When I was a
little kid my dad’s parents lived in an RV parked on our family’s property in a
small farming town in Nevada. Grandma was sick. She had a “weak heart” as a
result of having had scarlet fever when she was young. As an adult she
developed diabetes and had to take insulin and check her blood sugar all the
time. She was fashionable and delicate and proper-- not because of her upbringing,
but in spite of it. Grandpa was a laborer and draftsman. He traveled all over
the deserts of the Western U.S. working on civil engineering projects like
freeways and bridges. He’d bought the RV so he and Grandma could be together
while he was working. She was afraid to be alone, and he was afraid to leave
her alone. When he retired they parked their RV in our yard between the back
door and the lilac bush. A small irrigation channel passed under the lilac bush
and along a hedge of mock orange, and some other flowering shrubs whose names I
still don’t know, but whose scent I viscerally recognize. It was one of my
favorite places to play because the sand under the bushes was smooth and cool, and because the intermittent irrigation flow kept it free of the goat head stickers that covered the rest of the yard.
After
Grandma and Grandpa moved in I was only allowed to play under the bushes after
Grandma had woken up in the late morning. She said “the children" were too
noisy, and she needed her rest. I knew I wasn’t noisy, and decided she just
didn’t like children. Grandpa was an early riser, though, and he would let me
help him with whatever his morning’s project happened to be. He was a farmer at
heart, and spent a lot of time and energy trying to cultivate a garden in our
dry, fallow field. The soil was quite poor, but he was determined. He loved
tomatoes, partly because he loved tomatoes, and partly because Grandma loved
tomatoes. He put in a half-dozen vines, which he mindfully and diligently
tended. I was little, and could fit between the gnarled vines, so he gave me
the important job of finding and removing the tomato worms. It was a job I
loved. The worms were huge, as big as my whole first finger, soft, fat, and
green. Some had yellow dots and diagonal stripes along their backs, some were just
plain green. All of them had a single large thorn-like projection on their butts to scare off
birds. Grandpa was careful to teach me the difference between tomato worms and
swallowtail larva. Swallowtails didn’t have stripes, except just behind the
head, and they had big yellow and black spots that looked exactly like
unblinking eyes. Most notably, though, they didn’t have thorns on their butts.
Grandpa also explained that tomato worms didn’t become tomato butterflies, they
became sphinx moths. I thought it was weird that tomatoes became sphinxes, but
swallowtails stayed swallowtails. I liked the idea of tomato moths or sphinx
worms better. Grandpa said that they were called tomato worms because they
could strip a tomato vine clean of leaves overnight, but as a moth they more or
less ignored tomato plants, and wouldn’t even visit the flowers. The ecology of
that didn’t make much sense to me, but it helped me understand the gravity of
my job. I plucked the fat, green worms off the vines and dropped them into a
rusted coffee can, which was eventually turned over to Grandpa. I don’t know
what he did with them, but I’m sure there were no survivors.
When I
started kindergarten I lost my mornings with Grandpa. Sometimes he picked me up
from school, but by the time we got home the morning was totally gone. It was
time for lunch, then a nap, then the big kids came home from school and I was
sent outside to play while my mom made dinner. I don’t know where Grandpa went
in the afternoons. It was too hot to work, it was almost too hot to
play. Eventually I started all day school and only saw Grandma and Grandpa on
Sundays. Grandpa would sit with us in church, head nodding and bobbing as he
tried to fight off sleep. Grandma was too weak to sit through church, so she
stayed home. Sometimes they would both come over for Sunday dinner. My dad
would pull the recliner into the kitchen so Grandma could be comfortable while
we all ate together. Grandpa would meticulously fix her plate, leaving off any
foods that might be too rich, or too salty, or too anything that could trouble
her heart.
When I was
in second grade my parents and my grandparents argued. Life had gotten very
complicated, and there were a lot of angry words spoken, mostly by my dad. My
mom cried a lot, my older brother was arrested and sent away, and everything
changed for the rest of us. My grandma and grandpa loaded the RV and drove
away. My mom said it was because Grandma wanted to spend some time with her
other grandkids. My cousins lived in Kentucky. I had met them exactly twice, I didn't think they were that great.
Not long after my grandparents moved to Kentucky my grandmother died. Mom said
her heart was broken. I knew Grandma had had a weak heart, so dying of a broken
one made sense. Grandma and Grandpa had already purchased grave plots in a small
Utah town, a place they’d lived once and liked. My dad’s brother lived
in that town now, and I wondered if that was the real reason Grandma was going
to be buried there. Dad said his parents had always liked his brother best.
After Grandma’s body was prepared for burial Grandpa loaded the casket containing
his fashionable, delicate, and proper wife into the back of his van to drive
her back across the country to this place they had lived once and liked. I heard my mom say he had
to get a special permit to transport a dead body over state lines. I wondered
what it must have been like for him to fill out the paperwork. Was it creepy to
drive with a dead body in the van? It took him three days to make the drive. He
didn’t get a hotel. He slept in the van.
I wore my
white dress with pink ticking to the funeral. It was my favorite dress because
it had puffy sleeves and a cummerbund, which I pronounced “cumberbund” (and
still do unless I think carefully about the word). My mom had sewn the dress
for my eighth birthday and I hoped I’d never grow out of
it. There were a lot of people at the funeral; I didn’t know most of them. An
old man introduced himself as my great uncle. I wasn’t so sure. An older cousin
asked me how much I missed Grandma and if I’d cried when she died. I felt
embarrassed and ashamed, I hadn’t cried, and I didn’t really miss her.
Several
years later Grandpa was killed in a car accident. He had fallen asleep behind
the wheel and was killed instantly. I cried. I didn’t like that Grandpa was
killed in an accident. He did everything so carefully, it seemed like a cheap
shot. My parent’s were divorced then, so my dad’s sister called my mom to make
sure we knew. Mom cried and said it was good that he went quickly. I wondered
who would drive his body back to be buried by Grandma. I didn’t go to his funeral.
I was in high school and claimed that I couldn’t miss class without risking
exam scores. Really, I just didn’t want to see my dad. My dad and his brother
argued at the funeral. My mom and dad argued afterwards. Everyone came home
angry and hurt, I was glad I hadn’t gone.
Just now I’m
in an airplane flying from San Francisco to Boston. Hours ago the Pacific Ocean
gave way to golden hills dotted with oak trees, which grew into snow-covered
granite peaks, which sloped down again into hundreds of miles of fault-blocked
desert mountains. The Great Plains yawned under spotty cloud cover, and miles
of Lake Superior now lie below. Each transition caught in my throat like
homesickness. Especially the transition from granite peaks to fault-block desert. There's such little water down there, but there's enough if we're smart. Grandpa said so, and I still believe him. The Humboldt River curves like a slow green snake through
golden grass. Farms, towns, and freeways hug its banks and mirror its curves. I wonder if
there’s a field down there, with a tomato patch, where a little girl is catching
worms for her grandpa.
