Amidst all the craziness of adulthood, I found hidden, unexpected haven at my grandmother's house where everything seems to grow smaller as I grow older.
Since my grand father's passing, the family promised to take turn in accompanying my grandmother to comfort her in feeling less alone. Of course, it is decided by her children. Not that she ever asked, with her small figures she still likes to think of herself as a strong and independent lady. But it may also be another way for the children to cope with the sense of loss together. All of us. But either way it seems like a good idea.
The older grand children get to sleep over every Saturday. There are three of us; We'd watch HBO before bed while Titi sits attentively. Sometimes, she'd make comments such as having never watched Harry Potter, she would throw away questions, "Why he doesn't have nose? It must be dark magic!" referring to Lord Voldemort, or "Why is she screaming at her mother?" to one of the Girls episodes. Later, we would all sleep together on the same king-sized bed like we were 7.
But my favourite part is during dinner when we all sat on the wooden round table, without phone, just us and the home-cooked meals. She would only eat with her now faded pink set of cutlery and her diabetic pills and blue plastic glass with flower-like bottom ready in front of her.
The conversation would begin organically, anything that hold relevance to everything around us. Like, my older cousin's wedding in a couple of months, the weather, the garden, newly upgraded fish tank, the parrot, and how she turns the emptiness by making herself busy at all times, even if it takes her to sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning, then stretches into far into something that we'd forget how we ended up there.
I admire how her eyes gleam, reciting the old tale she still remembers as if it happened two days ago. She sure does forget a lot of things, recent things like where she puts one of her keys that she lost for the third time as you sure cannot defy age. But the things she remembers about the past is impressive.
When the children lay around on the bed, scrolling our lives away on social media feeds, with her tiny crescent-shaped glasses, she sits next to her small corner with a tiny table and tiny green chair that she bought for the grand children back when we were five. The yellow paste reading light sheds just about the amount of lighting she needs to read one of her recipe books from 1992. The pages have gone yellow.
Follows, her routine before bed. After closing the recipe book, and only then, she'd check her smart phone, a gift from one of her sons, and learn slowly how to type Whatsapp message. Touch screen baffles her, she said. Most of the times she would accidentally send broken, unfinished message to the group chat we all try to figure out.
It is that little things in her habit that sometimes tells a story larger than what she seems. The littlest detail that I missed when I was away that must have gotten lost in the stories. How her faith in my grand father surpasses the space and time continuum.
