Our family was in the midst of a crisis. Our grandmother, Mom’s mom, whom we called Mommo, lay in a sterile hospital bed at Cabell Huntington Hospital. The stroke in June had almost killed her, and while she recovered, a second a month later rendered her faculties useless. She would spend her days like a newborn child, my mother by her side stroking her wrinkled, bony arm. She rarely moved and couldn’t eat. While she slept, Mommo would move her arms as if she were sewing or stirring, like she was going about her day to day life from the bed.
During this time, the line between day and night was blurred. Mom would come
home at 6 in the morning and go straight to bed, exhausted from her all night
watchwoman duties. I spent the majority of life that summer in a daze, because
I would spend sleepless nights worrying about life, death, and the fine line
between the two that my grandmother was walking. Sarah seemed to be taking it
all in stride. Sure, her eyes would redden and she would tear up slightly, but
she wasn’t the kind to cry. All her hurt stayed on the inside.
One particular evening, Sarah and I sat on her bed in our pajamas, sticking
closely to the path of air the air conditioner blew across us. We had just returned
from a trip to Wal-Mart with some essentials, makeup, shampoo and the like,
and one of our favorite guilty pleasures, a Bop, thirty pages of gossip, poems,
articles and big, bright, glossy photos of our favorite pop stars.
Sarah and I browsed through the pages, stopping to read the advice columns and articles. We read several poems out loud, poems from lovesick teenage girls whose idea of true love was an autograph and a wave. Sarah would make a drum out of her nightstand as I read the poems in the style of a spoken word song:
Looking at the pictures on my wall
I always wonder, “Who’s the fairest of them all?”
Lance is the one who always comes to mind.
Oh, how much I wish he were mine!
To meet Lance would be a dream come true,
Although my face would probably turn blue.
His gorgeous, blond, spiked hair,
It’s very hard to compare.
I wouldn’t mind a date with ‘NSYNC’s Lance,
Or even just a close-up glance.
After the performance, Sarah and I would dissolve into giggles. For a brief
few seconds, all the problems of the real world were gone. That night, we stayed
up for hours, laughing, talking, trying to forget the pain of our everyday lives.
It was reminiscent of the days of Barbie, those hot summer nights of carefree
childish joy. For once that summer, we were staying up not out of worry, but
out of happiness.