Look at this letter, written circa 1977 and found among the keepsakes in my grandmom’s top dresser drawer the week she died, twelve long years ago.
This letter makes me laugh. I had forgotten all about it, but as soon as I read it, I connected with 16-year-old me, the creative and spunky, demanding me. Look at the bravado. Look at the hard sell. Look at the confidence with which she asks for something she wants, knowing she will get it from this source. Look at the bad spelling? Did she not know how to spell automobile? At least she caught herself the third time around.
As soon as I unfolded the yellowed envelope I’d found among the special items Grandmom had kept in her drawer, I remembered the Quality Inn stationary and how enticing the blank pages were to bored girls like me and my sisters.
I remember sitting at her desk in the lobby of the motel office one hot summer afternoon. She must have been showing a house because I had the office to myself. I could see, through the glass wall partitioning the office from the motel reception area, Grace adding some receipts on an adding machine. The motel manager, she was large and gruff and non-nonsense like a principal of a high school, the job she retired from before managing the motel. She didn’t love three girls hanging around all day in wet bathing suits asking for money and messing up the place. I was trying to fly under the radar and not attract her attention when I reached for an envelope and loaded it into the typewriter. I remember thinking that Grandmom’s name was grand and I was impressed that she was the boss. She owned both the Imperial Motel and Clark Realty.
Grandmom did know, and intimately, the state of my mom and stepfather’s financial situation because she was their safety net. She could always be counted on to come to the rescue, and my letter has a sense of unstated assurance that my pleas would be heard. Grandmom didn’t give me everything I wanted, but she did make sure I had everything I needed.
Shopping was our thing. When I was younger, we’d go all the way down to Nashville to shop at the new Rivergate Mall. At the beginning of every school year, she’d take all three of us out and buy us new school clothes. As we grew up, she’d take us shopping for clothes at Christmas time, then again for our birthdays, then Easter. She’d take us down to her condo in Florida and of course we needed bathing suits and fun new beach outfits.
My college roommate, Nancy, once accompanied me and Grandmom on one of our shopping trips. We started at J.C. Penney’s, a reasonably-priced establishment with reasonably fashionable choices. Grandmom liked a bargain and was known to say, “At this price, you can wear it once and throw it away.” As Nancy describes our technique, I would find a pair of jeans or a skirt, try them on, escort Grandmom to the cash register and leave her there to pay, looking back over my shoulder with a “Thanks, Grandmom,” while I dashed off to look for a cute top to go with the bottoms. She’d catch up with me just in time to pay for the next item (“Thanks, Grandmom.”) and I’d head to the shoe department while she was pulling out her wallet.
“Do you need that?” She’d always ask when I’d hold up an item I’d found.
“Yes,” I’d say, pointing to some jeans. “Look at these patchwork jeans. I haven’t seen them anywhere else.”
Then the next day when I’d come down to the motel after school, she’d ask, “Did everybody like your jeans?”
When I got my first apartment, then my first house, we added shopping for home goods to our repertoire. She’d buy me dishes and rugs and sheets and wall art, but only after determining that I needed them. Grandmom was my person and shopping was our thing. She wasn’t like other Grandmothers. She didn’t bake biscuits or give hugs. She ran businesses and bought me things.
A few years after Grandmom died, I took Chloe shopping at TJ Maxx. She had moved in to her first apartment and I wanted to buy her some bathroom accessories. We had the cart loaded with a rug, four bath towels, four hand towels and four washcloths and a couple of pillows for her sofa. Browsing through the kitchen aisle, Chloe picked up a blue glass bottle with a stopper.
“These are pretty, aren’t they,” she asked. “Look, there’s three of them.”
“Yeah, they are. How much are they?” I asked.
“Umm, $7.99 a piece,” she said.
“Okay, let’s think about it,” I said, starting to move the cart down the aisle. Then I paused and turned back to her. “Well, get those too if you need them, Chloe.”
When Chloe put the bottles in the cart and said, “Thanks, Mom,” I inhaled sharply, trying to stop the pain in my heart. I pressed my eyes with my fingertips and stood in the aisle waiting for the feeling to pass.
“What it is it?” Chloe said, putting a hand on my back.
“Grandmom. This is what we used to do together,” I wiped at my tears, trying not to make a scene. “I’ll never stop missing her.”
Chloe let me cry for a moment, then said, “You’re just like her, Mom.”
And Grandmom did respond. The weekend after she received my letter, she took me to a used car lot. And look at the car she bought me:
“Thanks, Grandmom,” I said, driving off the lot with a wave.
Don’t judge. I needed it.
