Someone has planted a bubble gum tree on North Decatur Road. I noticed it the other day when I was walking to school. The sun was shining and a breeze was blowing, with just enough of an edge to keep me cool, but not enough to make me put on my cardigan.
The breeze lifted the smell of the flowers, and this particular day no one was mowing their lawn, and my allergies were hardly bothering me at all, so I could actually smell the flowers on the breeze without sneezing. As I passed the pink and white and fuschia azalea bushes, I smelled the bubble gum. It made me smile because it was such a beautiful peaceful moment. I remembered my grandmother's house, as I usually do when I pass azalea bushes. She had a beautiful one right outside her door. It was such a vibrant pink; I loved just sitting on the front steps staring into it. I remember wanting to crawl inside the well-trimmed bush, like a flower apartment. With bees.
Her yard was a sloping yard on a cul-de-sac, and her house was a ranch house paid for in cash by her and my grandfather. He died when I was very young. I have a picture of me and my brother at his funeral. I'm about five and he's about three. My hair is blonde and curly and Baxter's hair is even blonder, although it is straight. We are wearing our dress-up clothes and our little puffy winter jackets, because it is February. We have huge smiles on our faces, because we don't understand death yet.
I remember my grandfather, but only vaguely. I remember he used to read to us. He was very tall and strong, so we loved it when he would come down to our level; he used to sit with us on the bed or on the couch and let us climb all over him. We'd always ask him to read "Journey Cake-Ho," about a little boy who is very poor; he makes a pancake with the last of the food in the house but it falls out of the pan and rolls all through the town, with the boy chasing it, scared he'll lose his dinner. I can't remember how it ends, but I remember the excitement of the story because my grandfather would get so animated when he was talking about it. He had a huge mouth to match his booming deep voice and I would fall asleep listening to him talk, feeling the vibrations in his chest.
He was big and strong because for decades he delivered mail. They lived in Asheville, and he walked around all the hilly neighborhoods in Postal Service issue boots after getting out of the military. He and my grandmother met at the Army base in San Diego. They got married and took a honeymoon in La Jolla, back when working class people could still afford to do that. He was very strong, and his presence filled up a room. He died of leukemia, and the hospital would not let me see him before he did because I was not immediate family.
When I would go visit my grandmother later, we would play with all her old things, and one of my favorite things to play with (aside from all her old teaching materials) was this Old Spice bottle shaped like a mailman's car. It was thick clear blue glass with a red plastic cap and it said "U.S. Postal Service" on the side. Although the wheels were not real, I would push it through the green shag carpet of my grandmother's family room and think of my grandfather when I closed my eyes and opened the cap. There was a picture of my grandfather taken in Hawai'i at a convention and you could always spot him immediately: he was the one with the biggest smile, the one who looked like a hug.
My grandmother never remarried, and we often went to her house and stayed for long periods of time, partially (I realize now) to relieve my single mother and partially to keep my grandmother company. I used to lie in her sleigh bed and pretend my grandmother and grandfather were both there with me. I would make my grandmother drive us through the big tunnel they blew out of the mountain with dynamite and I would hold my breath and make a wish every time. She always took us shoe shopping and I would always get very girly shoes, which my mom didn't let me buy, since they couldn't be handed down. Baxter was always thrilled to get new things of any kind, things that I had never worn. We would go to my grandmother's Methodist church on Sundays and I would marvel at the developmentally-disabled grown-ups in her Sunday school class, including my Aunt Julie, wondering at their kind eyes and open hearts, always delighted to see us.
Grandma was an artist, so her living room was filled with paintings and collages. We loved to hide behind them and I loved to feel the texture of the paint on the canvas. She had sculptures of bizarre weird things she had completed as assignments when she went back to school after my grandfather died (eventually she even glued the Old Spice bottle shaped like a mail car into a dollhouse). She didn't like us to play in that room, so usually we just went outside.
There was a tree in her front yard that was split open on one side and filled with moss. Baxter and I used to take turns calling each other from it (it was obviously a phone booth). We would run around finding spider webs in trees and crushing mushrooms with our bare feet in hopes of finding the ones that would spray spores out in a cloud of dust. Squealing with delight, we would walk down the cracked sidewalk to her cracked driveway, and run in circles around the cul-de-sac. When we were out of sight, we would walk along the concrete wall that led from the street, along the driveway, and up and around to the back of the house. Thrilled with the possibility of falling 12 feet, we would hold our breaths and speed up or slow down depending on the state of our nerves or the other's taunting. We would look for the places in the sidewalk where the ants emerged, and I desperately tried to avoid stepping on the monstrously huge black creatures.
When we had to be inside, we would watch public television: Sesame Street or Mr. Rogers if we were lucky, the McNeill-Lehrer News Hour if Grandma was. She would play restaurant with us, ordering steaks and coffees and eating endless amounts of popcorn out of little paper cups. We would sneak spoonfuls of Ovaltine or frozen chocolate chip cookie dough when we went into the kitchen to retrieve her food, amazed at our own sneakiness.
I never thought about my grandmother's decision not to get remarried. She and my grandfather were a couple even when she was the only one left on this earth. For years, she went to sleep in the huge sleigh bed by herself, and restocked her kitchen for herself, and went to her art openings by herself, and went to church by herself, and cared for her severely mentally handicapped daughter by herself, and played with her grandchildren by herself. But she was never really by herself.
When I saw the azalea bush on North Decatur Road the other day and smelled the bubble gum someone had planted, I smiled thinking of my grandmother. Walking along, I saw a robin in the distance, poking something lightly with its beak before hopping off into the yard next to it. As I got closer, I realized it was another robin, lying dead on the sidewalk. The first robin stood looking inexplicably at the huge house standing on the other end of the yard.
My grandmother showed me a robin's nest once. It was a small little cup-like thing with bright blue eggs. I remember they looked like candy.
Robins mate for one breeding season, sometimes more than one, but not for life. If their mates die, they frequently search for new ones.
I hope the robin I saw finds another mate. Although it's not quite as romantic as my grandmother and grandfather's story, I guess it is more practical. At the same time, I have immense respect for my grandmother's commitment to my grandfather, and can only hope that someday I'll love someone as much as she loved him. And I can only hope that as she lay in a nursing home towards the end of her life, alone and crippled by Parkinson's, she was comforted by thoughts of seeing him again soon.
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