Irene

Someone asked me recently whether I ever thought of my books living on after me. And my honest answer is no. I don't write to leave anything of me behind. I LOVE in order to leave something of me behind. I love my kids, my parents, my friends. I hope if I dropped dead tonight, people would miss me. That maybe you'd drop by the blog and toast my memory with a shot of whiskey in your coffee. I like to think that I am leaving the world a tiny bit better place for having been here.

But my books? I don't give that a thought.

Except . . .

For my grandmother.

My favorite story about my grandmother, Irene, was when she asked me to drive her to Yonkers to go to the bank. Stone deaf, speech impediment on top of it, anything having to do with communicating outside the family she left to her family--me, my mom, whomever. I don't think anyone ever made a decision as far as that was concerned. It was just the older she got, the harder it was for strangers, who hadn't grown up with her, to understand her, so life became a series of interpretations. What did she say . . . then what did they say back. I would face her, so she could read my lips. And I would shout. LOUD. And even at that, a lot of times she didn't understand. So she would fake it.

Anyway, off we went to Yonkers. Only she wanted me to drive the wrong-way down a one-way street. With cars coming. I argued with her. But she felt it was stupid to waste time going all the way around the block when we only had to go a hundred feet or so THAT way. The wrong way.

I argued.

She argued back.

The thing about Irene? Stubborn as a mule.

Finally, she slapped my arm. "Just do it. If a cop comes, they won't put YOU in jail because you're only 19. And they won't put ME in jail because I'll tell them I'm 80." (Which at that point was a lie, but I think she figured if she added a couple of years, it would help our case.) "We'll talk our way out of it. I'm an old lady. A cop will feel sorry for me."

So I did what any loyal granddaughter would do. I waited for a break in traffic and gunned the car the wrong way up the street, then made a sign of the cross and a whispered thank you that we made it.

That was just Irene. I could recount a thousand wonderful, maddening stories. And not a DAY goes by that I don't miss her desperately more than a decade after she's gone. Not one day.

And SHE is in my books. Bits of her. In dialogue. In the character of "Nan" in Diary of a Blues Goddess. Bits of her. And when I re-read those parts, that I know are about her, I smile and know she lives on.

So I wonder, does anyone else do the same?