Don't forget to remember, post 4

Marie Dolores Bourgeois, what a beautiful name, for a beautiful lady. She was my father’s mother, and I called her Grammy. She came from Canada for a better life away from the farm and cold. She didn’t get too far, she made it to New Hampshire, but she was able to wear red lipstick, pretty dresses, fur collars to church on Sunday, and ride in my grandfather’s cadillac with the top down. Not speaking any English when she met and married my grandfather, she would learn the language from soap operas she’d watch during her afternoon break from household chores, simultaneously knitting a beautiful afghan with a cable stitch down the middle. She would often mix her French in with English, then laugh at her silliness. I’d laugh, too. She was easy to be with and I spent alot of time with her. As a child I didn’t know the reasons why I slept at her house so much, even went to half of my first grade from her house. There was trouble brewing at home, and Grammy took me in for long periods. It is a blur to me where my other siblings went. All I know is I was lucky to get up to pancakes that filled the whole skillet, and cake donuts on Sunday mornings drenched in pure maple syrup. Sitting on a vanity stool beside her, I would admire Grammy as she would primp in her mirror, spraying on perfume from beautiful bottles, choosing the perfect clip-on earrings to match her dress, brush out the curls of her golden hair (she was a natural brunette, but chose to be blonde) and spray it into place. I was a ragamuffin in comparison with pigtails and overalls. She loved me as I was and gave me a line to remember always, “you need to love what you see in the mirror, so be who you are!” She and Grampy did not have much money, but they did their best to look like they did. The two homes I remember her being in were two bedroom ranches with one shared bath and a tiny kitchen. But the clothes she wore and the cars she rode in told the world that they were high class! Grammy had a part-time job as a housecleaner for a rich family on Lake Sunapee, and I would tag along during my stays with her. She polished silver as if it were her own and dusted the fancy chandeliers. After a simple lunch, she and I would put on our bathing suits and take a dip in the lake, pretending we were cooling off on the shore of our very own summer home. Shortly before she died at the age of 87, I spent a weekend with her, listening to stories of her childhood in Canada. Raised on a large farm, there were no screens on the windows and there would be flies everywhere…and there was always hard work to do. Though she missed her siblings deeply, she bravely crossed a border and made a new life for herself. Thank you, Grammy, for your courage, your wonderful laugh, your mixed up words, and your ability to live in the richness of the moment. Every six weeks or so I think I should just go gray, but change my mind and put on a bit of color at my roots, because I want to like who I see in the mirror. I miss you and I love you, Grammy!