Grandmas

I think it's human nature to want what you don't have.

My folks got together when they were teenagers. It was sweet and into their 50s, it remains so. They're older, heavier, went through some hard times and challenges but, they remain a strong unit. Family photos hang everywhere. Blown up everywhere, living room, kitchen, bedrooms and picture albums.

I think often of generational cycles. I ask myself why my maternal grandma got back with my grandpa when he left, was unreliable, a cheater, and now their resting places are by each other. I don't quite understand that. As a teenager, I took one look at him and said..."no." I didn't appreciate the hug and made sure to never do it again. As for paternal grandmama, she's a matriarch, a G, the foundation, despite all of her partners flying away like dust. She's strong. I'm strong. I dress like her, have many of her personality traits and mannerisms, may one day have twins like her. I certainly hold my liquor like her...hennesey, and am sexy and sexual like her. If I reach my 80s like her, I'd still be getting my nails and my make-up done too. And in my 50s/60s, I'll be dating a white sugar daddy who buys my grandkids gifts.

Like her, I'm the year of the dragon. Generational cycles.

And she's so luminous and awesome so I don't know why I fear so much of one day being a matriarch like her. I wonder often if she felt the same way in her 20s and 30s too because like me she loves very hard and she forgives very easy. She still speaks about my dad's dad in the most romantic way. The way they combed each other's hair and spent time together in the midst of war. It's sweet. I'm like that still. Seeing the good side of people is the way to go.

But it seems hard, too because of course, she holds down the fort on her own. She has wide shoulders but the necessity of have wide shoulders is something that shouldn't be a necessity. I have wide shoulders. And maybe that's why I'm scared because she's so awesome that she doesn't need anyone but still, she damn well deserved them. She's strong and badass without them, but that doesn't mean she wasn't with them...

She has her children, her grandchildren, her great-grandchildren. It is all good and all beautiful and simply different than what my parents, and uncles, and aunts have. I have to tell myself that because regardless, it is all ok, life doesn't always twist the way you want it and love doesn't always work out. And sometimes people love who they shouldn't, like on the other side of my family, and being together doesn't mean very much. That's not great either... the mere title isn't great. It's the work. I have to remind myself of that because I have a little bit of that too.

The anxiety is there, full blown, but it's a little silly because if I were 1/2 as awesome as my grandma, I'd be overjoyed.