball I’d ever formed in my hands and fried for my grandkids. For my kids. For everyone. Every piece of pasta I’d ever boiled. Every crab and shrimp, squid and clam, mussel and scallop. It formed a mountain that could touch the clouds. It surrounded us with gluten, red meat, shellfish, and tomatoes. A monument to the generations that left my house full and picking their teeth. It made the decades of burns and cuts long healed feel healed again. And Joe Torre was there, with Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera. They were in pinstripes and they forgave me for all the things I shouted at the TV. They forgave me for calling them bums. They thanked me for cheering and said I helped them win each game. And there were slot machines. Slot machines just like they had in Atlantic City. They were everywhere and their big levers were all pulled down. Every slot machine I had ever played was there and this time they all came up cherries. Cherries, three across on every machine. They were all jackpots and the change poured out of them like a geyser. Every single one was a winner. Everyone was there and everyone won. Can you believe it? Everyone. All of them were there in front of me. Looking at me on my 100th birthday. Everyone was there and everyone had seen how old I’d gotten. It was a nightmare.”
Related Recs
An old man comes into my line , hunched over and dragging his feet,
As he puts items on the conveyor belt i see his knuckles white, and taunt with letters spelling “R-I-T-A”
RITA reveals his youth to me, she paints à vision of the couple behind him
I can see him standing with à woman, who’s young with à soft voice that creeps under the music my job is playing.
She buys à single bag of candy smiling as her child pulls on her arm.
Her partner, doesn’t seem to match the town we’re in and when he puts cash on the counter his knuckles read “R-I-C-O” instead,
RICO’s face mixes into someone from home and I wonder if he’ll live the same life as the man in front of him or meet the same fate as the latter.
Will he be able to retire in à sleepy town like Rita’s lover?
Or will he die young, far away from the smiling girl trying to prove himself?
His mother would wake up in à cold sweat to 30 missed calls. She’ll think of him at 6, nervous for his first day of school and collapse on the floor at his funeral. His childhood friends would rush over even though they haven’t seen him outside of Facebook in 16 years
But they’ll remember the important things, like him learning to ride his bike and getting à tattoo to match his dad for his approval even though it didn’t work. His dad would look at the casket and shed his first tears in à decade realizing that perhaps he was too hard like his father before him
After the quiet of the funeral, his friend would go back home to his empty apartment and have à longing for home and feel the need to visit home to see his mother to reminisce.
She would be the woman coming into my line now. Smile lines reveal to me the years of joy he’s brought her and in her bag, 6 oranges symbolizing good luck. She tells me the good news of her son visiting and tells me while talking that hes far older than me
I smile and ask her to guess my age “17” she says proudly. I feel disappointed that she didnt guess correctly. Everyone says that I’ll miss these years of mistaken Identity. But in my youth I wish to skip it. At age 20 , I wish I had à life of tattoos and lines that express à life full of laughs
I’m aware that with this change that no one will see me as the girl that I am anymore but this refined thing. No one would see me as carefree and fun loving as à mother but irresponsible and immature. At the young age of 40 no one will see me as curious but nosy and stupid
By then I won't be insecure but desperate, by then I should be wise.
I wonder if the woman in front of me remembers her first boyfriend vividly or her mother cutting her deeply for the first time or does she just feel the grooves that have been carried in her
At 60 will she remember being at the edge of the windowsill at 14 and view it as an error of her youth? And when she saw the same signs of decline in her own daughter will she ignore it like her mother had done her and instead clasp her daughters hands in prayer and force her to her knees. Or would she view her daughter pulling away as necessary instead of à sign of abandonment and remember that in her youth she was her daughter and vice versa
Feb 13, 2025
I have a lot of terrible memories that took place there but there are also beautiful memories. they had a comfortable warm and inviting home in the country and in the moments where I wasn’t being confronted with my family dysfunction I felt so normal. They called the bedroom my sister and I would stay in the princess room; it had two twin beds and a huge collection of VHS tapes, board games, and vintage children’s books. When I grew up my boyfriend and I got to stay in the one of the grownup rooms with en suite bathroom, pictured, which was a defining moment for me. I loved waking up before everybody, making coffee in the sun room, sitting there and reading the Dallas Morning News looking out into the garden. My grandfather sold the house before we had our falling-out and they’ve since passed so I couldn’t go back even if I wanted to.
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I would also say my paternal grandfather's house, which sat on a huge tract of land with pecan and pomegranate trees which we would pick up off of the ground. An irrigation dam ran behind it. In the winter, I would stomp on the cracked dry earth to break it beneath my feet, and shatter the ice that would form in the bird bath.
The walls were lined with my great grandmother’s pastel art from when she went to finishing school and my grandmother’s embroidery pieces. There was a wood paneled library with smoke-stained classic books, many of which I have with me today. My dad and his brother had a play room painted in primary color blue, yellow, and red, and my sister and I could play with all of their old toys and look at their old books. My grandmothers glass shoe and bell connection as well as her vanity set had all been left exactly as they were and I would admire them every time we visited. She died before I was born but I always felt a strong connection to her and I would love to have space to display her collections someday!
And I adored my grandfather who had been so prickly with my father and his brother but was so sweet to me. He would always give me porcelain dolls he bought on QVC. his house smelled like rotten bananas because he would buy them and forget to eat them. He died when I was about six years old and I said why couldn’t it have been my other grandfather that died (lol). I miss him a lot and I think he would be proud of me! 🫶
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Oh and my mom‘s dead gay best friend Jackie’s house which he shared with his partner Aaron, a sculptor who was close friends with Cormac McCarthy. I learned everything about sophistication in decor from them and their house was my favorite place on earth. He would have a huge Christmas party every year and go BALLS TO THE WALL DECORATING; other professors from the university and artists would hobnob and I would eat inappropriately too many hors d’oeuvres (he would get all of his charcuterie and shrimp cocktail from COSTCO). His kitchen had black and white checker board floors with cherry red accents and Betty Boop decor. I miss him so much too!!!
Jul 18, 2024
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My paternal great-grandmother, Charlotte (Lottie for short)—whose husband Vernon came back from World War I as a cruel, shellshocked man incapable of providing for the family—forced to bear the weight of responsibility and open the first plant nursery in our hometown, resigned to her quiet strength, always tending to living things with care but never receiving that same treatment.
My maternal grandmother, Barbara, a reserved and emotionally detached woman who matter-of-factly confessed to my mother in 1998 that she and my grandfather Billy had not had sex in years. I would eventually come to learn that he preferred the company of other men, and looked back on the time when I was 13 where I had attempted to help him search for a long-lost military friend in a new light. Barbara developed dementia and wasted away into a whisper, but the last time I saw her, flashes of anger would rise to the surface: telling me to throw Billy down the staircase; that she hopes he’ll drown in his iced tea. During that visit, we discovered that her antique bisque dolls from her childhood in Iowa had been carelessly tossed into the unfinished attic, exposed to the elements and left to decay—just like her.
My mother, a woman I hated growing up until, to my horror, I came to understand exactly what made her into the monster she had been to me—like looking into the most humbling mirror. My father mocked her interests, dismissed her emotions, deprived her of affection, and poked and prodded her until she snapped.
My father, who tearfully confessed to me late one night, several beers in, his accent slipping into its latent southern drawl as it did when he was drunk, that he regretted not staying with the mother of his first daughter, Layla—named after the Eric Clapton song, conceived during a meth bender when they were 19, leading to a shotgun wedding and a marriage that ended too soon—and had to watch from afar as she suffered in a marriage to a man who was “a square” and didn’t see her.
My paternal grandfather, Herbert, who adored my grandmother Dorothea until her dying breath and kept her belongings and mementos all throughout the house like a mausoleum for about 20 years until he succeeded in drinking his way to joining her—her collections of antique bells and glass slippers, her embroideries, photos of her in Paris, her silver vanity set in the bedroom, her blank greeting cards and stationary, her cigarette-smoke-stained books in their library with notes stuffed into the pages and scribblings in the margins.
My maternal great-grandmother Katherine, who was left by her first husband—a man who never treated Barbara as his child—and married her second husband, a patient, stoic, loving farmer. In her old age after his death she joined a biker gang, wore leather studded gloves, and developed a love for the thrill of casual shoplifting.
My aunt Lisa, currently on her third marriage to a good ol’ boy NFL agent for the Cowboys and former A&M football player with a passionate love for Wienerschnitzel. Last I heard, he was trying to get his friend Jerry Jones in on buying a franchise with him because there are no locations close to his house but Jerry remained skeptical about its value as a joint business venture. My mother told me throughout my childhood that Lisa had ended a perfectly good marriage with her first husband to chase something new; that I was evil and selfish just like her. Lisa looks happier than ever.
Feb 28, 2025
Top Recs from @will
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School made us think reading is a holy act. It is not. Its just something to do. Like watching a movie or sports. You aren’t going to be tested by anyone. Read high. Read drunk. Read 2 pages. Read half awake. Remember nothing or just some of it. It really doesn’t matter
May 2, 2024
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Just do it who cares she probably knows better
Feb 27, 2025