Carly Sanders
Bio
Stories (1/0)
What Lasts
Her handwriting was all over her house--hundreds of words handwritten on small pieces of paper taped over the garbage disposal, in the refrigerator, in the utility closet, in the drawers on top of piles of bank statements and decades of filed taxes and official documents. Charlotte’s grandmother, Yuma, who lived alone in the same house for nearly 50 years, wrote such practical reminders to herself: “garbage disposal NOT working--DO NOT use” over the sink, or “unplug refrigerator before changing light bulb” on the inside of the refrigerator door. In the cupboard above the stove, Yuma had organized rows of empty jars and bottles that said “sterilized” with different years written on each container, all of them 20 years old and at varying stages of collecting dust. These notes were meticulously cut from pages of Yuma’s black moleskine notebooks--12 in total, always the exact same color and size--that she kept in her bedroom. In these notebooks, Yuma also systematically chronicled how certain foods affected her blood sugar, which was stubbornly high but somehow managed to stay stable in the “pre-diabetic” zone for the last three decades of her life. She would write a food, and on the same line write “YES” or “NO.” “Chocolate donut…..NO.” “Sweet and sour chicken….NO.” “Carrot cake….NO.” These notebooks catalogued years of her dietary habits, most representing rejections that did not maintain the balance of her blood glucose, and yet she persisted in documenting each food, the occasional “YES” providing just enough reassurance to keep documenting. “Oatmeal...YES.”
By Carly Sanders3 years ago in Families