I-75 South

A few days past New Year's Eve, Liz and I are alone inside the Neys house. Neither of us live here, but I have been staying with them for a month or more, since running away from the mother and stepfather’s house. Liz is helping me make ham sandwiches, which we stuff into a duffel bag.

Yesterday, we sold most of our clothes to a resale shop, and we have a little over sixty bucks. The cash, bounty of ham sandwiches, and Jim Neys' hunting knife in my sweatshirt pocket will be supporting us until we get waitress jobs in Florida. If need be, we figure we can sleep on the beach until we get stabilized down there. We are sixteen.

Our ride honks outside: time to go. I leave a note for the Neys family, who've been so good to me, and with our duffel bags and gigantic balls, we head out.

Curt says we are stupid little girls as we get into his car. I know he’s only doing this because I've let him take me home from parties. There exists some type of warped and extremely weak bond, I suppose. I’ll take what I can get.

Very snow-packed and cold today; the car slides sideways at stop signs. Cigarettes are smoked, and fake plans of heading to Oregon are cleverly laid by me and Liz. Curt drives too fast and marvels at what "fucking idiots" we are.

Time to get out of the car. We are slowing to a crawl on the service drive. I suddenly feel completely retarded that I am to walk down the icy onramp with my duffel bag. But there's no good place to stop the car, and Curt is telling us to get the fuck out if we're going.

We go.
_____

It is a very odd thing to enter an expressway on foot. If you've never done this before, you'd be interested to know that walking past a merge sign makes one feel extremely small and in slow-motion.

I am wearing new mittens. They’re from Maryellen, just a week ago at Christmas, and, bizarrely enough, I feel very classy waddling onto I-75 because my mittens are from Saks Fifth Avenue and boast my name on a leather tag.

At the bottom of the ramp, on the slushy shoulder, we learn we have a problem. It seems that hitchhiking actually requires one of us to perform the absurd act of sticking out a thumb toward oncoming cars. It is four o'clock in the afternoon, and this is where we live and know people who might be driving by. Furthermore, it occurs to me that I've never even seen a hitchhiker in our popular suburb. And what about The Law? These are brand-new thoughts.

There is no way in hell I am sticking my thumb out at all those cars. Liz feels the same way. We are too cool for this.

So we are cracking up, shoving each other around, laughing so hard at the absurdity of this situation, saying "I'm not doing it," and "Well, I'm not doing it," and it is really freezing out. So I do it.

My Saks-clad thumb is stuck out into the windchill, and Liz is mocking me, and how bizarre we must look to these ordinary people driving by. We decide that real hitchhikers sort of walk backward as they hold their thumbs out, so we do that. Our toes are super cold. My arm is tired of being up, so we start taking turns on thumb-duty.
_____

Our first ride. Liz sits up front, me in the back. The driver is a lady so kind that the surreal story our lives have become seems suddenly Disney-esque. Where was she when we needed someone on our side? It is too late now; we are already bad kids. We recite our well-prepared story, how we're both 18, are on our way to visit my dad in Florida, and yes, he knows we're hitchhiking. Our sweetness is convincing, and we look at each other, amazed. We are goddamned Sydney Sheldon and Agatha Christie.

Seven or so miles closer to the beaches of Florida, we are back on the frozen shoulder of the interstate ith the sun sinking low, and the realness of it all settles into our bones. But we don't panic or cry, because we are survivors; that's why we're here.

Ride two, and it's my turn to get in front with a stranger. He doesn't talk to us much, but tosses Liz a bag of weed and says if she'll roll it, we can keep a joint for ourselves. I thank God that it’s not me in the backseat, because I don't know how to roll joints, and Liz does. I never made a very good burnout.

When we bid dusky curbside adieu to this ride, we are one joint richer.

Pot makes me very paranoid, but I tough it out to be cool. Every time I am compelled to maintain the persona by hitting what's passed to me, a mantra fills my head the entire night: "I can't wait till this is over I can't wait till this is over I can't wait till this is over." But Liz decides this will be our victory joint, smoked upon arrival in Largo, Florida. We hope to find her true love there, Steve Klotz; he moved away the summer after 8th grade.

Almost dark now. We are extremely cold. People we know—our families, friends, and enemies—are inside houses, unaffected by the whipping wind, their t.v.s glowing warm. We are somewhere past Detroit, standing on the side of I-75 South. We aren't talking much now, because the fear is too huge and might steal its way out on any words we use. I can tell Liz is close to tears, and I want to knock her head off for it. Don’t make me be this strong alone.

Man, is it cold.

A car is pulling over.
Thank God.

The Answer to all My Writing Woes

I just figured it out. Can you believe that? What great fortune! On a particularly magical Saturday morning, with crisp and windy fall-like air blowing through my house (which is currently stacked with boxes of old books from my grandma's house, now for sale) it just came to me: The Truth. That's the answer. All I have to do is say the truth about what I think and feel, and my work is done. Reporting the truth of events has never been a problem for me at all, but deciding how I felt about such realities---which position was most morally correct, psychologically healthy, likely to promote future growth in a positive direction---this problem has kept me largely stymied for years. I didn't want to be one of the bad guys, be a loser, lead someone astray, be a poor role model, get it wrong. How simple it all is now, though, by simply removing the word "decide" from the how I feel part of things. Eureka is not too strong a word.

Fuck 'em if how I feel, what I think, at any particular given moment that I happen to write such things down isn't the smartest, sanest, or kindest angle to take. It doesn't seal me in concrete to the position, I can always change my mind later. So.

My Posse

As a kid, I had this idea going that if I did everything right, I would earn passage back to my home planet. I've always wanted to find my people. Not in some delusional, truly thought out way, but more as a feeling. Articulating it into regular words was never really attempted, but a feeling that I was very different from the people whose lives I'd been plopped into persisted, and I held out some hope deep down that there were others like me, and that one day I would find them, or they me.

In the midst of my people, I would feel normal in a way that didn't require thinking about---it would just be. Existing would be as effortless and comfortable as the perfect temperature of luke-warm pool water at the end of the day; skin temperature; flying. No problem. Our fitting-in-together-ness wouldn't be this gigantic, evident thing to notice; that's the whole point. It would be organic, unspoken, home.

I have identified some of my people over the years. Many of us communicate with each other in writing, throwing out books to the winds with the blind faith that our one-way conversation will be picked up and heard. So, many are writers.

My favorite two, the two at whose recognition I wept with anti-loneliness, the two who make me feel the most at home, like a hug, the two of my people who I feel the most normal knowing they exist, are Lynda Barry and Kurt Vonnegut. I'm so glad they're out there, and that they've made the attempt to communicate to the isolated rest of us. What they've done for me, that's what keeps me writing, so I can, maybe, toss a rope to another of my people.

Seasons in the Sun

"Goodbye to you my trusted friend." Good grief, what a song to start out a perfectly weathered Saturday with. Seasons in the Sun was one of a handful of songs that shook me to my core when I was six or seven. Run Joey Run is another one. But I think Seasons in the Sun was the one most attached to my inner self. Weird, how I was intimate with some songs in a deeper more meaningful way than was available to me in human form. Parents and other adults might not have recognized the real me going on under the surface, but songs could speak directly to it.

Title Case Wins

Today, at least.

Sample Heading in Title Case

Or maybe like this? Need some text to get the full picture. The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dogs. I earned a D- in high school typing. Loving my new Authentic Pigment hoodies. Okay, that's enough.

Sample heading in sentence case.

Wondering if I might like this better.

THE WORK TOILET

Cramping stomach and explosive needs to empty all contents are a real bummer when you're stuck with only the office bathroom. Can't relax in there at all. Why the hell don't they make the stall walls go from floor to ceiling? How does forcing adults to elminate their waste products right next to each other meet with anyone's approval? What a crazy system.

STALE

I guess I am just not fresh. I cannot get the plumbing to show up in Blogger's 10 Freshest links. Drat. Guess I'll go drink beer.

MOST RECENTLY PUBLISHED

Why is it never me?
(Running to check...)

THE BLOGGIEST

I can't imagine my blog becoming all the range amongst strangers. Yet still I wonder if someone out there will chance upon it and want to keep reading. Some moments, this seems so plausible. And then I stumble across a truly fascinating blog and realize what it's all about for the reader-end of things. I don't think we're necessarily a good match, the interested reader and me, the blogger.

It's fun anyway. Blogging. I didn't think it would be. Really, the whole thing annoyed me, seemed so 8th grade. Or else junior Rush Limbaugh. But I want to get my stories typed out, and this seemed a good motivator. It is a good motivator. Because there's always that chance that some person is sharing my one-way conversation.

COOL

It's almost time to become cool again. A new cool, this time; more refined. More me. This time, it will be a cool by default; I'm just letting myself out of the box. Can I help it if some of that tends toward cool? Ha. Riskiness usually does. And I plan to be risky; rather, I plan to not give a shit what anyone thinks, which is risky. You can't really 'plan' to be risky; it defeats the whole thing and makes you a poser. Or, at least not a leader.

Leaders and freaks and outcasts are cut of the same cloth; they're the same people. The risks just panned out in different directions. That's why the coolest of cats are always friends with those fringe freaks that the rest of the cool people torment. It's those rest-ofs that create problems. But they can't really help it. It takes enormous despair to live without caution.

RATIONS

These are times when you really appreciate your rations. A stale chowder cracker is a mighty tasty and full o' nutrients when you're lost at sea. We are on the foldout couch, Angie and me. It's in the upstairs living room at Dad's Middle Channel house. Down the street is a witch-lady's house with an evil statue outside her door that can do bad stuff to you. We hold our breath and run past when we go to the store for extra-good rations like Lick-M-Aid or a can of frosting or beef jerky.

There is another evil-statue house on the island, with a lion statue. This one has proof of evilness because Duchess, our dog, barks her head off at it and growls, and she is a very good judge of character. She's like our smarter big sister sometimes. One time I am so ashamed of, me and Duchess were sitting on the seawall in town, and the water's pretty wide there---it's North Channel, and freighters go by. Duchess loves like crazy to chase birds of any feather. There were ducks floating way out there that day, and Duchess knows how to understand humans very well, so I got her all riled up about the ducks and kept saying, "Go get them, Duchy!" And finally she jumped right off the seawall and into North Channel and started swimming toward those ducks. I got scared right away and called her back, but she was on the single-minded dog mission that I told her was a good idea. She trusted me very much.

I kept calling and she was getting so small out there and I knew there was no way she would have the energy to swim back from as far out as those ducks were floating. I couldn't swim that good for that far and I didn't have a life jacket or anything. And we already had a dog once who drowned, Baron, because Baron liked to get in the water and swim with us, but we always had to help him out because his toenails would keep sliding off the slippery seawall and back into the canal, and my dad left him tied up while he was at work one day, and Baron's rope could reach the water so he decided to swim. But we weren't there to help him back out. He was a St. Bernard puppy, only six months old.

Finally, Duchess did turn around (maybe I ran and got my dad?), and she made it back to shore.

What's wrong with me to do something that mean and stupid and evil? Why am I sick at the core? I love Duchy so much.

She's getting extra rations today.

THE SALTY DOG | Madison Heights | 06.09.03

I've heard that this place was a hole, and I've heard that the waitresses wear no underwear beneath their skirts. But the fact that it looks like a big wooden ship beached in a lonely parking lot in a neglected part of town has finally reeled me in.

It's true: the place is a hole. No bottled beer, only draft, and immediately I am warned that the Bud Light is skunky. And I shudder to report that the underwear thing looks to have good odds at being true. Just the bartender working this afternoon hour, and she's wearing a men's shirt that just covers her bottom; her legs are bare. That she's this daring makes the next step not too big a leap. She's young and wholesome-looking, too. Like a high school baseketball player. Sad to see her dressed like this for an ogling audience. (I admit that I'm tempted to sit at the bar, just for the sport of catching a glimpse that would provide a definitive answer, one way or the other.)

I'm at a table, one of a handful scattered at the end of a boat-shaped bar that takes up the center of this place. The bar is well-manned, all men, eight in total. Six seats remain unfilled. Everything is wood and plank and rugged: we are literally inside a ship. It's very cool, and the coziest ever. Extremely dark, too. I had to feel along the wall coming in, like a fun house. Top Gun is playing on a large screen, and a of couple smalls.

It occurs to me that my draft mug was expensive at $2.50. Add that to the hearty male population and possible naked private parts of the staff, and I wonder if I'm sitting in a kind of strip club wtih beer, rather than a bar with waitress rumors. Are all these guys getting an eyeful when she bends to clean mugs or make a burger? Am I the lone female patron in a ship full of hard-ons? The beer is not cheap enough for me to live with these ponders. Out I go.

THE GREEN LANTERN | Madison Heights (North) | 06.09.03
Okay, this is much better. Er, was until this guy just crammed in next to me at the bar. I had a nice roomy corner to myself. I guess it'll be okay; I have enough room, just a kind of cramped style. And the beer is cold-cold-cold, on special ($2.00 pint of Killian's), and they have potato chips. I like a bag of bar-b-que with my beer. The men in here, as opposed to the Salty Doggers, have an air of recreation, not just escape, and probably have boats and nice carpet at home. My neighbor is kind of bossy, but at least the young bartender has both pants and self-esteem.

Yeah, it's bugging me being wedged in with these two. I can hear too much. It's hard to unfold in my own directions when I'm rivetted by the anger in their stories of court orders and painful divorces. Worse yet, the interaction. One of them has decided that I'm cute, and proceeds to tell me this every few minutes. He uses a tone of surprised revelation, as if my cuteness is a momentary fluke. There's a vague insult in there somewhere... He's the one that made me nervous right off the bat, the one I detected as bossy. He's still making me nervous; these types always do. Because he's like Mike. What is that mysterious quality that is so familiar and trapping? There's some X factor that binds me, pins me in by these people, and threatens danger.

Some conversation later, the answer---part of it, anyway--is revealed: intelligence. It's really down to that. The dangerous equation reads like this: high IQ + deep sensitivity + great wounds + anger + drinking. There you go. It equals up to a person I feel small and powerless around, and indebted to. A hardly charming mix of anger and potential fly-off-the-handle-ness. Or is that part me? Maybe it is the me I want to express, so I'm drawn to these guys to do it for me?

Sam---my new friend, here---meets the criteria of the equation. He's got it. And that's what makes me vulnerable to the dangerous ones: they can see that I get it, and: a) they need recognition desperately; and b) there is, frankly, some base raw attraction. His girl is here now, the one who is not smart enough and he knows he has to "kick to the curb," but who is a great transition during the divorce that becomes final on the 30th, and she's proven his analysis by taking care of him like a baby since she walked in. Two grown daughters, prom royalty nominations, and 30 years later, Sam is getting his freedom from the most intelligent woman he's ever known (ranked 13th in the class of '71) who doesn't care enough about herself to keep him. Is it his drink driving her away, or her slackened self esteem driving him? He says she's never done anything wrong, but that it's definitely over. The house has been sold. He's a journeyman carpenter, 50 years old, starting a new life with $60,000 in his pocket and stupid girlfriend on his arm.

JUST TALK

So, what do you think of that little story? Are they stories? Probably not quite. I'll be typing some in here from time to time that were previously written. I have many pages full of these types of things written over the last couple of years. Some, like Trick Pony, are time travels backward in my life, and many are my Bar Essays.

Speaking of which, I'm heading out to The Salty Dog for a bar-writing session. I've never been in it (except with my dad once when I was a kid), and I'm hoping the rumors aren't true about waitresses going free-style beneath their skirts. I'm pretty sure that things have changed since those days.

TRICK PONY

It is a time when my stepmother's Frederick's of Hollywood style nighties fit us perfectly and we wear them to play in. My little sister and I are 8 and 9 years old (and my stepmother is only 4'10"). Nine has always been my favorite number. It's so nice and mellowly cool, like Barry Manilow singing 'Mandy.' One day I figured out that three 3s make 9, and that magical code blew my mind; so I made 3 my favorite number as a shorthand for 9, which is really my favorite number. It has gotten confusing, though, and I sometimes have to remember good old 9 back there, because I'm so used to saying 3 is my favorite. I fell out of touch with 9 through the beautious equation of it all. And that has caused me a lot of emotional guilt. Because it's like I'd fallen in love with the clever title and lost touch with the book, itself. Where's my loyalty? What about nine's feelings? What kind of shallow person am I that I forgot my true favorite number and all the important ways of its own special personality? Why am I such a creep that I let myself pretend that hanging out for years with 3 was "honoring" 9? What a load of bull. I left 9 all locked up in a vault and took its two-dimensional shadow with me everywhere, pretending---to myself even---that it was still about 9. But it did cease being about 9 somewhere along the way, and I started up an affair with 3. Three, who was more popular; hip; deemed by Sesame Street the 'magic number.' Never because I found 3 itself especially appealing (it's certainly no 9!), but because 3 had that clever notation going on of three 3s equaling 9. I became enamored with the trick pony.

Playing house or school, I was always "Brian," and "9 years old." Even when I was older than 9---say, 11---it was my favorite age to be. I certainly would not have been 3.

Playing restaurant, I am sitting in Dad's reclining chair, reclined. It is boxy and wide and rust-colored velour. I'm reclined enough to have the footrest up, facing the TV, and somehow my sister buys this as an acceptable restaurant-customer position. She comes out of the kitchen and hands me a menu, asking if I'd like to "start with a beverage, madam?" I've watched half of It's A Mad Mad Mad World while she was in there drawing up the elaborate menu. I do very little in this game, but that doesn't seem to occur to my sister. She's completely immersed in her role as soon as we agree to play restaurant, and sits me in the chair with repeated instructions to make sure I'll stay put while she heads into the kitchen. Even though she's in there for sometimes an hour at a time, it's all 'playing restaurant.' I feel guilt about taking advantage: I mean, I'm sure---I sit here and get waited on for a few hours. The only rule is that I must stay in character. It's easier for me to fall out of character, since I'm mostly just watching TV and eating. But my sister, this whole span of time, is completely absorbed first in her menu-making (an elaborate and creative process, based on that day's ingredient supply), then checking on me frequently to see if I'd like to add anything else, and finally in preparing the fancy menu items that I've ordered. Plus there is the matter of her filmy little costume to keep her character going. Upon refection, this game closely mirrors my dad and stepmother's real life.

We have a huge supply of nighties in our size, and our stepmother is totally into the slinky stuff. Slinky sounds so much better than that other word. Sexy. Eww. It is perhaps my most despised word, I hate, hate, hate that word. It makes me feel gross. There's certainly something kind of gross about kids wearing "sexy" nighties; it's like we got tricked into being gross. The nighties are made of such cool fabrics. Very unique and tempting fabrics that don't exist anywhere in the kid realm. Totally see-through oranges, and misty blues. Silky and shimmery pink and aqua. Little lacy dresses with matching panties. All the same size that we are, and there for the wearing. I wish we weren't allowed. It's not cute. I am embarassed when adults see me wearing those. Not my sister, though. She loves the feeling of it. She gets lost in the play of it. She doesn't have the gross feel of the word "sexy." But I do.

I've ordered the "Choco-Delite," a menu favorite, and today's Speciality Of The House. It's one of my favorites, because there are many kinds of chocolate in it, like Swiss Miss powder, Hershey's syrup, and rocky road ice cream. And, like most of my sister's dishes, has a lot of Cool Whip involved.

SYNAPSE MISS

Testing out a less awkward, more apt, title. Synapse Sparks is being left on the wayside; I wonder if a search will turn it up here. I like the plumbing feel much better. That's really what I'm doing here, plumbing my own depths.

GRANDMA IS DEAD

I can't believe this is true, and I am even more shocked that I find it so troubling to deal with. She's been ready to die for years; her whole life was a journey in depression. It pissed me off, frankly, how this reality was ignored; I wanted her to get help, be happier. She had a lot of brilliance and laughts and love, too; I just wished. There was the good part of it, but those were globs of dough in the vat of blackness. How can it work like this, that beling alive isn't enough for us, that we have to be so well balanced with happiness and meaning?

I cleaned my stuff out of her basement today. I had piles of stuff stored down there from my various moves, and from when I lived with her for a couple of years. I should have gotten that stuff out while she was alive; I kept meaning to. I know it kind of bugged her to have it down there the few times she had the basement officially cleaned. But that was sort of my tie to the old life, to a family I always wanted more from.

It was horrible over there, with everyone going through stuff and divvying it up. Not greedy, just horrible. All my aunts and uncles, and mom, who I grew up with in that house in the 70s. And where they grew up in the 50s and 60s. My grandpa built the house. He died when he was 57 and I was 12.

The house has an offer on it. It's too fucked up to really process emotionally at all. Logically, no problem. But in the areas where life matters most, I feel like my heart lining has expired, is being cleaned out, tossed, and sold. I wish I'd found a way to manage it better while it was in my care.

I miss my grandma. Even though I hardly saw her the last several years, I just miss her being alive. I want to e-mail her, and I wanted to send her a postcard on my vacation last week. I got a book inscribed to her from the Detroit News, and enclopedia for winning a spelling be in like 1913 or something. I am getting almost all the books. I am amazed nobody else really wants them. There is also a book that was my mom's accounting text in junior high school, and my dad's name is written all over in the margins. Neat. Then came my existence.

I watched my cousin walking with his girlfriend when I drove away with my load of stuff today. They are 16. I can see how un-momentous their actions are, the little things they do. But those are the things that make up the roots of my life, the everyday-ness of my family when they were young. Why? It seems so backwards. Either that, or I shouldn't value it so much. Why can't I get on with a life, instead of being so emotionally obsessed with someone else's memories? My own seem so small.


Here is something I wrote when my grandma was dying.
We had copies around the visitation at the funeral home when she died.

Gramala
          This isn't about what a saint my grandma was (that would be boring). It's not about what she gave, how much she did for people, or even what kind of a woman she was. I imagine that she was somebody different to each of us: witty artist; lifelong neighbor; sassy young woman; stylish coworker; grandma; great-grandma; Scrabble buddy; mother; friend. I won't attempt to define her, or her life. I just want to tell you some of the things I loved about her. The things I will miss, and remember. The things that made Margaret Lobur my Gramala.

          I love that just a few weeks ago, on Good Friday, after I told her that I was feeling terrible for having lost a check someone sent me as a Christmas gift, she said in her characteristically prim way, "Well, people should know by now not to send Amy checks!" She had a way of somehow transforming my own faults into royal assets. I love not only that she knew me (and my scattered ways) so well, but that she was so willing to absolve me of my guilt.

          I love that she taught me how to play solitaire one hot summer day at the dining room table. It took hours, me on my knees in the old white vinyl chairs, but she explained all the rules-and the tricks-to this grubby seven-year-old grandkid. The family was saved from my "I'm bored" whines for a long time, and she played doubles with me at that table throughout my life.

          I love her Ardmore days, when her perfume preceded her into the kitchen every morning, and Larry, Angie, and I covered our cereal bowls with our hands, fearful the White Shoulders molecules would waft into our milk.

          I love that, one October when I was five and had been given permission (after much begging) to go to a haunted house with the big kids (Larry-my idol, Maryellen, etc.), and I chickened out just from the scary music outside, she didn't make me feel embarrassed. Instead, we sat in the Dart together and she taught me the whole song of Mairzy Doats. She sang it over and over, enunciating every word until I got it, and I felt like I'd been let in on a huge secret; such a mysterious song, and now I could sing it, too! And we would, together, in the kitchen, the yard, or the car:

"Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey,
a kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?"
(The Secret: "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little
lambs eat ivy, a kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?")
          I love she had such fun with words, and gave me a love for the same. I love that she would ask me for help with a crossword puzzle, and giggle through her frustrations with tricky words (those darned ernes!). And watching Wheel Of Fortune together.

          I loved hating Natalie and oh-my-ing at Erica's latest antics, and otherwise being involved with the citizens of Pine Valley with her. We watched All My Children together for 30 years; if I missed a week (or month or year!), she could always fill me in, including the drama.

          I loved watching her watch Jeopardy-she loved that Alex Trebek. She was sweet on Wilford Brimley, too, for a spell in the 80's, but later denied it. And just two months ago, she asked me to use my internet prowess to unearth what I could about her beloved "Chimmy" from the Lawrence Welk Show. "I am curious to know how he died," she wrote, "surely not from a broken heart because he didn't get to meet me in time." Ha, ha! "Any research you can uncover," she concluded, "will greatly enhance your lovesick grandma's life." We uncovered quite a bit about Chimmy, and she was pleased to learn he had, indeed, married after finding her unavailable.

          I loved her at Houghton Lake, doing a crossword puzzle or reading a novel in a lawn chair, out in front of the cabin, while we swam in the lake. Splashing around, I could see her there, and when she went in, it was time for All My Children. And she swam, too-for years and years. Everyone got their swimsuits on when she did, and she'd bob for hours on her air mattress, like a throne, while we dove for clams and pretty rocks to give her.

          I love that there's never been a Christmas without eggnog, even though I'm the only one who likes it.

          I love that she let me live with her when I was a miserable teenager, and that she drove over the same curb every morning taking me to school.

          I love that she made me a fancy lunch of Cornish hens a few months ago, with my favorites: chocolate milk, sliced cucumbers, and a table filled with condiment bottles.

          I love her giddy little giggles when she's feeling silly, sticking her nose in the air and shaking her behind with a twist.

          I love that e-mail opened up a new form of communication for my writer Gramala and me. We cracked each other up through letters, kept abreast of each others' lives, talked about dreams, and complained about woes. She believed I have talent, and encouraged me to limitless heights, though she pooh-poohed her own. My interest in writing, art, and comedy are firmly based in growing up with her and the creatively brilliant family she produced. I love that in the last couple of years, through writing, she became more than my grandma-she became my funny, witty friend.

          And finally, that these memories can last forever, though my time with her cannot.