Cool Grandma
Sometimes the people you least expect to emulate are those you become in life. It kind of sneaks up on you. Like when you’re walking out of church on a Sunday morning and you mutter, “Where the hell are my keys?” as you cross yourself with holy water. Or you realize the dusty pile of books next to your couch contains titles like Irish Folklore for Dummies, A Walking Tour of Brooklyn, and Shogun.
Shogun? (I know, right?)
Or when you’re asked, “Are you reading the newspaper?” while not speaking on the phone to your mother after a full ten minutes.
These quirks are handed down like treasured heirlooms – only much better.
I thought that all I had of my grandmother were memories. In some ways, I often believe she is still alive. After all, a woman so full of piss and vinegar (the good kind) can’t possibly have died. Had I not seen it for myself during a grey stretch of February days, I’d never have believed it. How could a five-foot tall woman who told off perfect strangers in Woolworth’s, or slowed her car (no, not stopped) on the West Side Highway to let me drive, or who made bold pronouncements like, “She has horse teeth, so I hate her” be dead?
It defies the boundaries of possibility in my mind.
This woman – who served frozen Marie Callendar’s lasagna for Christmas dinner, never baked a cookie in her life, and once flew to Paris for a weekend – couldn’t have given up and died. Not when she told me she would never be old. Never be like the other grandmothers. Never sit in a rocking chair or knit blankets. Never admit her real age to anyone.
And she didn’t.
She bought me (and quite possibly herself) a neon pink sweatshirt emblazoned with “Frankie Say Relax.” She took me to the Village to have tea on a Saturday afternoon in my Doc Marten’s. She let me listen to the Police in the car on the way to the mall. And she didn’t tell my mother I was faking it when I called her to pick me up from school because I didn’t feel well.
Listen, I’m happy for all you people (one of her favorite expressions – you people) with grandmothers who made seven course dinners and scrubbed floors with Pine Sol. But I loved my grandmother and her dusty South of the Border knick-knacks, lovingly placed among her tiny, hand-painted yellow set of table and chairs. My grandmother, who had a framed sepia picture of Jesus with a small crack in the corner hanging by the front door. I loved my grandmother, who took me to Belmar and Avon-by-the-Sea, wore an Hermes scarf, and had more than one pair of earrings in her ears (unheard of for grandmothers in the eighties), and who let me get the New York strip for dinner, even though she knew I wasn’t going to finish it.
She was so the coolest.
Because she had mastered YOLO long before there was YOLO. She knew you only lived once, so it made no sense to be uptight about it. Or at least she had figured this out by the time I knew her. I only wish she had lived her once a little bit longer, that we had more than just these little legacies, these subtle, but unmistakeable, variations of her uniqueness which she has passed down – hopefully not only to me, but to all of her children and grandchildren.
Of course, these are much better than plain old memories. And she was much better than a plain old grandmother. And she is missed.
A Girl by the Bridge 
Your grandma sounds like a cool character, and someone who lived by her own rules and let you do the same. Her life lives on in your stories and love for her.