Grandma's Package

I wrote about my grandmother in my last post. And I still have so much to say about her. My heart and mind are entangled and entrenched in emotions. For years it had been my understanding that she was evil, a liar, mentally unstable. And I can see those qualities in her, but I think time has tempered them to soft blurrings of what they had been. Like chalk drawings on the driveway after a rain - just shadowy outlines of themselves.

Grandma has her own truth. And really, don't we all? Grandma's truths are little nuggets of reality wrapped and covered in pretty papers and ribbons. She has spent hours and days and weeks... and years wrapping up the truth into a size she can manage. She takes these gifts and folds them, crushes them, squeezes them into little bite size gems that she can pack away in a little box and tuck into the corners. When you ask about one of them, she reverently pulls out a tiny box and lifts the lid to show you. Out unfurls one of Grandma's gems and she peels away a bit of ribbon here, a peice of paper there, so that what you see is Grandma's pretty little truth and not much more. If you are wise though, you can catch enough glimpses of the truth underneath and pull together snippets of information that are tucked in your subconcious to add to what you see. In your mind, the whole truth, or most of the whole truth, is revealed. When this happens to me, when I see Grandma with her little wrapped up gem of truth and her own distorted view of it, when I see the real truth under all the careful packaging, I am able to smile, to pat her on the hand, to nod and mmm-hmmmm, and agree. We all have our own truth. And at 85, what good is it to rip off all the pretty ribbons and bows and show her the realness of her creation? None. No good at all. It doesn't hurt me to let Grandma believe her little truths. It is enough for me to see flashes of reality in her little gems and add them to what I already know. I'm sure I've created a few of my own pretty little packages.