November 28, 2003
"Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters"
"Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters" by Elton John
The Ideal(!) Thanksgiving - Jenga, Waffles, and a Lack of Turkey
Today wasn't a complete bore. There was an aquaintance of mine at the friend of the family's house, and though she was a couple years younger, we played only a couple dozen games of Connect 4 and Jenga. Yeah. Then after dinner, which I ate waay too much of, (I didn't even eat any turkey!) we napped on the couch until a couple hours later when the football game ended and we left. I like a normal boring Thanksgiving dinner at home better.
After we left, we went on to visit my Great Grandmother NawNaw, and Great Aunt Anna. NawNaw was moved to a nursing home two years ago, and I haven't seen her much since then. Not nearly as much as used to. Growing up, Mum and I would visit NawNaw and Anna once a month, and whenever we visited them, they would have the most wonderful Italian cookies baking for us - waffle cookies, tarts, egg cookies - they were the best. Mum would talk with them, and I'd read or watch television, listening to their Dundalk brogue with a hint of Italian accent. Once we left, NawNaw would admire how tall I had gotten (I passed her height when I was 10. That's when I started believing as people got older, they shrunk.) and she would give us baggies of the freshly baked cookies. I'd eat most of the waffle cookies by the time we got home, and enjoyed some of the tarts, munching around the jelly centers, then finally eating the last flavored bite as the sugar melted in my mouth. At Christmas time, she'd add our gift of an angel knickknack or doll to her collection, then show us the hundreds of angel memorabilia. One of the Christmas decorations I remember most was her ceramic tree, a 2" tall painted evergreen with tiny colored glass bulbs that glowed and twinkled during our visit.
And now she's in a nursing home. My NawNaw. She can't make those delicious cookies from her home country anymore, much less remember the directions passed down to her from her mother. She barely recognized me when I stood by her bed. But even though her bones are fragile, her skin of the softest silk, her hair white and glossy, eyes weathered and tired, she's still one of the most beautiful women I know.
She has very little time left. Our family is one of the few that remember to visit her. To see her try to smile and kiss us goodbye felt so strange, as if she wasn't the NawNaw I had known all my life, but rather another being that had replaced her. And although there has been tension in our extended family as long as I can remember, she is one lady I admire, more so for her stubborness and strength than anything else. NawNaw and her cookies are part of my heritage, and perhaps a bit of her hard-headedness is running through my veins.
Perhaps. 