On Love and Turkeys

I wonder...if you've never known true love, can you miss it?

I think you can.

My mother's mother. We called her Granny and I loved her fiercely. A true southern lady, but man, did she have some big brass balls.

I am often told I am just like her. And I am to some degree. Southern charm and grace on the outside, inappropriate curiosity and often no filter on the inside. Not nearly as open and brave as she was, though.

She and my grandfather were childhood sweethearts. They even had the same birthday. He was seventeen and she was thirteen when he saw her up in a tree and said, "Someday, I'm going to marry that girl." This was the late 1920s. He married her in 1935.

I tried to get married on their birthday, as a tribute to them both. We were a day late in getting the license and had to settle for July 22nd instead. I was almost inconsolable.

They had a kind of love so rare you don't even wish for such a thing, but hope you at least get close. Cupid himself was probably an active voyeur. She was the outgoing life of the party and he was the quiet, refined professional. They complemented each other. Peas and carrots or some such nonsense.

This was a woman who never met a stranger. There is an infamous tale of the time she encountered a woman in a public bathroom. The woman had very long nails that curled due to their length. My grandmother stopped her, and in what I can only imagine as morbid curiosity cloaked in southern pardon-me, she asked her how she managed to wipe. That story gets told to every newcomer to the family.

Her driving was infamous. This little red-haired woman (she kept up the red for a long time after nature took it from her) drove like a maniac. God help you if you got in her way. To this day, I echo her in calling people turkeys when they don't agree with me that ten miles over the speed limit is the right way to interpret the law. I use it a lot to joke with people, too. It was not even something I noticed until my mom pointed it out. This was followed by the now-familiar, "You're just like her!"

She kept gum in a little silver cup on a shelf for me. I've probably gone through hundreds (thousands?) of five-piece packs of Wrigley's Spearmint gum in my lifetime. And when the flavor ran out, I'd go get a cough drop for the crunch and a minty kick. I still like crunchy gum. Try a Starlight mint and Big Red gum. You're welcome.

When she went into the nursing home, she gave me her car. It stank of her Capri cigarettes, and to this day I can't see one of those weird, skinny little cigarettes and not think of her and smile.

When she died, she left me--out of all of her children and grandchildren--her wedding ring. This is my most prized possession. When my grandfather died in 1980, she basically died with him. She impatiently waited sixteen years to join him. And while she still smiled and laughed and loved, her soul was missing its mate. She was ready for the reunion and refused more treatment for the cancer.

Since I cannot have children, that ring will go to my niece. The one I fully expect to be arrested at Mardi Gras when she's eighteen, and as such, I'll have to put down some strict conditions on bequeathing it to her. She's only two, so we have time to iron out the details.

I have a shitty memorial tattoo for her on my wrist. My ex-husband got a tattoo gun and I was young and dumb. I want to get it fixed or lasered off and done properly, but every time I think too much about it, it seems like I'd be removing her from me. I can't do it.

But what she really left me, and what I'd love to be able to hug her neck for now that I know what a gift it was? A sense of knowing who I am. A take-no-prisoners approach to being me. A sense that if you don't like me...well, bless your heart, that's a personal failing on your part. A knowledge that there are men out there who will love you fiercely and look fondly upon you and laugh when you show your ass. This is what gets me through the loss of love, and what allows me to roll with the punches.

And to know what I am missing.