Grandmother’s Jewels

I grew up in New Hampshire and Maine.  Well, the jury is still out whether I ever “grew up”.  As long as I can remember, I’ve had a passion for the ocean.  In many ways, it was like a romance, for when at the ocean, I could simply be me. I could think profoundly. I could be silly. I could scream with holy terror if my Mother took me too deep in water. I could be swallowed by a wave, tumbled about, and survive. I could walk along a long winding beach after midnight, alone, and sing to the moon and the sea. No matter what or when, the ocean would always be my teacher, friend, and accept me.  Perhaps another time I’ll recite some me and the ocean tales.

In the mid 80’s, while in my 30’s, I moved to Baltimore to go to art school.  I had to take a portfolio course to be accepted.  When I finished the course and was enrolled in the fall semester, my grandmother sent me a card instructing me to make sure to finish what I had begun.  This was the same grandmother who had once told me after reading a story I wrote as a child, “Nothing is new under the sun.”  She same woman who worried to my mother, ”She’s not thinking of becoming a photographer is she?” (12 or so years before I went to art school).  The same concerned grandmother who in one breath said, ”Do it now, don’t wait until you retire”, when referring to my going to art school. The second breath was, “How are you going to pay for it?” In fact I went to art school because in a rare moment my grandmother and mother chorused, “If you want to go back to school do it now!”  Since I was talking about an art career, I was dumbfounded.  Neither had suggested that was a good path for years.  Yet we had come together. I ventured off to my new adventure. It wasn’t easy either.

One night while walking home from a long weekend studio session, I was admiring a particularly brilliant sunset, uncommon for Baltimore sunsets. I was thinking about my grandmother who now resided in a nursing home. She had been ill but my mother had said, “Don’t come home now, wait until Christmas.”

As I climbed up the four flights of stairs to my tiny apartment, I wondered if she would make it in the few weeks to Christmas. I felt a deep love and appreciation for my grandmother and all that we had shared.  In a week or so, I received a letter from my mother that my grandmother had died.  She had died the afternoon of that walk home.

Some time later, my mother sent a few old photographs. One was a Kodak black and white with my grandmother standing on a rock bluff holding me as an infant, on a cloudy winter’s day overlooking the ocean.  It was the same rocks I had scampered about hundreds of times as a child and adolescent.  The same beach we visited each summer when she would come visit.  In so many ways she had always stood beside me and for me.  In this way she had given me her jewels, gifts that would carry me through always in this life.