In 1984, shortly after my grandfather died, my grandmother emerged into the light. Not that she was ever in the dark. She had always been lively and funny and beautiful, but before my grandfather's death she lived in his shadow. The woman married to the man with enough charisma to burn a hole in heaven. If he wasn't donned in Cuban hats or Mexican sobreros dancing the Cha-Cha, he was listening to Latin jazz or train albums. He often spoke fondly of his mixed-race heritage; of the gumbo of his Florida origins; of fishing in the Gulf of Mexico. He was a smart man, so said my mother, and easily Morehouse and/or Harvard material.

But when my grandfather died, suddenly my grandmother was front and center.

And boy what a treasure unlocked!

There's not enough time in this blog to unravel and disclose my grandmother. But I will say this: I think of her often lately. Her spirited laughter, her timeless beauty, her adoration for her poetry-reciting, charming dancer of a father. I know my grandmother was a different being when she was simply mother to her children. And whatever twists and turns that marked their hearts and minds, she only surrounded me with her wisdom and humor and seamless way she playfully endured diabetes, heart disease and cataracts.

I think of her often lately because I'm no longer in the center of the median. The scale has tipped on one end and now I'm one of those who teeters on the wise side of experience. I'm not lucky enough to have an abundance of senior citizens in my life. My mother, two of her three brothers, grand-aunts and -uncles, all gone before 50 or 60. My mother's youngest sibling, Roger, nearly 62, is considered our family's patriarch. A spirited, youthful uncle who will forever be deemed as "the boy who drilled the hole in the toilet". [that's for another blog]

My grandmother... who once sat on the wise side of the median; who laughed so hard at times she'd fall off her seat and go plop to the floor; who painfully buried her 24 year old daughter after a life bout with sickle-cell; who once admitted her Aunt Helen was a "nosy something" as she peaked from the window in 1933 as Grandma smooched my then thin blue-eyed grandfather; who once had a deep love for picture shows and cold glasses of beer that made her ears turn red. Yes, this grandmother I look to for strength.

But the one thing Grandma said that sticks to my soul more than anything was never to talk back to my mother. She'd say, "'Cause you only get one."

She was right. You only get one. But there's also another "only one" you get: a human being who passes through your life cloaked as a Grandma who finally emerges from the shadow of her husband and demonstrates that no matter how much your world gets reckless, there's always room, much room, for living.

Until next time,

Keith