Love & Lemons
I’ve stumbled.
With faith, many, many times. The first time, it was twilight. I was sitting in my grandmother’s lap as we watched the dwindling stars illuminate the sky in the front steps of my house. The air smelled of grass and summer. She pushed my hair back and whispered, “Look at all this beauty. There’s so much more” And she told me the who’s, the why’s, the how’s. I was only seven. And I cried because it all seemed too big. Too much. Too rare. She told me I cried because my heart was pure. And it was faithful.
I never forgot that. Pure. As the years passed, her ever-constant presence in all my milestones became less frequent, and her voice of wisdom on the other side of the phone became more strained. More than anything, she tended to my grandfather’s growing forgetfulness. There wasn’t much talk of anything more.
Very often the things we fear most are not only bearable, but also transformative. When my grandfather started forgetting he’d already taken his blood pressure medication, we knew there was no going back—only forward at the pace of those speed boosters from video games. His disease progressed exponentially. Before we knew it, he went back to asking for his late mother, and asking for my grandmother’s hand in marriage.
*
My grandfather. Him who at his best built five different homes for his family, tossed his children to the deep end of every body of water, and proudly regaled himself a veteran of the Korean War. Him who hosted a party every Saturday while his wife handled affairs in the kitchen, and played “música del ayer” in the evenings as he asked my grandmother to dance. Him who made up stories for his grandchildren to fall asleep to, now needed stories made up for himself.
Meanwhile, my grandmother suffocates. He asks. He demands. He hovers. She runs out of stories. He can’t bear letting her out of his sight for a minute.
“But what do you want me to do? It is my pleasure to be next to you.” That, and he just loses his bearings if she’s not around.
My mother tells me she calls sometimes and says she can’t anymore. That she wonders when her cup will be too little, too thin, too full. Her strength fickle, her courage ran out. In these moments I miss her. And I want to be the one to whisper, “Shh. There’s always more.”
*
“Is this our house?”
I’d heard this question too many times, but I hear it louder as I crack open one eye and shake the grogginess from behind my lids. The clock across the room reads 2:00 a.m. I throw the covers aside. As I make my way down the empty hallway to the kitchen, I see their silhouettes around the corner and I hide in the shadow. My grandfather paces the kitchen, grabs a lemon from the fruit bowl in the counter, and tosses it across the room. My grandmother looks shaken. So, so tired.
She reminds him again and again. Yes. This is our home. Yes. We’ve lived here for 20 years. Yes. This is our car. Yes. These are the pictures of our children. This is your granddaughter. Let’s go back to bed.
“But I don’t understand. There has to be something wrong with my brain.”
When they’ve moved towards the room, I stand outside and I listen. I listen and I break a little. My eyes sting, but not because my heart is pure this time, so much as it is afflicted. I clutch my hands to my chest.
“Tomorrow. Tomorrow when it’s light out I’ll show you.”
*
I read once that love is not love which alters when it alteration finds. It carries all, bears it all. It is sacrificed. Pure. And it is faithful.
On the other side of the door, I can picture my grandmother caressing my grandfather’s back in slow circles. She loves him. His strong hands trembling as he looks down on them and wonders. So much wonder. I can almost see his eyes glaze over once again, shallow in their once-infinite depth.
“Is this our house?”
I stumble again. And I think, “This is Okay.” It’s Okay. There’s more. There’s more.