And we’re back! Hi 🙂 It’s been a while.
My sweet grandma has been living with us for the past year as she has gone through treatment for breast cancer. It has been the most incredible blessing to have her here with us. This is the third time I have lived in the same home as her during my life. When I was around 10 years old, we moved into my grandma’s house while our home was being built. My parents and siblings all had rooms downstairs, but I slept with her upstairs, snuggled beside her in her giant king sized bed. I spent the year sipping corn tea in the mornings and knitting quietly before bed at night. When I was 13, she moved in with us while her house was being remodeled. And now, at 17, I get to be with her again.
It is not part of my grandma’s culture to sit around and talk. So I cook with her or knit with her or accompany her on her daily neighborhood walks and marvel at the stories she tells me about her life. Clothes sown out of empty rice bags, shelters crafted out of cardboard boxes. One thousand dollars, a few English phrases, and a student visa in her pocket on her way to the US when she was just my age. 17. Upon arriving, she had no place to stay. And then she interrupts herself to show me how to add a splash of cold water to the potsticker dough. She doesn’t know what it does, but her mother did it. So she does it too. Then she hands me the potsticker filling to stir counterclockwise 5 times and clockwise 5 times and so on.
I once told my grandma that she was very brave. She laughed and shook her head. She said that she was a chicken. I said that she was the littlest chicken in the world.