Beech Tree News Network

My granddaughter, Sabria, and I started on Wednesday, waiting for her great-grandmother, Aggie, to show up on Friday.  We sat in the swing under the maple tree and waited.  We sat on the bench on the front porch and waited.  We sat in the chair in front of the dining room window and waited.  Finally, Aggie arrived on Friday evening at 8 pm. 
    Aggie is my husband, Garey’s, 85-year-old mother.  His sister, Charlotte, drove Aggie to our house for the weekend.  Sabria adores Aggie and can go only so many weeks before she starts asking about her.  When she does ask about her, we either, load up and drive to Corner, Alabama, where Aggie lives, or Charlotte brings her our way. 
    On August 15th, Aggie will be eighty-six.  Sabria wanted to celebrate while she was visiting with us, so we baked a cake, put candles on it, sang Happy Birthday, and Sabria helped Aggie blow out the candles.  We gave her new kitchen curtains for a gift.  They were curtains Sabria and I shopped for in every store that sold curtains in Bowling Green. 
    Sabria spent every waking minute with Aggie, playing dinosaurs and princesses and coloring then, when it was time to go to sleep, she slept in the bed with Aggie.  Sabria was very sad when it was time for her to go home on Sunday morning.  She insisted that we go with her.  We couldn’t of course, so I spent the afternoon feeling the sadness of distance separation that has plagued our little family since its inception.
    There have been times when I’ve said to Garey, “Let’s just sell out and move down there by her.”  Garey reminds me that, as much as I love Aggie, there are things about his mom that are maddening then adds that I wouldn’t last fifteen minutes in Corner, Alabama. 
    The maddening things Garey refers to have to do with the fact that his mom has no filter between her brain and her mouth.  She is not a malicious person, but she doesn’t always think before she speaks.  Because of this character trait, she often processes her thoughts out loud.  This habit is glaringly apparent when you watch TV with her.
    If you watch TV with Aggie, it’s a good idea to keep your hand hovering over the pause button on the remote, because you will have to stop what you’re watching every fifteen to twenty minutes to explain or repeat or dissect the information you have just seen—thank God for Direct TV and the DVR.
    Charlotte is usually the one who explains things to Aggie.  She has lived around her longer than we have and usually understands what the confusion involves.  Occasionally, Garey or I will give it a go and Charlotte will express her gratitude by saying, “Thank you for being the interpreter.”
    Aggie is not a stupid person, I think it’s more that she zones out for brief periods of time then when she comes back, the conversation or action has progressed to the point that it is unrecognizable to her.  I once had to explain that the particular character on the screen was not the character who had appeared in the previous sequence of events.
    “Are you sure?” she asked
    “Yes,” I said, “This guy is white.  The other guy was black.”
    This weekend, we were watching the eye glasses commercial where the woman standing at the back door calling, “Here, kitty, kitty,” lets the raccoon in her house.  The caption says: Missing Something?  Agnes scoffed, “That doesn’t look like any kitty I’ve ever seen.  It looks like a pole cat!”
    Charlotte raised her head from the couch arm where it had been resting, “Mother! It’s a raccoon!” she said.  “They’re advertising eye glasses, which is something you should probably look into.”
    Garey’s right, those conversations, although entertaining, can be maddening, but Aggie’s goodness more than makes up for all that.  She has been better to me than either mother I had, and she has been the kind of grandmother to my kids and my granddaughter that every kid wishes they had. 
I still wish we lived closer.  We could always hire an interpreter.