I’m writing this entry from my dad’s home office computer (via dial-up connection) in my hometown of Houston, desertland of highways, humidity, car dealerships, and folks who wear their cellphones in protective cases clipped to their belt buckles. Man, I haven’t been back to Texas, or seen any of my family, in a year and a half… I tend to steer clear of this part of the map, for fear of dying from boredom and just plain alienating my loved ones (which I have a tendency to do sometimes). Nothing better convinces me that I’m a heartless judgemental monsterchild than a long weekend trip back home, where I’m faced with parents who support and love me unconditionally, a younger sister who hero-worships me, and crippling guilt over the fact that I rarely spend longer than a few moments wondering about them and their lives. Know what? I’ll skip the self-hate portion of this entry and move on.

It’s been a bittersweet trip down so far. Spent the afternoon @ the hospital in Lubbock, TX, where my G’ma is recovering from a recent stroke. It was weird seeing my only living grandparent in that bed today, hardly able to speak or move her left side, but she was alert and those eyes were busy. She was saying alot with those eyes. I’ve always known she’d run out of steam one day, but I always figured it’d be gradually and well into her 90’s… not due to a brain-damaging stroke that would just hit her one boring afternoon at home. She’s always been such a pioneer in my mind, and I could wax poetic over what a pillar of strength and grace she’s always been. I could toast and beautify and attempt to immortalize her to be this remarkeable force of nature that I was lucky enough to be genetically tied to… but shit man, so could you. We could all do this with each of our families. The simple truth is, my g’ma is a wonderful woman… flawed and real and now very weak.

I gave her a yellow LIVESTRONG bracelet — slipped it over her patient wristband — and explained how it helped me, that maybe it’d do the same for her. She looked at me and stumbled, “I’mma be alright, honey.” I smiled at her and said, “I know. Like me.” At one point, everyone left the room and it was just the two of us… I had no idea what else to say, so I just started singing this dumb song, one I sang when I was little, that she always loved. A song I haven’t sung or even thought about in at least 15 years, but the words just kinda followed each other out and my eyes were tearing up but I kept singing to her. When I was done, she squeezed my hand (rough texture, thick veins) and tried to nod for me, saying everything else on her heart with her eyes. I left the room and went out into the hall and just started bawling. Hard. For her, for my lonely and worried dad, for other things. Texas is really not the way I’ve recalled it to be and but that’s ok… I’m not really always the man I recall myself to be either.

My grandmothers were strong.
They followed plows and bent to toil.
They moved through fields sowing seed.
They touched earth and grain grew.
They were full of sturdiness and singing.
My grandmothers were strong.

— Margaret Walker, “Lineage”