By Sonja Anderson
Focus
Midland HS
1st Place
Division 2, News Writing
Feature Columnist
Adopted Grandma
The first thing I notice is the smell. I don’t think there’s any better title for it except Old People Smell. Kind of musty, a bit of lavender, maybe some moth balls. It doesn’t smell good or bad. I’m indifferent, really. It’s just there. Old people smell old, just like infants smell like infants, new or whatever.
One notices certain things while entering a nursing home, like the fact that the door is locked from the outside, and all of the decor looks like it was copied from a page of Better Homes and Gardens. It’s caged, and it’s impersonal.
Her room isn’t though. Her room has paintings tacked up on the wall, ones she’d done herself in an art class. And pictures of her family, and a portrait of Jesus Christ hanging above the television. Stacks of books and papers crowd the entirety of the back wall, and she’s converted her shower into a closet. There’s even a small statue of a tiara bearing dog to greet you as you walk in.
I’d come to visit Lu Delaney, as my family and I have been doing for some time now. She’s known me since I was five years old, after all. She was my neighbor, her and her husband. Their yard was directly behind ours, so that the back of our house faced the back of theirs in a mirror image. My brother and I would run over there in free time, which is all the time when you’re five, and accept treats and stories from them. The treats being candy orange slices and strawberry pie, and the stories being from their own childhoods. Mike, Lu’s husband, used to work as a milk delivery boy when he was young, and said he would often sip the foam off the top of the cartons before delivering them. I remember being intrigued by that, as that type of disregard for sanitation is pretty much a crime now.
Mike died on July 7, 2008, and Lu’s lived in a home ever since. He had cancer of the bladder, which was eventually replaced with a plastic bag. One of the many supporting reasons as to why age is frightening.
If Lu looked elderly when she was living at her house, it’s nothing compared to now. She’s ninety years old, and that sort of number does not tread lightly on the body. A great number of deeply purple veins show through almost transparent skin, her hair rests in loose, silvery white coils that reach to the bottom of her ears, and her legs are
not quite strong enough to stand for more than fifteen minutes. Although, when my dad offered to help her up from a chair, she shook her head and insisted on continuing independence. A very small woman, she only comes up to around my collarbone, maybe four and a half feet tall. Her eyes, though, remain a vivacious blue, like the color of a cloudless sky at midday. They pierce you when she talks. I love how she talks.
Lu was telling us of her volunteer work at the hospital, a twice per month occurrence. She stuffs and seals envelops with letters of the breast cancer variety. They’re mostly reminders to people to come in for their next mammogram. She said that she likes doing it, that she’s glad the nurses, busy and “with their smarts,” don’t have to do mindless things like that, because she’s able to.
The thing about old people is, there comes a time when most of them choose one of two directions. There’s senile, and there’s happy. I think that Lu has definitely chosen the latter. She doesn’t really care about anything futile anymore. She only cares to enjoy herself.
For example, her feet are perpetually covered in a pair of green, fluffy slippers. There’s a small bow on top of each. Also, the front bar of her wheeled walker is decorated in a long line of rubber ducks. She said that it started when somebody gave her that bright pink one right there. And then she got the other yellow ones, and then the one dressed like Santa Claus, and then the Halloween one, etcetera. She collects them, in the same way that one would collect coins or stamps. It’s kind of cute, really. Like, old people cute.
These small things that she finds joy in have taught me a lot. And I admire her, not only because she is braving her age, but also her losses. Her only remaining family consists of a daughter who’s around sixty years old. She once had a son, but he died when he was twenty-four of a brain tumor. And her husband’s been dead for seven years now. Despite that, she’s cheerful when we visit her. I really hope that she stays that way. Appreciating the small things, like her collection of soda tabs for charity and her matching pastel outfits.
So, next time I see her, I’ll probably bring a rubber duck.
And the thing I love about that is, it’s all she’d really want.
Philip Pirrip lives in me
The first time I fell in love, I was at the ripe age of seven, and in the first grade.
It all comes back very vividly. I was in multiage—a kind of mini school inside Plymouth Elementary, which grouped a bunch of first through third graders together and taught them as a whole. It was a weird concept and it’s since been discontinued, but I thought it was okay. The only issue that I had with multiage was that I was in it, and Alex Anganis was not.
Alex Anganis. The blonde haired, blue eyed first grader who I’d developed a huge crush on over the past few months. I don’t remember how I came in touch with him, but I do remember being absolutely smitten.
Now, this was the first grade. I had no idea what I was doing, and this was all new to me. All I knew was that I wanted to hang out with Alex. So I tried. And hereby began the longest trail of rejection I’ve ever experienced.
I started small, on the playground. It’s a little creepy, but I would discreetly follow him around the jungle gym, hoping to join any game he might start (which I did try to do several times). In one instance in particular, I remember approaching him and some other kids who were playing a game of “house” that he was clearly orchestrating. I asked if I could play, politely, and Alex told me, very sternly, that they didn’t have room for a single addition. No parts left to play in his family. But I asked again, several times, and eventually he reconsidered.
I would be allowed to play the part of the family dog.
I knew then that the feeling wasn’t mutual, but I persisted. He would learn to love me.
Alex’s family owned a restaurant called YaYa’s, and I forced my family to take me there very frequently. Not for the food, though. The only thing on the menu that I liked was pita bread. I went in hopes of seeing Alex. But he was never there, so I chatted with his father, asking him if Alex ever mentioned me. The answer was always a polite negative.
When I was in the second grade, my mother told me that she wanted to take my brother and me to the pool the next day, and I could invite a friend if I wanted. I selected Alex, naturally, and asked my mom to call his house. She did, and I waited.
When she told me that his mother had said yes, I was delighted. I remember playing this one Jessica Simpson song over and over again while lying on my bed and thinking about the day that Alex and I were about to share at the Plymouth Pool. The song was called “With you” and it was off of one of my mother’s old CDs. The daydream involved Alex and me swimming and splashing, and then becoming best friends and never leaving each other’s presence and getting married and owning a house and ten horses together and eventually looking through photo albums as adults, where we would find a picture of us at the pool, where it all started.
The next morning, though, my mother received a call. From Alex’s mom.
Alex had “bumped his head,” so his mother is very sorry, but he can’t come to the pool today.
I knew it was a phony excuse. I mean really? He bumped his head? I’d seen him nearly break a bone on the playground and never even frown.
Jessica Simpson’s songs held no meaning to me that morning. My Cheerios tasted like a Smiths song, and the Plymouth pool was de-romanticized into a simple bucket of chlorine and urine.
I was Pip from Great Expectations, and Alex was my Estella.
That wasn’t even the end though.
I was in the third grade, and I wanted to have a play-date with Alex. So I called his mother and asked if he could get together at three o’clock. She gave me their address and my dad dropped me off at precisely 3:01. I was ecstatic.
Alex’s mother greeted me upon arrival, took me inside, and offered me a drink. Lemonade. Then she went to retrieve Alex from his room.
Except Alex wasn’t in his room. Also, Alex wasn’t in the bathroom, or the living room, or the kitchen, or outside, or anywhere, it seemed. His mom and I searched the house for 15 minutes, and eventually, we did find him.
In the basement, in the very back of the laundry room, hiding behind an old couch, so that he wouldn’t have to play with me.
We endured several hours of awkward Wii bowling until I went home, and after that I didn’t try any more advances, besides some small things at school. I’d accepted my fate, and I’d also discovered unrequited love, which isn’t always entirely bad.
So now, every Valentine’s season, I don’t think about actual, romantic, star-crossed love stories. I am reminded of this. Thanks, Alex.