Grandma

This morning my grandma passed away. Its a funny thing losing a grandparent. When my grandfather died, I didn't shed a single tear. Last night when I called my mom and was told my grandmother was on her way out, I couldn't keep the tears from coming. And when I think about it, its not because I will miss her and having her in my life (and for that matter didn't miss my grandfather). Truth be told she's been gone emotionally for a number of years now. Now that she has passed physically from this world however, its like I sense a loss of some other kind. Like a tremendous buffer that I once had is gone, that the perfection of child hood is really over. You see my grandma loved me unconditionally, really, honestly and truly unconditionally. She and my grandfather always crowed over my sister and I, about how beautiful we were, and how smart we were, etc, etc... And its not that we were particularly smart, or beautiful, its that some one, honestly and truly believed we were. And don't get me wrong, my parents were amazing and loved me similarly. But parents have to correct you and be the bad guy. Aside from wanting to put Vicks up my nose when I was sick, I don't ever remember my grandma correcting me or telling me what to do. That wasn't her job. I think when you know you're loved by some one, it makes you stand a little taller, a little stronger, knowing that some one thinks your perfect, makes you feel less like crap when other people don't. Its a buffer. So I decided I was going to start a list here of all the non-remarkable things my grandma did. Because what made her great was not that she did anything super fantastic, it was how she loved us in all the seemingly unremarkable ways.
My grandma: put big chunks of cheese in my vegetable soup, made me cinnamon toast at 4 in the morning, played scrabble with us out on her deck, always had a pyrex pitcher of tea on her counter, taught me how to crochet and made me blanket after blanket, believed every stitch was a kiss, made mint tea from the garden, knew how to make the longest peels when peeling apples, froze everything under the sun and always had some soup in the freezer, made Easter bunny cakes with flaked coconut and even added raisins trailing behind the bunny, scratched my back for hours and hours and hours and hours, never let us walk around with out socks on because we'd get a cold, called me honey.. called everybody honey, played cards for hours, threw noodles on the wall to see if they were done, loved my grandfather for over 50 years of marriage, grew raspberries in her back yard, burnt the skins off of peppers, always packed us sandwiches and cookies for the ride home (even if you were afraid to eat the ham in the dark for fear of the gristle-y bites), used terms like "creamy good" and "creamy rich", tried to put Vicks up my nose, used to bring an air mattress and sleep on our living room floor and wait for us to lay on it and deflate it,  ....

I am woman.. hear me roar...

Last night on the way home I was thinking about the word woman. Its funny how probably up until recently it always felt like a far off destination. It seems like some one very old, and, well, womanly. Girl. Miss. Lady. They're all so much less threatening than the word woman. The word woman holds such a tangle of pleasure, power, tenderness, and opression.
So as my inward dialogue continued, I wondered, was it the day I got my period for the first time when I was 12? Certainly cultures for centuries have regarded that as the key entry into womanhood. A 12 year old has as little idea about what a woman is, or what that entails as a man does. No, I have concluded that the hormonal changes of puberty do not equal womanhood. Maybe it was when I first had sex, or when I got married. In the same regard I would look at my husband at that juncture in our lives, and think, was he a man? Biological yes, of course. But would I have sought out my plight in life, as a woman, with him as my man... probably not. Now that I see how he supports my family, and supports me, and is strong, and loving, and kind, and wise (yes I could go on and on), now I think of him as my man.  If you would've asked me then, when we were married,  I probably would have said I was a woman. But I did not feel like a woman. Woman were older, and more mature, and wise, and well, womanly. I remember a friend of mine in junior high telling me that her mom said that you are not a woman until you have children. And I think that brought me a step closer. Having sex, carrying a child, giving birth to a child certainly gave me the rites to womanhood. However, there are many, many women who do not have children and are still women that roar as powerfully and/or tenderly as the rest of us child baring women. So. Where on earth does that leave me...
All I know is that now, I now feel distinctly womanly. I am a woman, do not violate me as a woman, do not talk down to me as a woman, I feel much love and awe and admiration for womankind. Its seems that all the sudden I realized that I am not a girl, I am not a lady, I'm not even just female. I am a woman.
If I were to venture a guess at how this new image came to be, I would probably tell you I came because I know struggle. For the first time, I feel caught up in the struggles that women have faced for... ever.. the damn double-bind and what not. And I think somewhere, somehow unbeknownst to me I overlapped this far of place that was womanhood, with this place that is me.