The pleasure in the voice at the other end of the line couldn't mask the weariness. Pain was there, too, hiding beneath the words like a child behind a tree in a game of hide-and-seek a good try, but obvious to anyone who's looking. Try as she might, this amazing woman who helped rear me couldn't keep the weight of her years from crushing in on her voice this time.
My grandma was born nearly 81 years ago in a two-bedroom house on the parched plains of central Texas, the second of eight children to a Christian patriarch and his polio-crippled wife. Like her older sister and the younger siblings who followed, she was born at home with no electricity, no running water and only the help of a local midwife.
In fact, Grandma helped deliver many of her younger brothers and sisters, just as she helped her wheelchair-bound mother feed and bathe and discipline them. Like any farm child, she helped take care of the livestock, chop firewood and clean the house from the time she could walk. By the age of 10, she had already helped embalm neighbors who had passed away.
This was rural Texas before the stock market crash, after all, where families took care of their own and neighbors helped neighbors like they were family. It wasn't just the right thing to do, it was the only thing to do.
Grandma was named after a neighbor woman who always wore a smile and carried a spare shoulder to help bear other people's burdens. For the neighbor woman, "Kindness" was a nickname; for my Grandma, it has been a name she has lived up to every minute of her life.
Once when I was 5 years old and grouchy, Grandma continually refused to rise to my bait. She ignored my temper tantrum and sweetly tried to change my mood. I complained bitterly that she was too, well, "nice," and she apologized. Then she told me, "Todd, being nice is the only way to be."
Her sagacity didn't impress me at the time, but over the years, I've learned to appreciate it more. I may never be as loving and supportive of family, friends and even strangers as she, but then again, I'm not even sure an angel could.
Faith in God has taken her to where she is today, and nothing makes her happier than feeling good enough to ease her way to the car to drive to church, foot resting on the brake at all times, on a Sunday morning. This is a woman who devoutly believes that woman was created to be man's helper, but she's the most independent, absolutely capable person I've ever met. Grandma worked the fields until she got married shortly before World War II, and then she had a career in office buildings back when society thought women should stay in the home. She outlived her first husband, married another and then outlived him as well.
During my 27 years of life, I've watched arthritis gnaw away at her freedom of movement like a beaver at a tree. She's gone through three artificial hips and two plastic knees, and I tease her that we'll turn her into a plastic football player any time now. But the disease is getting more degenerative every year. Any more, she seems worse every day.
This is the woman who, a month after her first hip replacement and still on crutches, laughed herself silly when her 4-year-old grandson stood next to her in the field where she had grown up and tried to attract the attention of a crotchety Brehmer bull.
Always adept at Southern cooking, Grandma has had to give up all but the blandest food. Her arthritis medicine gives her high blood pressure, and her blood pressure medicine aggravates her ulcer, and her ulcer medicine makes her unable to digest most food. But she still laughs and loves to buy her grandson his favorite food, Pizza Hut pizza.
This is the woman who spent her 60s hunting the woods for snakes for me to keep as pets. I can't count how many times she got me out of trouble by capturing a snake that had gotten loose in the house while I was away.
Once I had caught a 4-foot speckled kingsnake and put it into an aquarium in my room. My father had demanded that I put a rock on the lid, but confident in the fact that he didn't know what he was talking about, I disobeyed. Not an hour had gone by before the snake popped the lid and slithered down the hall and into the kitchen where my herpetophobic parents were talking to my grandma. When I came home from riding my three-wheeler, I found Grandma outside holding a crutch in one hand and a writhing snake in the other, red-faced with laughter. She was 68.
The arthritis started plaguing her in her late teens, and when she was still a young woman some backwoods doctor ripped out her teeth, telling her that they were the cause of her back troubles. There are times nowadays when this strong woman has to hold her head up with her hands because arthritis has eaten away so much at her neckbones. Continued high blood pressure has painted her face red, and the arthritis now prevents her from holding a book to read or cards to play or needles to crochet. No more will I get a toasty afghan from the woman who used to make a couple a week.
My parents fear that though her mind remains strong, her body is so weak she won't be able to care for herself within the next few months.
But where I rail at God when I lock myself out and snap at my roommate when I have a headache, she praises her Lord and thanks Him for the life she has led, the daughter who has made her proud and the grandson who lives 1,100 miles away and calls her once a week.
The grandmother of a friend of mine died a couple of years ago, plunging my friend so far into despair I thought she'd never smile again. I called her a couple times to tell her I was sorry for her loss, but the depth of her grief terrified me. But now, on days when I can hear the pain in a voice that never held anything but cheerfulness, I wonder how much longer a woman who survived the rise and fall of the Soviet Union can last.
And it scares me.
Todd Foltz has no intention of attaining sagacity or anything resembling wisdom.