Ruthie.

Ruthie is my grandmother. She turned 86 last week. And she’s amazing.

My family is a small one. Both parents are only children, so there have never been dozens of cousins and aunts and uncles roaming around. Our holiday gatherings are intimate and cozy, with copious food and drink and lots of stories to tell. Gramma has always been the matriarch, but not in the way you might imagine. She’s not prone to doling out unsolicited advice or brandishing her years of experience like a blunt weapon. Rather, she’s been the voice of humor and levity and has a quiet wisdom that always has captivated me.

When I was young, we lived down the street from Gramma and Grampa, which I thought made me the luckiest kid on earth. My younger brother and I spent summer days picking mulberries from the back tree and tramping our purple feet through Grampa’s woodshop and eventually onto Gramma’s carpet. (She never complained.) For some reason, boiled hot dogs and carrot sticks always tasted better sitting at Gramma’s table, where Eric and I fought over who got to sit in the red stool that Grampa made.

Gramma was always ready to play a game of Memory (my personal favorite) or dig out pads of paper and crayons. She never minded when I stole into her TV table drawers and borrowed the pencils that came free with proofs of purchase from Jay’s potato chips. They wrote better than all the others.

As a child, she was always the epitome of happiness to me. I never remember her upset, or angry, or even much sad. She never seemed to grow tired of my brother and me (and certainly not as tired as we often grew of each other). Life at Gramma’s house was the way it was supposed to be - full of warmth and too many sweet things, and loads of love.

It was only as a young adult that I started learning more about Ruthie herself.

Those summers in middle school, it never occurred to me to notice that Grampa had a cocktail by his side, even when I’d visit in the morning. Looking back, I’m still hard pressed to find the signs of his drunkenness, though I suppose if I thought really hard I could dig up a moment or two when Gramma steered me clear of him later in the day. He always had time for me and was ever gentle and kind, but Gramma must have artfully distracted me when it was necessary. It’s probably to her credit that I never noticed much of the ugly side of his drinking. And I certainly never knew of the nights she spent worrying, willing the car pulling into the driveway to be that of a taxi service and not the police. (This after she spent the early years of her marriage wondering if he’d come home from the war at all).

Grampa died when I was 13. The drinking didn’t kill him, but cancer eventually did. She survived that, too.

When I was young, I never thought anything much of the fact that Gramma didn’t drive, either. I didn’t know or understand the depth of her battles with agorophobia, or how much it took for her to overcome her petrifying fear of being out in public. She stopped driving in her 20s after a violent panic attack nearly caused her to crash horribly. But she managed to deal with her illness, even through the decades where doctors didn’t know enough about the disease to diagnose it (instead blaming it on outrageous things like PMS or hormone imbalances). I never knew what a journey it was for her to arrive at today, dealing with lifetime medication that helps her do simple things like shop, or socialize, without terrible effort.

Her sunny disposition belies so much of what she’s been through. Her transportation of choice today is a hot pink mountain bike that she bought at WalMart, complete with tacky plastic basket lashed to the handlebars. Yes, she rides it, and she loves it. Or, if the mood strikes, she just might set off on foot with Sammy - her fat, obstinate beagle - and look for the neighborhood garage sale. (The woman has more $2 t-shirts than any human should rightfully own).

The family delights in Gramma-isms, the malapropisms and mixed up idiomatic expressions that are so much a part of her dialogue. And she’s the most plugged in 86 year old that I know, sending me emails full of more emoticons than you can imagine. Our favorite Gramma-ism to date: Mom mentioned that she was going to clean up some stuff on her computer which would make it run at a better rate of speed. Gramma simply replied that apparently she’d have to learn to read faster.

Ruthie was her usual livewire self this year at Christmas Eve dinner, sipping her Manhattan and delighting in the toddlerishness that is my daughter. Gramma’s unapologetic laughter, as always, set the lot of us off with fits of giggles that wound their way through the entire evening. What a blessing it is to have four generations of women in one place.

But for the first time, I can see signs of Ruthie’s age. Her blue eyes sparkle still, but little things slip her memory as they’re apt to do, I suppose. But having watched her mom (my great-gramma Etta) slowly succumb to Alzheimer’s in her elder years, I see signs of some of the same holes in Gramma’s memory. The same patterns of confusion and frustration that she can’t remember. And I see the pain in my mom’s eyes as she sees it, too.

I know she can’t be here forever. But I’m so desperate for her to impart some of her strength, compassion, and widsom to my daughter. To me. To teach me what she knows about perseverance that I haven’t yet learned. To explain to me, somehow, all the things I need to know. I’ve never seen her look old before. I’ve never seen anyone but the outrageous, perpetually optimistic, amazing woman that I grew up with. And I’m scared.

But she is still here with me, today. For that I’m grateful. I will treat all the next months and years as holidays with Gramma, stuffing myself to the gills with her quirky sense of humor, and her moments of accidentally profound insights that leave me speechless. I’ll drink up her stories and get drunk on her laughter. I’ll absorb every ounce of fun and history and perspective that she’ll give me, and I’ll yet ask for more. I’ll let my daughter know her as much as Gramma can stand, hoping for osmosis and some kind of language between them that transcends 2-year-old-speak.

Once upon a time, I lamented my tiny family and our lack of bustle and chaos during the holidays. But not now, not today. I’ve spent the quiet of these years knowing Ruthie.

Merry Christmas, Gramma. I love you more than words.

Tagged as: Christmas Eve, Family, Gramma