Grandma's Labyrinth

Grandma Bert rarely spoke. She would stand in her kitchen, arms behind her back, one hand holding the wrist of the other, staring out the window above the sink. Her eyes fixed on the north field and the ruin of the old school house.

Around her standing sentinel was the flashlight on the fridge, papers piled on the piano, rose soap by the sink, and stale graham crackers in the cookie jar. Scandalous novels tucked in couch corners, medicines hidden behind the good plates, and a powder puff I never saw her use, not once, but was liberally applied by grandchildren.

I knew only the dot to dot of her life. Her first breath in a cabin, one room of logs and stone. Not a single power line or satellite or radio wave. A father found dead, suddenly of fever, while she went to the well for water. Then a sister followed him.

Somehow in a city, college degree in hand, captured in a monochrome photo with a Mona Lisa smile. Then North, again. The Great Depression barely touched their poverty, the country dances in flour sack dresses. The man she married should have been, sometimes was, like her father. She loved her cows. Maybe more than her children.

In her corner of the world she weathered a century that changed the world. We somehow knew there was a labyrinth waiting in the kitchen by the sink, disguised as an old woman. There was no map, no clues, but we hoped someday to find the entrance.

I wonder now how many words lived under her skin. The stories she held should have spilled from her mouth and fingers. Tales should have trailed in her wake. Instead she was sealed shut. Formidable in her silent smallness.

Time has taken her voice from me, but I can see her hands bridling the old mare. Feel her ancient cotton house dress under my cheek. The smell of her ammonia and lemon kitchen floor. The kindness of her gaze on my sister who has her chin, her Mona Lisa smile.

I found a violin in her attic that she gifted me because she saw that I had fallen in love with the curve of its scroll. She didn’t waste words, but it was there, under the tree, that christmas.

At the last, Grandma Bert never spoke, The Stroke chose silence for her. Maybe it was a relief to know the option was out of her hands and mouth. That the secrets she had always kept, would be kept.

She spent so many years as the labyrinth. In the end we never did get in, and she couldn’t get out. Maybe she had peace, on her side of the wall.